‘Moonlight over Paradise Gardens’ by Mel Anastasiou

Ambitious Eyes

From Pulp Literature Issue 48, find the next instalment of Mel Anastasiou‘s The Extra Takes the Castle. Read an excerpt of ‘Moonlight over Paradise Gardens’ below, and be sure to look for the rest in Issue 48, Autumn 2025!

Frankie Ray’s acting chops and investigative talents have taken her far from her Vancouver home and set her on what she hopes to be a path to success in the movies. But 1930s Hollywood seems to have little regard for a presently blackballed, though still registered, extra. Now employed in the star-studded Castello Hotel, Frankie’s friendly encounter with a famous director, and rumours of a screenplay any producer would kill for, are all she needs to raise her hopes and send her sleuthing after this fabled prize.

The Extra Takes the Castle, Part 2:
Moonlight over Paradise Gardens

by Mel Anastasiou

Frankie Ray hung up her chambermaid uniform in the Castello Hotel closet and donned the chic pointed hat that she shared with several other movie extras. This first day might have been the longest and hardest an unemployed actress had ever worked outside a movie studio. However, the rumour of screen pioneer GX Forrest’s hidden treasure—a long-lost, perfect screenplay—and her unexpected encounter with the most important director in Hollywood ensured that she’d be back on the morrow.

Would director Des McMann remember Frankie after their afternoon tracking the hotel fire up to GX Forrest’s apartment? A regular person would, but he was not that. She could only hope. And, as an extra blackballed from the Monument Studios lot, she was good at hoping.

Frankie was adjusting the dashing angle of the hat in the reflection of the elevator doors when they opened to reveal the director himself, Des McMann. He flapped into the foyer in his bedroom slippers and called her by name.

“Frankie Ray! I’m off to bed.” Resplendent in a red velvet robe over yellow striped pyjamas, McMann yawned and ran his fingers through his hair so that it stood up comically. “Come see me tomorrow morning, will you?”

Frankie clasped her hands in front of her. “Yes, sir. What time?”

“Come up when I’ve had my coffee?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will have pots and pots of coffee. A fellow at Schwabb’s delivers it with my morning grapefruit and jar of mimosa.”

“What’s mimosa?”

Des McMann laughed. “It’s a kind of southern breakfast porridge. Leave me now and I’ll see you tomorrow, once my body is refreshed by sleep and my humanity restored.”

“You’re human as anything, Mr McMann,” Frankie assured him. She pushed the elevator call button, and he flapped back inside and up towards his apartment on the third floor.

Frankie drew a deep breath of appreciation for the great man’s friendly attitude to a chambermaid. After all, she had spent her day at the hotel covering for the rest of the young staff, all of them absconded from their jobs and off to the studios to work in the movies. Fooling her gosh-awful manager was satisfying, but there was no disguising the fact that cleaning commodes and dust was not the ideal way to advance her acting career. She grimaced at the thought and then grimaced at the grimace, for you didn’t see Marietta Valdes, the great star and hopeful director, wearing her thoughts on her beautiful face. If Frankie was going to be an actress, which she darn well was, she must learn to control her features. It was something she’d be smart to practise during her exile from the studios. That, and her Marietta Valdes walk.

She touched a hand to her hat, grateful for its hauteur and for the platinum hair beneath it that showed no dark roots. Then, confident as an unemployed actress could be, she set out along Sunset Boulevard towards Monument Studios. She reminded herself that although King Samson had banned her from his studios, not even he could stop her from gazing upon his studios with ambitious eyes. Nor could he prevent her from walking like a movie star.

Find the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 48, Autumn 2025

and get the first Monument Studios Mystery, The Extra, here >>

Mel Anastasiou writes the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, the Monument Studios Mysteries, and the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, available at pulpliterature.com. She won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award and was longlisted for the Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for her novel Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries. Look for Stella Ryman and the Search for Thelma Hu, available through online booksellers and at Pulp Literature Press.