Death Above the Line: A California Zephyr Mystery

Set in 1953, Dawson’s agreeable if lightweight fourth California Zephyr mystery (after 2018’s The Ghost in Roomette Four) finds Jill McLeod—who usually works as a customer service employee called a Zephyrette on the California Zephyr, a train that runs between Oakland, Calif., and Chicago—in a temporary job: playing the part of a Zephyrette in a noir film set aboard the train. In the warehouse in Niles, Calif., where the movie’s being shot, she learns moviemaking slang and gets to know the actors. Then Global Pictures executive Stu Felton arrives from the home office, and everyone tenses up. Felton has the power to kill the production, and he and several people involved in it hate each other, including rising actor Leona Alexander, who has rejected the man’s sexual advances, and high-strung scriptwriter Wade Radcliffe, who’s furious at Felton for threatening to put him on Hollywood’s anti-Communist blacklist. When Felton is murdered, levelheaded Jill starts asking clever questions and has the good fortune to eavesdrop on relevant conversations. The result is pleasantly nostalgic fluff for fans of old movies and trains. (Sept.)