In 1950 Midtown Manhattan, NBC Symphony second violin Fritz Stern visits private investigator Jack LeVine. Fritz, who has been with the symphony for over a decade, firmly believes that someone kidnapped the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini. Stern bases his assessment on the fact that the great conductor could not remember the evening's program when the symphony performed for President and Mrs. Truman. Still a paying client is a client so Jack accepts the case.

Stern tells Jack to start with the nasty Sidney Aaron, NBC vice president for Special Programming. Following that meeting, Jack concludes something is not right at NBC. However, things turn ugly when someone kills Stern. Jack stays with the case, which takes him to Cuba and the Mafia, but not any closer to learning the truth even with his life now on the line.

TENDER IS LeVINE is a fabulous historical mystery that works because Andrew Bergman makes 1950 seem so real that it in turn anchors the mystery and Jack. The story line is fast-paced and the investigation is fun to watch, but this tale belongs to the period as history has never unfolded any better than this superb detective tale.

Harriet Klausner

Set in the WWII 40's, written in the Watergate 70's, when detective fiction enjoyed a renaissance, this book is full of wonderful wisecracks. Maybe it's a little too self-conscious, and a little smutty for my tastes. But it is very clever. The author also has enjoyed a successful, if intermittent Hollywood screenwriting career, most notably penning Blazing Saddles.

The plot has to do with the daughter of a prominent banker (and significant contributer to the Republicans) being blackmailed by sources unknown. She had made a blue film earlier in her life and her father was having the squeeze put on him. In the course of his investigation, Private Peeper Jack LeVine tracks the corruption all the way up to FDR's staff. And interestingly for the events happening in Washington near the time it was written, the Democrats are portrayed as the far more nefarious group in this book.

The plot was refreshingly large in scope but at times unconvincing. It seems unlikely LeVine could get away with much of the stuff he does here. And the ending was somehow pat. The mystery elements were lacking after the halfway-point, making it play out somehow flatly. These are not necessarily meant to be harsh criticisms; I liked the book. It just didn't follow the form exactly, that's all.

Because this sort of thing must, of course, be compared to Chandler. Bergman himself would probably encourage the association. And it feels remarkably close, closer than anything else I know of. But this lacks the depth, substituting pith for real feeling. Here the attitude is put on like a shoulder holster. Chandler was writing from his heart, to come to grips with a world that seemed unspeakably cruel to him. Any humor injected was not the point, but a bonus. BK-Oof1944 is foremost comedy, attached to the PI skeleton to give LeVine opportunity to utilize the one-liners that make it so. The result is lots of fun, but nowhere near the classic status of the novels it tries hard to be like.

Still, almost-Chandler is better than just about anything else around.

P.S. This is much better than either of its sequels to date.

Andrew Bergman, the director of "Honeymoon in Vegas" and the underrated "Striptease" was a novelist before his scripting/directing career took off and an excellent novelist at that. His detective is a Mensch forced to deal with McCarthy-era Hollywood, a few stiffs and screenwriters under the black list. Very genre but very good. A really funny encounter with Dick Nixon is hallucinatory. A small-hours tour of the Warner's Studio backlot western town unforgettable and the ending image echoes the best of Chandler. You'll want to read it again.

In the days before video, if you could get access to twenty or thirty films and come up with a few insights, you could get a book published. This book, written originally for a thesis or dissertation in American studies, is one of those. Occasionally, he comes up with an accurate observation, but much of what he says is based on a very limited familiarity with films of the era. Indeed, most films fans of today, with access to video and classic film stations, will have seen more than Bergman had when he wrote the book.
He follows the traditional line: Mae West was the most incendiary thing on the thirties screen (hardly); the Marx Brothers' DUCK SOUP was daringly political and that's why it was unpopular (not true.) If he'd seen other films about sex besides Mae West's -- or had seen enough films to realize just how political movies could be in the early thirties (when Duck Soup was made), he'd not have jumped to those conclusions. But you can't be an expert by leaping to lofty generalizations based on limited knowledge.
His analysis of the film FAITHLESS, for example, proceeds from a complete misunderstanding of its context. He talks about a daring, feminist film as though it were a throwback because he has no idea of what he's seeing.
Thirty years later, Bergman probably knows better, but the idea of anybody reading this book and thinking they're getting some kind of real knowledge about the subject is saddening. I'd be willing to bet that ninety percent of the people who read this know more about the subject than Bergman did when he wrote about it.

This book explores the movies of the 30's in great detail. It covers some of the best movies ever made. If you are a fan of the movies you will be a fan of this too.