Scott Elliott is the protagonist of Terence Faherty’s Scott Elliott Mystery series. A former contract player in 1930s Hollywood, Elliott’s minor acting career was cut short by World War II. When he returned from the war, nobody needed his services as an actor, so he drifted into security work as a way to stay connected to the movie business.
As the top operative of the Hollywood Security Agency, Elliott handles the studios’ dirty laundry: scandals, cover-ups, and the kinds of problems that could ruin carefully crafted public images. His cases take him through the fading glamour of studio lots and the sun-bleached streets of postwar Los Angeles, set against the broader decline of the studio system from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s.
The second novel in the series, Come Back Dead (1997), won the Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Novel. Faherty uses Elliott’s perspective to explore a Hollywood in transition, where the old guard’s power is slipping and the city itself is changing around them.
Reading Order
See the complete Scott Elliott Mystery reading order for all books in the series.