Robert S Murillo, recognizing the public’s ongoing love affair with Hollywood’s Golden Age of film—and its personalities—has written another cross-time page-turner about a surprise pre-Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese on Long Beach’s Douglas Aircraft Assembly Plant—a vital supplier of warplanes to the Allies.
This time, Murillo takes the reader back to 1941—where starlet Veronica Lake, while on break from beauty sessions at Hollywood’s famous Max Factor Make-up Studio, accidentally drops her lipstick, pulling it from her purse. That runaway brass tube leads her into Mel’s Drive-in Restaurant—and into the year 2014—where she meets time-crosser Mike Lundy.
It’s not long before Mike realizes that his encounter with the young star is not random; she has crossed with him a few days before the infamous and deadly Japanese attack on the assembly plant in August of 1941. Mike knows that these bombings will kill at least 90 people and cause delays to aircraft production for more than three months. But, with the attack still in Miss Lake’s future, Mike also realizes she may be able to save the workers and the assembly plant by warning the military of the deadly Japanese plan. Veronica responds to Mike in typical Lake manner: “Well, it isn’t exactly like deciding to go to a beauty parlor.” Her way of saying she’s all in. Unfortunately, she quickly realizes just how correct she is as each agency she contacts—from the Hollywood Police to a local U.S. Navy recruiting station—believe her pleas are nothing but a ploy to plug a new movie. That is until the F.B.I. steps in. Then things get worse.