This delightful tour de force has Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott heading an all-star cast of Algonquin Round Table regulars, all taking deadly aim and shooting from the quip in a baffling case of murder that springboards with the body of a murdered Ziegfeld beauty found dead in George S. Kaufman's "hideaway." It's 1926 and the day of Rudolph Valentino's funeral, and the shade of the great screen lover plays an important role in this tantalizing recreation of the Babylon that was New York City in the roaring, bloody 1920's.
The intricate web of murder and intrigue in which Mrs. Parker finds herself the willing fly to a very fascinating, mysterious spider whose lifestyle is strangely based on that of Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby, includes meaty appearances by Texas Guinan, Florenz Ziegfeld, George Raft, and Polly Adler and reaches out west to Hollywood and the mysterious, unsolved murder of film director William Desmond Taylor. As the Detroit News summed it up,
The intricate web of murder and intrigue in which Mrs. Parker finds herself the willing fly to a very fascinating, mysterious spider whose lifestyle is strangely based on that of Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby, includes meaty appearances by Texas Guinan, Florenz Ziegfeld, George Raft, and Polly Adler and reaches out west to Hollywood and the mysterious, unsolved murder of film director William Desmond Taylor. As the Detroit News summed it up,