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From Publishers Weekly
Fans of James Ellroy nostalgic for his gritty, cynical take on postwar Hollywood in such noir classics as L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia should enjoy Edgar-finalist Abbott's second novel (after Die a Little). The author uses a less-celebrated real-life crime—the disappearance of actress Jean Spangler from Los Angeles in 1949—as her hook to spin a downbeat tale about a journalist-turned-studio-flack, Gil "Hop" Hopkins. Hop was with Spangler, a stunner but a second-rate acting talent, the last night she was seen, and harbors guilt over leaving her in the company of a famous acting and singing duo, Marv Sutton and Gene Merrel, who have a reputation for rough play. Hop's efforts at amateur sleuthing unearth a blackmail ring and a possible mob connection to Spangler's disappearance. Abbott deserves credit for resurrecting this virtually forgotten case and concocting a plausible fictional solution to a true crime. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Apply a sly feminist sensibility to postwar Hollywood noir, and you get a sordid saga in which women normally consigned to one-note victimhood turn out to be alarmingly complicit in their own downfalls. At least that's the tale Abbott delivers in this solid follow-up to 2005's lustrous Die a Little. Gil Hopkins--Hop to his friends, of which he has either a million or none, depending on your definition--is a studio fixer who helped cover up a song-and-dance team's involvement in the disappearance of an aspiring actress. When a gal pal shows up years later demanding help, Hop tries coming to grips with the conscience he never knew he had. A fevered, schizophrenic exploration of L.A.'s darkest corners follows as Hop opens cans of worms only to work desperately to keep any from wriggling free. It's Hollywood as meat grinder for Midwesterners too eager to swap snow for stardust, a place that can leave one "uncomfortable, disgusted, and vaguely aroused at the same time." And although it wallows in third-act melodrama, it's tasty stuff. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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