Frames: A Valentino Mystery

Enter Valentino, a mild-mannered UCLA film archivist, buys a decrepit movie palace and uncovers a skeleton in the secret Prohibition basement. He then makes a second discovery: long-lost, priceless, reels of film: Erich von Stroheim's infamous Greed. The Los Angeles Police Department wants to take the reels as evidence, jeopardizing the precious old film. If Valentino wants to save his find, he has only one choice: solve the murder within seventy-two hours, with the help of his mentor, the noted film scholar Broadhead, and Fanta, a feisty if slightly flaky young law student. Between a budding romance with a beautiful forensics investigator and visions of Von Stroheim's ghost, Valentino's madcap race to save the flick is as fast and frenetic as a classic screwball comedy.