Guy Bolton on Hollywood Scandals

My first novel The Pictures centres on a studio fixer hired to cover-up the apparent suicide of one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz. So when people ask me about it usually they want to know if it’s based on a true story.

The answer is complex. Yes, and no, I say.

“Was the producer of The Wizard of Oz found dead at his home?” No. “Is Jonathan Craine a real Detective?” Afraid not.  “Was there a Hollywood star called Gale Goodwin?” Sorry, I made her up.

At this point my disappointed audience might make one last plea: “Were there even any scandals and cover-ups in Hollywood at the time?”

Oh yes, more than one. So many you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.

Indeed, as I began researching my novel I quickly realised that the truth, as the adage goes, was stranger than fiction. Sure, there were rumours and gossip about movie stars then as there is now: Clark Gable had an illegitimate lovechild; Errol Flynn was accused of statutory rape; Spencer Tracy was an alcoholic; Judy Garland was addicted to prescription drugs. But the starting point for my plot was actually MGM megastar Jean Harlow and her producer husband Paul Bern, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances in the early thirties. 

On paper, theirs was an unlikely partnership. Harlow was a wild-child who happened to be one of the most successful movie stars of her generation. Bern was introverted writer-producer twenty years her senior. So when the newly married Paul Bern was discovered naked in his bedroom, shot in the head by a .38 calibre pistol besides a questionable suicide note, naturally the movie studio was desperate to protect their star.

Studio police were on the scene before even the LAPD. MGM’s Head of Publicity (the inspiration for my Russell Peterson) released press stories that painted Jean Harlow as a victim of a troubled marriage. Of course, the District Attorney chosen to handle the inquest happened to have close ties to MGM Chief Louis B. Mayer – he was an important donator to the DA’s re-election campaign. Not only did the District Attorney rule that Paul Bern’s death was suicide, he even went so far as stating that Paul Bern suffered from impotence, giving motive to him killing himself and helping to whitewash anything that might threaten Harlow’s image.

A few years later Jean Harlow herself was dead; gossip columnists speculated that Harlow had died of alcoholism, maybe even a botched abortion or venereal disease. In the end, the official line was that she died from kidney failure. She was 26 years old.

Rumours around Harlow and Bern’s premature deaths persist to this day. Delving deeper, I discovered that our studio-friendly District Attorney was later indicted for bribery and perjury and in a twist of fate took his own life with a pistol to the head. But what the case really highlighted to me was the obscene influence the studios at the time had on the press and judicial system. It was the first of many examples.

One of the saddest scandals I came across was the rape of a 20- year-old dancer by an MGM sales executive in 1937, a tragic tale detailed in Vanity Fair by David Stenn and later turned into a documentary Girl 27. Dancer and bit-part actress Patricia Douglas filed a landmark lawsuit against MGM when she claimed she was raped at an MGM sales convention. The tabloids soon discovered that the “sales convention” was actually a lavish Wild West themed party MGM put on for its national sales teams. After all, MGM was celebrating their success and survival in the depression, coming out as the only major studio to make profits year-on-year.

For the studio, an accusation of rape against its staff was bad enough. But as the story began to make headlines nationwide, the real fear lay in the public’s perception of MGM as a the home of wholesome family entertainment in the face of reports that it was throwing depraved parties filled with free liquor and underage girls.

The studio used its press influence to launch a smear campaign against Patricia Douglas, going as far as hiring private investigators to follow her and dig up dirt. Inevitably, the DA (still the same friend from the Paul Bern inquest), sympathetic to MGM’s situation, used his position to block action against the rapist. Douglas’ case fell apart.

In The Pictures, I have my own studio party and my own sad turn of events. But nothing would ever match up to what happened to Patricia Douglas. She soon fled  Hollywood and spent most of her life alone. In interviews shortly before she died she admitted she never truly recovered from the ordeal.

Drugs. Unruly stars. Debauched parties. The influence of studios on press and the justice system. The consistent and unashamed exploitation of women. I could go on. The Golden Age of Hollywood was founded on a bedrock of sin and corruption.

But perhaps what’s most interesting is that these key plot-points and themes are as relevant now as they have always been. In many ways, the scandals of 1930s Hollywood were no different to anything you might read in the paper today.

