Valentino has a perfect job for a film buff: He is a film detective who locates lost movies so that they can be preserved for future generations. And often he has to become an amateur sleuth as well. To locate a fragment of a film long considered to have vanished, Valentino has to jet to remote locations or to find ancient Hollywood producers and bit players. But there can be danger as well: people sometimes are willing to kill to insure that a film stays lost. Cover painting by Carol Heyer. Cover design by Deborah Miller.