A boat off the coast of California. A Hollywood starlet. Her older husband. A sea captain. Christopher Walken. Lots of alcohol. One sea-sickness pill. One dead body.

Sounds like an Agatha Christie novel, doesn't it? All we need is Hercule Poirot to arrive on the scene, stroke his magnificent mustache, and all will be solved...

If only.

The starlet (and the dead body) was Natalie Wood. The older husband was Robert Wagner. The sea captain was someone named Dennis Davern. Christopher Walken was Christopher Walken, which makes it even creepier. The mystery, now 30 years past, is completely unsolved. And Poirot is still entirely fictional.

We would't need the famed detective to figure out if Natalie was Jewish; she was Russian Orthodox. If only the other mystery was so easy...