Cut to: Murder

Filmdom meets history--and murder--in the second charming Queenie Davilov mystery (after Murder Offscreen). When a scriptwriter vanishes from location in Spain, director/producer Fernando Frazier brings in Queenie to complete the script for a film that tells a true story from the Spanish Civil War. But Queenie soon discovers that Fernando and his half-brother, Carlos Ballester, who arranged the film's financing, have very different ideas about the movie's plot and the history it purports to tell--the saga of their mother, who was denounced as a traitor during the war and executed by her rural village's political boss. Fernando claims she was betrayed, while Carlos dismisses this argument as ``nonsense.'' As Queenie gathers information about past and present mysteries, she needs longer than does the reader to figure out that the two are intertwined. A look at the unfinished film and her sixth sense send her digging for a corpse, but not in time to prevent another death. Her minor mental foot-dragging aside, Queenie is an engaging sleuth who moves easily on a convincing stage populated with varied characters who spice up the story with their surprises. (Aug.)