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When it comes to graphic novels and murder and mystery in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the name Rick Geary is synonymous. His Treasury of Victorian Murder, series, which became the Treasury of XXth Century Murder series, has been running since the mid-1990s, telling true tales of horror from Jack the Ripper to H.H. Holmes to Sacco and Vanzetti. But this year, Geary took a step back from these true tales to tell a piece of historical fiction --- a story about Louise Brooks, one of Hollywood’s early stars, becoming mixed up in her own tale of mystery.

Louise Brooks might not have been as big a name as Marlene Dietrich or Hedy Lamarr, her contemporaries, but she came close to such stardom. If you don’t know anything about Brooks, that’s perfectly fine. The book starts out with a quick recap of her life up to the point the book starts, and even that is brief. Geary isn’t focusing on the “real” Brooks --- this isn’t a biography after all --- but on Brooks as he imagines her, in this case in Wichita, KS after her career has faltered.

"This book has reintroduced a lost star of the Hollywood firmament in a dynamic murder mystery."

Geary knows how to write a mystery, and sets up a couple quick blinds to keep the reader guessing. At the beginning of the book, the murder of a wealthy widow is mentioned as the news item du jour in Wichita, and as Louise is fascinated by it, the reader is set to assume this is the “case” she will be investigating. But quickly, that case becomes background in a domestic story of Brooks dealing with coming home, strife with her mother, and finding work --- all the mundanity of daily life. And while Louise doesn’t solve this murder, Geary cleverly brings it around and ties it into the overall mystery by the end of the book.

The real murder mystery involves the fiancée of Louise’s friend, Helen. It’s something of a classic rural mystery, involving a hobo, a reclusive writer, a stolen car, and a damsel in distress. Structurally, mysteries are possibly the most difficult genre to write, because if you lay down one incorrect hint, or forget to put in one important clue, the whole story falls apart. Geary knows the type of story he’s telling well enough to lay out all the pieces, to work in the proper clues. While it’s not a perfect play fair mystery (where the reader has all the clues he or she needs to solve the case along with the detective) it’s not a cheat either, with a random character appearing at the end as the killer --- a classic mistake of rookie mystery writers.

The title of the book is telling of the focus of the story. This isn’t, “The Wichita Murder.” It’s LOUISE BROOKS: DETECTIVE. Louise is front and center, first and foremost a person. She isn’t a cardboard detective, stalking down a crime. The book is narrated in first person from Louise’s point of view, and so the reader spends the entire story in her head. They experience life in the 1940s with a woman who is divorced and thought of by many as a has-been at the age of 33. She is filled with doubts about her life, but is clever and charming, and no matter her self-admitted faults, keeps the reader rooting for her.

As an artist, Geary’s work is always outstanding. His line work makes the most of black-and-white and shadow, giving the work a classic feel that works with the eras he is depicting. He draws distinct and expressive faces, characters who wear their hearts on their sleeves or whose eyes and smiles mask what is hiding behind them. He draws lovely country roads and small towns with similar alacrity, creating the kind of idyllic world that works best in these stories, a stark juxtaposition with brutal murder.

There are very little in the way of splash pages in the book; each chapter begins with one, and there are a couple of important pages that stand on their own. Mostly he uses three or four panel pages, jumping from character to character and from one point of view to the next. But as the book nears its climax and the stakes increase, the panel count increases to four to six panels a page, working like quick cuts in a film to ratchet up the tension.

In the end, Louise Brooks leaves Wichita and the detective life behind to return to New York and try her luck on the stage again. Geary ends the story with a Louise who sees new promise on the horizon. And even if the readers never see one of Ms. Brooks’ films, this book has reintroduced a lost star of the Hollywood firmament in a dynamic murder mystery, the kind one would expect from Alfred Hitchcock in top form. 

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