Blue Suede Clues : A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley (A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley)

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Summary: Great mystery with Elvis Presley investigating
Review: A fabulous installment in this terrific series. Elvis Presley does the sleuthing!

Freddy "Squirm" Littlejohn sent Elvis a letter and photo. The photo was from four years ago when Elvis was in Germany in the army. It was of Elvis singing with other Army guys at Christmas. Squirm was one of them. His letter asked for Elvis' help. Squirm was serving a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit. Holly McDougal had been strangled on the MGM lot.

Elvis went to the California Correction Institution in Tehachapi to see Squirm. He met Bob Reardon, warden of CCI. After his discussion with Squirm, the warden gave Elvis a script. In a recent interview Elvis had asked for a first-class script.

Then Elvis contacted Regis Clifford, Squirm's lawyer. Elvis quickly concluded that Regis was a drinker. He discussed Squirm's case. He found out that a makeup artist named Connie Spinelli had told Regis that Holly McDougal was a wild kid. She said that she 'made a stripper blush to her ankles.' Unfortunately when Regis went to meet with Spinelli, she had vanished.

He also told Elvis that Miss Nanette Poulette, Squirm's girlfriend, had given some damning testimony against him which seemed to seal his fate.

Elvis asked around about Spinelli and finally got someone to talk to him. He then called his buddy Billy Jackson and asked for his help in contacting her.

Elvis went to the stunt shack on the MGM lot. He met Will Cathcart, a stuntman and rodeo rider. He showed Elvis around including the bunk room where Holly had died. Will had not been around then. He also gave Elvis a trial ride on Nelly, the stuntman's mistrees, a harness. While dangling from the harness, he met Mickey Grieves, Squirem's good buddy who had referred Squirm to his attorney.

I won't tell you anymore. You'll have to read to find out how Elvis keeps digging and digging to find out the truth behind the strangling of Holly McDougal. So many times I had to remind myself that Elvis never did all this investigation. It is written so well and with such believability and history interwoven, that I often forget it's fiction.

Mr. Klein has done a great job in catching the true essence of Elvis and using it in his books.

I highly recommend this book and the whole series.

Rating:
Summary: A Bitter Victory
Review: Daniel Klein did it again. Like Kill Me Tender, Blue Suede Clues is a true pageturner in spite of the fact that real life Elvis was not a detective and hardly could be one. Can a real life character be a fictional character, and how close they can grow, or how far they can depart? Every Russian (like myself) had read War and Peace where Commander-in-Chief Kutuzov, czar Alexander I and Napoleon Bonaparte were both, historical characters and fictional characters at once. Leo Tolstoi kept their images recognizable but didn't pursue their life-true portrayal. Instead, he used them for expressing his ideas regarding war and peace.

Blue Suede Clues cannot be compared to War and Peace, but in the latter case, the function of a famous character is the same. It expresses Klein's ideas about the subject of his mystery, the loss of humanity in a morally declining society.

Even Elvis cannot help Littlejohn, a victim of the corrupted justice system. As the mystery unfolds, the unholy power games escalate so forcefully that Elvis himself is caught by the net of intrigues. And Klein lets the forgotten Littlejohn to take care of himself by his own means. Littlejohn escapes and flees abroad. In the name of a traditional resolution, Elvis wins the battle against the evil by unmasking the judge, the twin brother of Littlejohn's attorney. Of course, the evil judge is the killer who framed Littlejohn. When unmasked judge takes his life -- evil is conquered. But it is a bitter victory. On the last page, Elvis learns that president Kennedy has been shot, and book ends with the words, "...he reached into his pocket for his bottle of painkillers." Who really won? Did Elvis conquer the evil, or the evil society conquered Elvis? Who will win at the end? As a matter of fact, the dark backdrop of Blue Suede Clues with its identical twin theme (one unit good versus one unit evil) leaves the battle unresolved. I cannot wait to learn, how Daniel Klein will handle this situation in his next installment of Elvis Presley mysteries...

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Summary: Three Reasons to Read Blue Suede Clues
Review: In Blue Suede Clues you get three for the price of one: a murder mystery, interesting facts about Elvis, and a psychological thriller. Serious suspense, of the kind that makes you stay up later than you had planned, mingles with amusing details from Elvis's real life. However, as a psychiatrist I found the psychological part of the plot the most fascinating. Dan Klein's portrait of Elvis struggling to reconcile his spiritual ideals with the reality of Hollywood (and sex) was both convincing and emotionally engaging. Will he succeed? That's one of the mysteries and I won't tell you what happens.