Imagine the sun-kissed orange groves of 1920s LA. Gary Cooper lifting his snifter. Greta Garbo striking a match.

Then flash back to 1907. The mystique of southern Louisiana. Cajun patois. Female voodoo deep in the bayou.

And finally, flash forward to 1967. The quiet harshness of the Mojave Desert. A stone theater.

And our opening scene, which ends up being the setting of the final murder and one of several resonating in Craig Rusell’s latest mystery thriller “The Devil’s Playground.”

Russell subtly weaves all three settings into a seamless whole, narrated mostly through the eyes of Mary Rourke, a studio “fixer” in the 1920s who’s paid to clean up Hollywood scandals and messes deemed unseemly for the public eye.

Norma Carlton, “the most desirable woman in the world,” is found dead in her palatial home, and Mary and her cronies determine it’s best to cover up what appears to be an unfortunate suicide. However, as Mary dives deeper into the mysterious causes behind Norma’s death, it becomes clear that there’s more than meets the eye in what becomes a chain of regrettable deaths — all seemingly unconnected, yet all orchestrated by the invisible strings of powers that lie even beyond the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood.

Norma’s final film role was in “The Devil’s Playground” a “cursed” production that was destroyed by fire, resulting in no more prints of what some say was the greatest silent horror film ever made in movie history.

But 40 years later, Paul Coway, a film historian, is on the hunt to locate what’s rumored to be the last copy of the movie, and what he discovers is far more sinister than anything he or his financiers ever bargained for.

It’s evident that Russell took care to paint every detail with historical accuracy and brilliant color, as he describes the decadent homes of the rich and famous, the catacombs of LA’s speakeasies during Prohibition, and the murky swamps of the Cajun bayou, where a young woman schooled in the dark practices of witchcraft becomes ostracized and then takes vengeance into her own two hands.

If you crave a taste of gothic noir and suspense, dashed with 1920s history and a bit of voodoo spookiness, then “The Devil’s Playground” is a novel highly recommended for your next read.

Bestseller Lists

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. “You Like It Darker: Stories” by Stephen King

2. “The Women” byKristin Hannah

3. “All Fours” by Miranda July

4. “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley

5. “James” by Percival Everett

6. “Funny Story” by Emily Henry

7. “I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons” by Peter S. Beagle

8. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt

9. “The Paris Novel” by Ruth Reichl

10. “North Woods” by Daniel Mason

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War” by Erik Larson

2. “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” by Jonathan Haidt

3. “Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk” by Kathleen Hanna

4. “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” by Rick Rubin

5. “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s” by Doris Kearns Goodwin

6. “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen” by David Brooks

7. “In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife” by Sebastian Junger

8. “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” by David Grann

9. “The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis” by George Stephanopoulos, Lisa Dickey

10. “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space” by Adam Higginbotham