The Valentino Affair: The Jazz Age Murder Scandal That Shocked New York Society and Gripped the World

A social-climbing American and a beautiful Chilean heiress. A turbulent marriage and its scandalous conclusion. An act of passion and the media-fueled court case that followed. This is the story of Jack and Blanca de Saulles, a story that crossed oceans and snared the attention of millions, including a young man who would become a legendary Hollywood heartthrob.

The Valentino Affair is a true crime book about people who get used and people who get away with murder, literally and figuratively. Evans is terribly effective at making Blanca a sympathetic figure despite her failings, and by doing so, he invests the reader in her court case as if we were a member of the jury.

Unfortunately, although Evans strongly points toward an unproven dalliance with Valentino as the dirty laundry Blanca so studiously tried to keep under wraps, he offers no corroborating evidence. And considering that Valentino occupies barely a few dozen pages, even fewer of them in the same state as Blanca, this could be the most staggeringly mistitled book I’ve ever read.

Ignore the title and book jacket, though, and you’ve got an interesting “trial of the decade” many have never even heard of.