THE OTHER ROMANIAN is Anne Argula's fourth book in a series featuring menopausal Seattle-based private investigator, Quinn. Filled with cinematic-style dialogue - as well as wryly wise and ruminative monologues - it is a quick and compelling read at just over a couple hundred pages. The story-line takes up where the last book (KRAPP'S LAST CASSETTE) left off, with Quinn on the long-cold trail of screenwriter Alex Krapp, who had disappeared on his Harley two years previously. At the same time she is unwillingly drawn into the police investigation of a recent John Doe murder, finding continuing and curious connections to her search for Krapp, a journey that takes her south along the coast to the Big Sur wilderness. Argula has concocted a whodunit which somehow manages to combine Adolph Hitler, Zen Buddhism, body piercings, soap operas, Bob Dylan and various famous Hollywood names. If all this sounds kinda improbable, you have to remember that much of the tale does take place in California, or, as a childhood friend once called that state, "the land of fruits and nuts."

I have read all of Argula's books and loved 'em, and ditto for this newest entry. And it's the Hollywood angle here that I find the most intriguing. And I gotta come clean here. I'm not usually one who reads mysteries or thrillers, with a few rare exceptions. (Frederick Busch and John Smolens come to mind as favorite practitioners of the most literary sort of mystery-thrillers.) But Anne Argula is not just any writer of PI novels. No, Argula is a pen name used by Darryl Ponicsan, who wrote several well-received novels back in the 70s, most notably THE LAST DETAIL and CINDERELLA LIBERTY. When those two books made successful transitions to the big screen, Ponicsan was lured away to the trade of Hollywood screenwriting, a pit where he labored in semi-obscurity for the next twenty-five years or more. Which explains why the character of Alex Krapp and his obsessive taped musings on the trade seem so genuine and knowledgeable, and more than a bit bitter in tone.

At one point, Krapp lets slip he has considered writing a memoir, but decided it would be a bad idea. THE OTHER ROMANIAN is probably about as close as Darryl Ponicsan will ever come to writing about his life in the screenwriting salt mines - well-paid salt mines, but still ... Through the character of Krapp, he skewers directors, producers, and a number of actors. A young Tom Cruise, for example, is remembered for an early role [in TAPS] when co-stars Tim Hutton and Sean Penn "would go through elaborate ruses to ditch Tom on their day off because he always soured their action with the local girls." Harrison Ford too is skewered for his acting skills in the original version of BLADE RUNNER (the one with the voice-over), when Krapp says:"Remember that time, years after, when I met Harrison Ford for the first time and he told me he hated the narration and deliberately gave it his least, which is very little indeed ..."

But it is screenwriting that really comes under close examination, as in when Krapp explains to his Buddhist host -

"The thing you have to realize, Roshi, about screenwriting, what makes it what it is, is that in every other kind of writing the writer knows, deep down, if the work is any good. When a screenwriter submits his script, he's equally prepared to told his work is 'the best draft I've ever read,' or 'this is a piece of s**t.' The game is to keep the screenwriter alive but in a constant state of impending humiliation. A delicate balance of praise and contempt is always in play."

Krapp calls a director "at best ... no more than a strong and sincere father to a large dysfunctional family. At worst, he's an inept father, an abusive father." But as the screenwriter, Krapp says, "In the family that makes a movie, I'm the son they hide in the attic." There's that bitterness I mentioned earlier.

Investigator Quinn is telling the story here, of course, as she did in the first three books, but this time it seems she is more than just an aging girl gumshoe, she's also a writer, whose first book, KRAPP'S LAST CASSETTE, will soon be released. This threw me a bit at first, but then I reasoned, 'Well, why not? She was telling that story too, ain't?' ('Ain't' and 'arfy-darfy' are just a couple of those coal-country idioms transplanted from Quinn's - Argula's, Ponicsan's? - native Pennsylvania that crop up in dialogue in all of the Quinn books.) But Alex Krapp, with his obsessive taping of his own thoughts and conversations with others, comes across as a kind of co-narrator, and is a character every bit as intriguing as Quinn.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, there are layers upon layers of identities to consider here. And the plot itself is filled with false and mistaken identities, odd connections and clues, not to mention a few red herrings. Interestingly, as murder mysteries go, there is a remarkable restraint shown in regard to violence. That which does happen is always 'off stage.'

Once again, no spoilers from me, but bottom line: this is a helluva fun read. Did I say I loved it? Ponicsan may have ditched screenwriting, but his wry sense of humor and his unerring skills for dialogue and setting up a scene still shine through as brightly as ever. ( )