Product Description

FEMME FATALES

OBSESSIVE LOVE

DOUBLE CROSSES

How does a respectable young woman fall into Los Angeles' hard-boiled underworld?

Shadow-dodging through the glamorous world of 1950s Hollywood and its seedy flip side, Megan Abbott's debut, Die a Little, is a gem of the darkest hue. This ingenious twist on a classic noir tale tells the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher, and her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the district attorney's office. Lora's comfortable, suburban life is jarringly disrupted when Bill falls in love with a mysterious young woman named Alice Steele, a Hollywood wardrobe assistant with a murky past.

Made sisters by marriage but not by choice, the bond between Lora and Alice is marred by envy and mistrust. Spurred on by inconsistencies in Alice's personal history and possibly jealous of Alice's hold on her brother, Lora finds herself lured into the dark alleys and mean streets of seamy Los Angeles. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution, and ultimately, murder.

Lora's fascination with Alice's "sins" increases in direct proportion to the escalation of her own relationship with Mike Standish, a charmingly amoral press agent who appears to know more about his old friend Alice than he reveals. The deeper Lora digs to uncover Alice's secrets, the more her own life begins to resemble Alice's sinister past -- and present.

Steeped in atmospheric suspense and voyeuristic appeal, Die a Little shines as a dark star among Hollywood lights.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #231928 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A velvety 1950s Southern California vibe suffuses this noirish novel about a young woman who sacrifices her own innocence while trying to protect her brother from the seamy side of life. Orphaned when they were children, Bill and Lora King live together well into adulthood, until Bill meets Alice Steele, a beautiful damsel in distress whose mysterious past and even more mysterious present set off alarms for Lora. Ere long Bill, a junior investigator in the district attorney's office, proposes to Alice and the two marry, but Lora becomes increasingly sure there's more to Alice's murky past than the alcoholic mother and deadbeat father she talks about. "Under the harsh lamp, in sharp contrast to the dark room, her eyes look strangely eaten through. The eyes of a death mask..." Lora makes self-deprecating Nancy Drew jokes even as she initiates a personal investigation, skulking around seedy motor courts and hiding in alleys. What the likable Lora discovers—drugs, sex, corruption and murder—fascinates her as much as it frightens her. Abbott, author of a nonfiction study of hard-boiled literature and film, crafts a stylish, sensuous tale with picture-perfect period trappings.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
It's 1954, and Pasadena schoolteacher Lora King has carved out a life of square contentment with her brother, Bill, an investigator in the DA's office. That changes when Bill falls hard for Alice Steele, a seamstress at a Hollywood studio. When Bill and Alice marry, Lora wants to be happy for them; she really, truly does. But she can't help sensing something dark in her brother's new bride. Even as Lora and Alice play at being sisters, bonding over thrillingly elaborate party preparations, secrets--ugly secrets!--seep out of Alice's past. Lora risks everything to uncover the truth, pocketing address books filled with cryptic code and tailing shady characters like a grown-up Nancy Drew. As Lora puts it, "There is a string I am pulling together, a string of question marks so long they are beginning to clatter against each other, and loudly." While Abbott doesn't match the scope and sheer virtuosity of Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, she does nail a similarly hushed and lurid tone in a tale that smolders like the night's last, forgotten cigarette. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Finally, here is a modern noir that perfectly depicts Raymond Chandler's 1950s L.A. in all its seamy, sexy corruption. In a thrilling portrayal of rival femme fatales -- one a denizen of L.A.'s demi monde, the other seemingly immune to its dark pull -- Megan Abbott's Die a Little mixes a potent cocktail of jealousy, obsession, and danger."

-- Lisa Scottoline, author of Killer Smile

Customer Reviews

The dark side of Hollywood...
This was a great read! One I had a very hard time putting down. Set in 1950's Hollywood, it explores the dark, twisted lives of high powered studio men, call girls, drugs and murder. Bill and Lora are siblings living in quiet suburbia in Pasadena. He's a cop and she's a school teacher. Then Bill meets vivacious Alice Steele when her car hits his. A friendship blossoms, and soon after a relationship. The two marry, buy a house, and settle into simple lives.

In the beginning all is well. Lora is happy for her brother and loves having sophisticated Alice around, who throws lavish neighborhood parties and is always in the spotlight. But soon Lora starts to notice little things that don't seem quite right. Dark edges around sweet Alice...who is Alice really, and where did she come from?

As Lora gets deeper and deeper into the trenches of shady Hollywood, she begins to realize that she's getting caught up in everything, she's beginning to change from the mundane schoolteacher into something else, something bad. Can she figure everything out before it's too late? I've gotta say I really recommend this book. I initially picked it up because of the era it's set in, but the story really grabbed me. Definitely give it a try...you won't be disappointed!

A cool, dark tale of intrigue and secrets
I found this novel impossible to put down. Think of the dark atmospheric films of David Lynch, but here you get a much more satisfying, coherent story. The two most important women characters play a fascinating game of cat and mouse. I really liked the character of Alice: hot, smart and always ready to act as her circumstances change. The author is particularly good at giving all of her characters psychologically plausible motivations. When you get to end, you will be thinking about it for days.

dark urban 1950s Hollywood noir
Schoolteacher Lora King shares a home with her brother Bill, an investigator with the Los Angeles District Attorney's office. They are decent middle class hardworking people who are very close to each other until Alice Steele enters their lives. Bill is besotted with her and within a few months he marries her. Lora tries to like her but she feels that Alice is trying too hard to be the perfect housewife.

Seeing inconsistencies in her behavior, Lora investigates Alice's background which leads to her to thinking her in-law is involved in something criminal. A friend Lois from Alice's former life acts trashy as she depends on Alice to bail her out when she gets into trouble. Alice befriends the wife of Bill's friend, who shortly thereafter commits suicide just prior to Lois being murdered. It is only when Bill is prepared to break the law to abet his wife does Lora act to put an end to Alice's influence with the help of a very connected criminal who bears no love for Alice.

DIE A LITTLE is a dark urban 1950s Hollywood noir where even honest lawmen break the law if they can get away with it. Lora is a fascinating character who loves her brother too much to let him throw his life away on a criminal and is a bit jealous of the hold Alice has on her sibling. There are no heroes in this book, only people who do what is necessary to get their own way. Megan Abbott is a fine writer who uses the first person narrative as a way of increasing the tension and the gradual feeling of overwhelming foreboding.

Harriet Klausner