Publication Date: July 2, 2024
In 1919, Hollywood film star Mary Pickford, “the most famous woman in the world,” is currently in between pictures and recovering from the Spanish Flu when a man shows up at her Malibu hideaway one night asking for help. The man, who’s been shot twice in the back, then dies in her garden, and Mary makes up her mind to figure out what’s going on. Assisted by her resourceful young driver, Billy Kidd, a rodeo rider and wrangler from Arizona, she soon finds herself involved in a series of dangerous abductions, abandonments, and murders that lead to San Francisco, Death Valley, then back to Los Angeles.
Who’s the mysterious man who died in her Malibu garden?
What’s happened to Suzanne Smith’s missing baby?
What’s the involvement of Mary’s close friend, the powerful Hollywood tycoon Adolph Zukor?
Over a span of 13 days in February 1919, famous movie star Mary Pickford gets tangled up in a real-life mystery documented in a manuscript written by her driver, Billy Kidd.
That manuscript, along with edits by Mary, was later compiled by author William Baer under the title A Mary Pickford Mystery.
The focus of the memoir, told in first-person by Billy, is the sudden arrival of a man who appears in Mary’s garden, only to die of gunshot wounds after giving her a cryptic message.
As Mary and Billy start searching for clues, the body count rises. It’s a whodunit with plenty of recognizable Hollywood names included. Will they be able to unravel the tangled web? Given that the manuscript was originally penned by an 18-year-old, it has the basic ingredients but lacks a bit of development.
A Mary Pickford Mystery brings old Hollywood to life with kidnapping, murder and mayhem.
William Baer  is author of thirty-five books including fourteen novels. His various books include The Gravedigger, Central Park, Annie Oakley Mystery, One-and-Twenty Tales, Mary Pickford Mystery, Classic American Films, Psalter, Love Sonnets, and the Deirdre Flanagan mystery series. He’s been very fortunate to receive a Creative Writing Fellowship in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright (Portugal), and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives happily in a yellow log cabin in Northern New Jersey, enjoying pizza, books, sports, and chocolate.