THE PICTURES by Guy Bolton is published by PointBlank, hardback £14.99

The Pictures a noir thriller, is set in Hollywood in 1939.  World-weary Jonathan Craine is a detective at the LAPD who has spent his entire career as a studio ‘fixer', covering up crimes of the studio players to protect the billion-dollar industry that built Los Angeles. When one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Craine must make sure the incident passes without scandal and that the deceased's widow, the beautiful starlet Gale Goodwin, comes through the ordeal with her reputation unscathed.  But against his better instincts, Craine finds himself increasingly drawn to Gale. And when a series of unsavoury truths begin to surface, Craine finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy involving a Chicago crime syndicate, a prostitution racket and a set of stolen pictures that could hold the key to unravelling the mystery.

You can find him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @gpbolton

Books I am looking forward to reading (Part 1)

I keep on being asked what books am I looking forward to reading next year.  As I have currently been posting about forthcoming books from various publishers between January and June, below (in alphabetical order) books that I am looking forward to for the first six months.

The Assassin of Verona by Benet Brandreth (Bonnier Zaffre)

All is not well in Venice.  Threatened daily by Papal assassins, William Shakespeare and his close friends Oldcastle and Hemminges are increasingly isolated - the lies that have protected them so far beginning to wear thin.  His companions want desperately to leave, but Will is tied to the city - his lover, the beautiful Isabella, is growing ever more sick. As tensions reach breaking point, their company is forced to split…

The Pictures by Guy Bolton (Point Blank)

Hollywood 1939. The year that The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind were made. Detective Craine has spent his life working as a studio fixer, whitewashing the misdemeanours and crimes committed by the studio players and stars.  But now he’s trying to turn his back on that life following the recent death of his wife as he’s determined to be a better parent to his young son. But then Craine’s services are called upon one last time. MGM need him to smooth over the press coverage of the suicide of one of their producers. And soon, what should be a straightforward case proves anything but when connections are made between it and a brutal murder across town. And that’s just the start of the story.  It’s only a matter of time before Craine must decide whether to follow orders, or to attempt to redeem a career of concealment by going in search of the ugly truth. It’s a choice he knows that cannot end well.

Deep Down Dead by Steph Broadribb (Orenda Books)

Lori Anderson is as tough as they come, managing to keep her career as a fearless Florida bounty hunter separate from her role as single mother to nine-year-old Dakota, who suffers from leukaemia. But when the hospital bills start to rack up, she has no choice but to take her daughter along on a job that will make her a fast buck. And that's when things start to go wrong. The fugitive she's assigned to haul back to court is none other than JT, Lori's former mentor - the man who taught her everything she knows ...the man who also knows the secrets of her murky past. Not only is JT fighting a child exploitation racket operating out of one of Florida's biggest theme parks, Winter Wonderland, a place where 'bad things never happen', but he's also mixed up with the powerful Miami Mob. With two fearsome foes on their tails, just three days to get JT back to Florida, and her daughter to protect, Lori has her work cut out for her. When they're ambushed at a gas station, the stakes go from high to stratospheric, and things become personal.

The Liar by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)

A missing child. When wealthy businessman Leonard Howell's daughter is kidnapped, the police jump on it straight away. But Howell knows this won't be straightforward - he needs someone willing to break the rules. A criminal lawyer. Once a con artist, now a hotshot lawyer, Eddie Flynn's learnt that fast talk and sleight of hand are just as important in the courtroom are they are on the street. Knowing what it's like to lose a daughter, he'll stop at nothing to save Howell's. A corrupt case. With a client on trial for his life, and the body count rising, Eddie Flynn is starting to fear that the whole thing was a set-up from the very beginning. The only question is who is deadlier - the man who knows the truth, or the one who believes a lie? A missing girl, a desperate father and a case that threatens to destroy everyone involved - Eddie Flynn's got his work cut out.  

Corpus by Rory Clements (Bonnier Zaffre)

1936. Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland. In Russia, Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror. Spain has erupted in civil war. In Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. Within weeks, she is found dead in her Cambridge bedroom, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers. In a London club, three senior members of the British establishment light the touch paper on a conspiracy that will threaten the very heart of government. Even the ancient colleges of Cambridge are not immune to political division. Dons and students must choose a side: right or left, where do you stand? When a renowned member of the county set and his wife are found horribly murdered, a maverick history professor finds himself dragged into a world of espionage which, until now, he has only read about in books. But the deeper Thomas Wilde delves, the more he wonders whether the murders are linked to the death of the girl with the silver syringe - and, just as worryingly, to the scandal surrounding King Edward VIII and his mistress Wallis Simpson...

