The Sunset Boulevard Dialogues — Maynard Allington

PI Rich Hazzard receives an unusual invitation to tea, accompanied by a photo of a woman whose throat has been cut. A perfumed note reads: "If the photo interests you, please call on me at this address. . . CARA SHEARS."

At the Sunset Boulevard Address, portraits of a stunningly beautiful girl cover a gallery wall. The girl is Cara Shears, a silent film actress who abandoned Hollywood for Berlin and German expressionist films in 1933. Hiding from view behind a silk partition, she tells him she's dying from cancer and wants him to write her story.

In a series of taped conversations, it's soon obvious to Hazzard that he's dealing with a serial pattern of murder. He never sees her face on the other side of the silk portiere and comes to wonder if the person talking to him really is the one time film actress. What he doesn't know is that he's being set up as the final victim in a complex scenario of murder that traces back to Hitler's Third Reich.