The French film industry just before WWI is the setting of Beatrice Hitchman’s delicious debut novel, PETITE MORT (Serpent’s Tail).

Essentially, it is the back story of a mystery, the sinister incineration of a movie studio in which a recently shot silent film is destroyed erasing a sleight of hand worthy of cinematic illusion.

Cast with a cavalcade of characters kindred to the great melodramas, PETITE MORT stars Adele, a native of Carcassonne who comes to Paris with a fervour fanned by a priest to become a film star.

Film fame foiled, she finds work at Pathe in the wardrobe department, relegated from scene stealer to seamstress, where she catches the eye of studio big shot, Andre Durand, special effects wizard and husband of cinema superstar, Luce, known by her stage name, Terpsichore.

So the scene is set for a ménage a trois, with a trio that have three individual back stories that inform the future, harbour the past and haunt the present.

Imagine ALL ABOUT EVE via THE ARTIST and HUGO with dashes of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock, and you have an idea of the tone of PETITE MORT.