A Game of Ghosts by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton)

It is deep winter. The darkness is unending. The private detective named Jaycob Eklund has vanished, and Charlie Parker is dispatched to track him down. Parker's employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found. Eklund is no ordinary investigator. He is obsessively tracking a series of homicides and disappearances, each linked to reports of hauntings. Now Parker will be drawn into Eklund's world, a realm in which the monstrous Mother rules a crumbling criminal empire, in which men strike bargains with angels, and in which the innocent and guilty alike are pawns in a game of ghosts ...

The Third Nero by Lindsay Davis (Hodder & Stoughton)

It is understood that a plebian aedile, thought to be Ti Manlius Faustus, has issued a formal complaint to the editors of the Acta Diurna, about the wording of a recent notice concerning his wedding. Due to health issues, queries should be referred to his wife.  In view of sensitive material contained in this publication, Our Master and God has instructed that the scrolls must be subjected to detailed scrutiny by the intelligence service. Some revelations may affect national security or be prejudicial to the safety of agents in the field. Names and other information concerning senior officials will be subject to redaction. No public statement is expected.  Information has been received that the sovereign nation of Parthia submitted a diplomatic protest about this publication, which it calls cynically Parthio-phobic, at the same time strongly denouncing recent treatment of its ambassadors in Rome and requesting the urgent return of one its citizens. The Palatine has declined to comment.  T Flavius Abascantus, freedman of the imperial family, points out that after a brief sabbatical, which he describes as a rest-break by mutual agreement, he has resumed all duties as Secretary of Petitions. He stresses that no formal charges have been laid against him and states that he has the full confidence of the Emperor. The Emperor is currently in Pannonia and unreachable.

American Noir by Barry Forshaw (No Exit Press)

He is acknowledged as a leading expert on crime fiction and films from Britain and the European countries, but a further area of expertise is American crime fiction, film and TV, as demonstrated in such books as The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction and Detective. After the success of earlier entries in his ‘Noir’ series -- Nordic Noir, Brit Noir and Euro Noir -- he now tackles the largest and, some might argue, most impressive body of crime fiction from a single country, the United States, to produce the perfect reader's guide to modern American crime fiction. The word ‘Noir’ is used in its loosest sense: every major living American writer is considered (including the giants Harlan Coben, Patricia Cornwell, James Lee Burke, James Ellroy and Sara Paretsky, as well as non-crime writers such as Stephen King who stray into the genre), often through a concentration on one or two key books.  Many exciting new talents are highlighted, and Barry Forshaw’s knowledge of – and personal acquaintance with – many of the writers grants valuable insights into this massively popular field. But the crime genre is as much about films and TV as it is about books, and American Noir is a celebration of the former as well as the latter. US television crime drama in particular is enjoying a new golden age, and all of the important current series are covered here, as well as key important recent films.

The Wild Chamber by Christopher Fowler (Transworld)

Our story begins at the end of an investigation, as the members of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit race to catch a killer near London Bridge Station in the rain, not realising that they're about to cause a bizarre accident just yards away from the crime scene. And it will have repercussions for them all...One year later, in an exclusive London crescent, a woman walks her dog - but she's being watched. When she's found dead, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. Why? Because the method of death is odd, the gardens are locked, the killer had no way in - or out - and the dog has disappeared. So a typical case for Bryant & May. But the hows and whys of the murder are not the only mysteries surrounding the dead woman - there's a missing husband and a lost nanny to puzzle over too. And it seems very like that the killer is preparing to strike again. As Arthur Bryant delves in to the history of London's 'wild chambers' - its extraordinary parks and gardens, John May and the rest of the team seem to have caused a national scandal. If no-one is safe then all of London's open spaces must be closed...With the PCU placed under house arrest, only Arthur Bryant remains at liberty - but can a hallucinating old codger catch the criminal and save the unit before it's too late?

