Before I discovered Shooting Hollywood, I had been looking and hoping for a new book from Melodie Johnson Howe since 1994. I enjoyed her two previous mysteries, The Mother Shadow and Beauty Dies, so much that I have read each several times in the years since then. Though I knew what would be happening in the books, I still loved Ms. Howe’s smart writing style and the well realized characters she created, and I especially enjoyed the interactions of those characters. Those qualities from her two novels also appear in this series of short stories, though because of their length the qualities aren’t quite as well developed.

The murder mystery stories in Shooting Hollywood all feature Diana Poole, whose disillusioned but still wistful sophistication sets their tone. She’s a former Hollywood starlet now in her forties and trying to get work again because her husband has died. Since all the stories are about her, each one has a few sentences covering the same backstory, and a lot of people do seem to be killed around her, but those are minor issues because the stories are fun to read. There is a paragraph before each story explaining what ideas or circumstances inspired the plot, and I found these descriptions almost as interesting as the stories themselves. Ms. Howe herself is an actress, and she’s made movies with many big name Hollywood stars, so it’s fascinating to have her behind the scenes perspective. ( )