The Misfortune Teller - Leigh Brackett

Novella

Number of words : 25000
Percent of complex words : 5.6
Average syllables per word : 1.4
Average words per sentence : 8.6


READABILITY INDICES

Fog : 5.7
Flesch : 82.1
Flesch-Kincaid : 3.9



SETTING

Los Angeles

Hollywood and Beverly Hills.


CHARACTERS

February Smith

Private detective in the classic mold. Knows both Hardy and Brandenburger. Investigating the Misfortune Teller case.

Detective Lieutenant Harold 'Horse' Palfrey

Homicide detective on the case.

Rachel Hardy

New actress interest of Brandenburger's. Old interest of Smith's. Current interest of Brandenburger's.

C. J. Brandenburger

Rich guy that blows his money on filmmaking and actresses. A bad man.

Lars Thorsson-Ed Kreisher

Actor. Attacked and badly disfigured when he comes between Janis and Brandenburger.

Ted Bray

Bad guy. Hired by Brandenburger to do bad things.

Tim Garrison

New actor in new Brandenburger picture. Fancies an actress too much.

Stella Janis

Dead actress, found with an Ace of Spades and a cut throat.

Chase

Plainclothes policeman.

Harry

Gunsel for Bray.

Matilda

Rachel Hardy's maid.

Dr. Wolf

Gives the verdict on Stella Janis.

Joe Sawyer

Friend of Stella's.

Johnny Reynolds

Homicide detective in New York that knew Smith.



MEDIA

Red Nocturne

An independent film made by Brandenburger.


Strange Victory

Brandenburger's planned new epic.


PLOT

A classic PI story. February Smith begins investigating a case that involves people being sent The Ace of Spades. An action that really isn't an invitation to the local card game. One such recipient, Stella Janis, is found dead with a cut throat.

Smith is designed to be set up for this by those concerned, and ends up in shootouts with the above cops and eventually the bad guys.

C. J. Brandenburger is a producer out of money, and jealous of his starlets. He hires a criminal to badly injure an actor because of this. It appears that his current girlfriend, Rachel Hardy is also a target - but it turns out that she and her current actor paramour are actually targeters instead.


4 out of 5