Ed Ifkovic – författare

Who murdered the handsome young actor? And why?

In 1940, against the chilling backdrop of Hitler''s rise and the specter of another war, Edna Ferber decides to follow an old dream: to act on the stage. Selecting The Royal Family, the comedy she wrote with George S. Kaufman, for her starring role, she travels to Maplewood, New Jersey. But her escape from the troubling daily headlines is short lived. Before opening night, a mysterious understudy is shot to death, opening up a world of lies, greed, and hypocrisy.

Ferber, along with Kaufman, who is directing the production, begin a different kind of collaboration: the discovery of the murderer. As rehearsals evolve, they deal with a cast of characters who are all hiding something from their days spent in Hollywood: a stage manager, a young ingénue, an American Nazi and his boisterous girlfriend, a stagehand named Dakota who is the son of a famous evangelist, his charismatic preacher-mother, her money-bags husband, and a driven acolyte of the church. Each character, Edna discovers, has some connection with the dead man. Why have they all converged on quiet Maplewood? As Edna investigates, she realizes that the answer to the murder lies back in Hollywood.

As Kaufman wisecracks his way through the story, Edna methodically examines the facts, determined to find the answer. Opening night looms and so does World War II. Edna, resolute, believes that justice needs to prevail in a world that is falling apart.

"Ifkovic successfully blends homicide with a loving homage to Budapest on the eve of World War I." —Kirkus Reviews

In 1914, as rumors of war float across Europe, Edna Ferber travels to Budapest with Winifred Moss, a famous London suffragette, to visit the homeland of her dead father and to see the sights. Author Edna is fascinated by ancient Emperor Franz Joseph and by the faltering Austro-Hungarian Empire, its pomp and circumstance so removed from the daily life of the people she meets. Sitting daily in the Café Europa at her hotel, she listens to unfettered Hearst reporter Harold Gibbon as he predicts the coming war and the end of feudalistic life in Europe while patrons chatter.

Then a shocking murder in a midnight garden changes everything.

Headstrong Cassandra Blaine is supposed to marry into the Austrian nobility in one of those arranged matches like Consuela Vanderbilt''s still popular with wealthy American parents eager for titles and impoverished European nobility who have them to offer. But Cassandra is murdered, and her former lover, the dashing Hungarian Endre Molnár, is the prime suspect. Taken with the young man and convinced of his innocence, Edna begins investigating with the help of Winifred and two avant-garde Hungarian artists. Meanwhile possible war with Serbia is the topic of the day as Archduke Franz Ferdinand prepares to head to Sarajevo. While the world braces for disaster, Edna uncovers the truth—and it scares her.

In 1955, grande dame authoress Edna Ferber is visiting LA for the filming of her epic novel, Giant. Edna is looking forward to meeting Rock Hudson, Liz Taylor, and especially the film’s gifted young breakout star, James Dean.

A charismatic rebel, Dean attracts attention, devotion, and trouble wherever he goes. Now he is being blackmailed by a young extra from the movie who accuses him of getting her pregnant. The studio fears that the negative publicity will jeopardize the film’s release. Then the actress is found murdered, and James Dean is the prime suspect.

Employing her honed character instincts and her sharp nose for subtext, Edna decides to investigate the murder, determined to clear Dean’s name. But as she uncovers the dark underside of glittering Hollywood, she fears that the truth may be worse than she could have imagined.

In 1904, the future bestselling writer Edna Ferber, then a nineteen-year-old fledgling reporter in Wisconsin, teams up with famed escape artist Harry Houdini to solve the baffling murder of a girl who has mysteriously disappeared from a locked room at the local high school.

Edna Ferber is a reporter for the Appleton, Wisconsin, Crescent, an occupation that many townspeople, including her own family, consider scandalous for a proper young girl.

It’s a troubling summer for her. Her home life is in disorder, though she is dedicated to her blind father. Her mother and sister dislike her walking the streets as a reporter. Even the newsroom has become a hostile environment, with a new city editor determined to undermine her. Then she gets to interview the famous escape artist Harry Houdini, who is in town visiting old friends. Houdini, as Ehrich Weiss, spent his boyhood years in the small town.

When Frana Lempke, a beautiful young German high school girl, disappears and is soon discovered murdered, the unusual crime baffles the local police because Frana mysteriously disappeared from a locked room at the high school.

Edna asks Houdini for help in solving the murder. Houdini takes a liking to Edna and agrees to help. But as Edna pursues the story, alienating any number of people, she senses that she is being followed. Piecing together the clues, she comes to see that her own life in the small town is unraveling. As the future bestselling writer starts to solve the crime, she understands that her involvement will impact her life forever.

"Others find peace of mind in pretending. Couldn''t you? Couldn''t I?"—from the song "Make Believe," by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II for the musicalShow Boat

In June 1951, Edna Ferber heads to Hollywood to support an old friend, Max, who has found himself blacklisted in the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings, which have rattled Hollywood with allegations of Communist sympathies. She has no plans of becoming involved with the soon-to-be-released MGM filmbased on her bestselling novel Show Boat.

She first met Max Jeffries when he worked on the 1927 Broadway production of Show Boat, and most recently he had brought his magic to the new film version starring Ava Gardner. In fact, he was the one who pushed to have Gardner play the role of Julie, the doomed mulatto. But Max, expelled from the MGM lot and shunned by friends, is not credited on the film because of his political leanings. Edna''s visit is one of friendship, nothing more—until Max ends up dead. Edna now must search for answers to the questions surrounding his death.

She begins socializing with Ava Gardner, a woman currently scandalizing Hollywood and annoying Hedda Hopper because of her affair with Frank Sinatra, who has left his wife for the sultry goddess. Edna finds Ava, the supposedly hard-as-nails temptress, to be a vulnerable, insecure woman whom she comes to like. Because the gentle Max was killed right after a public brawl with Sinatra, Ava fears that her lover will be implicated.

Edna plays sleuth quietly, becoming involved with the people who hang around the edges of Hollywood fame and fortune, where she uncovers dark layers of greed, envy, and desire. Against the backdrop of the new Show Boat is the tawdry romance of dream-street Hollywood itself—all part of the world of make-believe.

A sweltering July in Chicago, 1923. Edna Ferber, now a famous short-story writer, is supposed to be researching the novel that will become So Big, her Pulitzer-Prize winner. With her mother, Julia, she spends the week visiting her mother’s old childhood friend, Esther Newmann, who lives with her family on the edge of the bustling Maxwell Street Jewish marketplace.

But the awful specter of a scandalous murder fifteen years before suddenly haunts Edna. Leah Brenner, the woman confined to a mental hospital after stabbing her husband Ivan to death, is back home, sitting next door on her front porch. Horrified, Julia Ferber laments the return of a brazen murderer to the quiet street. But Edna, meeting the old woman, believes she was condemned for a murder she did not commit. “Leave it alone,” the Newmann grandmother Molly insists―“it’s old news.”

Although life has moved on, even Leah’s children believe their mother stabbed their father. After all, she was found standing over her husband’s body, blood on her fingertips. But no knife was ever located. As Edna probes into the Brenner family―grown children at war with one another, a flashy uncle who once wanted to marry Leah―Edna shakes up the street. Undaunted, she has an idea who the murderer is, but she needs an elaborate scheme to trap the killer. Another shocking death and a funeral give her the opportunity.