Renee Patrick books

Renee Patrick is the pen name of Rosemarie and Vince Keenan, a husband-and-wife writing team who set their historical mysteries in 1930s Hollywood. Their series pairs fictional shopgirl Lillian Frost with the real-life costume designer Edith Head.

Lillian Frost & Edith Head Reading Order

Title Published Buy on Amazon
Design for Dying 2016 Buy
Dangerous to Know 2017 Buy
Script for Scandal 2020 Buy
The Sharpest Needle 2021 Buy
Idle Gossip 2022 Buy

Rosemarie and Vince Keenan write together as Renee Patrick, having found that 1930s Hollywood gave them a setting rich enough to support a long series. The pairing of fictional narrator Lillian Frost with the historical Edith Head lets them move through the studio system, the party circuit, and the criminal underworld of Los Angeles without being constrained to purely invented characters.

The series began in 2016 with Design for Dying and ran to five books through 2022. The Hollywood backdrop shifts with each novel as different studios, genres, and scandals of the era come into focus.

The Keenans do careful research, and the books are as much about what the film industry looked like from the inside during the classic era as they are about the murders themselves. Readers who enjoy Old Hollywood as a setting tend to find the series hard to put down once they start.


Frequently Asked Questions

How many books has Renee Patrick written?

Renee Patrick has written five books in one series.

What was Renee Patrick's first book?

Renee Patrick’s first book is Design for Dying, published in 2016.

Who is Edith Head, and why does she appear in these mysteries?

Edith Head was a real Hollywood costume designer who won eight Academy Awards, the most of any woman in Oscar history. The Keenans use her as a central character because her access to studios, stars, and sets made her a natural fit for Hollywood murder mysteries.

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