We don’t know the exact number but the Library of Congress (according to their own studies) estimates that around 75% of silent films have been lost due to lack of preservation, vault fires, or because no one bothered to save the films in the first place. This figure only encompasses silent films created before sound films took over in the 1930s and does not include films that were never finished in the first place, like the mysterious movie at the center of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s excellently chilling new novel, Silver Nitrate. The mass of unknown and lost films offers plenty of room for a creative, clever writer like Moreno-Garcia to work with...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.