 Killers of the Flower Moon: An American Crime and the birth of the FBI by David Grann (Simon & Schuster) A true-life murder story which became one of the newly-created FBI's first major homicide investigations. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organisation's first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled it. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Spook Street by Mick Heron (John Murray)

Lori Anderson is as tough as they come, managing to keep her career as a fearless Florida bounty hunter separate from her role as single mother to nine-year-old Dakota, who suffers from leukaemia. But when the hospital bills start to rack up, she has no choice but to take her daughter along on a job that will make her a fast buck. And that's when things start to go wrong. The fugitive she's assigned to haul back to court is none other than JT, Lori's former mentor - the man who taught her everything she knows ...the man who also knows the secrets of her murky past. Not only is JT fighting a child exploitation racket operating out of one of Florida's biggest theme parks, Winter Wonderland, a place where 'bad things never happen', but he's also mixed up with the powerful Miami Mob. With two fearsome foes on their tails, just three days to get JT back to Florida, and her daughter to protect, Lori has her work cut out for her. When they're ambushed at a gas station, the stakes go from high to stratospheric, and things become personal.

The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurwitz (Michael Joseph/ Penguin)

He was once called Orphan X. As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children's home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so deep that virtually no one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves. One day, though, Evan's luck ran out ...Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what's happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help. With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he's never encountered to have any chance of escape. He's got to save himself to protect those whose lives depend on him. Or die trying.

The Venetian Game by Philip Gwynne Jones (Little Brown)

From his office on the Street of the Assassins, Nathan Sutherland, English Honorary Consul to Venice, assists unfortunate tourists as best he can. A steady but unexciting life that dramatically changes when he is offered a large sum of money to look after a small package containing a prayer book illustrated by the Venetian master Giovanni Bellini. Unknown to Nathan, from a palazzo on the Grand Canal twin brothers Domenico and Arcangelo Moro, motivated by nothing more than mutual hatred, have been playing out a complex game of art theft for twenty years. And now Nathan finds himself unwittingly drawn into their deadly business ...

Athenian Blues by Pol Koutsakis (Bitter Lemon Press)

Stratos hates being called a hitman. A conscientious fixer is what he is. He fixes problems that very few can deal with. Things that people are willing to pay handsomely to get done, without wanting to know about the small stuff. Stratos is their man, provided that his meticulous research shows him that the targets deserve their fate.   But now, in the midst of the Greek economic and political crisis, this film-noir loving assassin takes on the highest-profile case of his career. He finds himself caught between the most beloved lawyer in Greece, known as “the guardian of the poor”, and his actress wife, the most desirable woman in the country. They are both in dire need of his killing services, but which one is telling the truth? Helped by three childhood friends, Costas Dragas, a homicide cop, Teri, a transsexual high-class hooker and Maria, the passion of his life, he discovers that truth, in shattered loves and broken families, is, as ever, a relative thing.

The Silent Death by Volker Kutscher. (Sandstone Press)

Berlin 1930. Sound film is conquering the big screen, leaving many by the wayside: producers, cinema owners - and silent film stars. Investigating the violent on-set death of actress Betty Winter, Inspector Gereon Rath encounters the dark side of glamour and an industry in turmoil. When his father requests that he help his friend, the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, and his ex-girlfriend Charly makes a renewed attempt at rapprochement, things start to get out of hand. Trapped in the machinations of rival film producers, he roams Berlin's Chinese quarter and the city's underworld as he works ever closer to the edge of legality. Meanwhile the funeral of the murdered Horst Wessel leads to clashes between Nazis and Communists.

A Necessary Evil is by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)

India, 1920. Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee of the Calcutta Police Force investigate the dramatic assassination of a Maharajah's son.  The fabulously wealthy kingdom of Sambalpore is home to tigers, elephants, diamond mines and the beautiful Palace of the Sun. But when the heir to the throne is assassinated in the presence of Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant 'Surrender-Not' Banerjee, they discover a kingdom riven with suppressed conflict. Prince Adhir was a moderniser whose attitudes - and romantic relationship - may have upset the more religious elements of his country, while his brother – now in line to the throne – appears to be a feckless playboy.  As Wyndham and Banerjee desperately try to unravel the mystery behind the assassination, they become entangled in a dangerous world where those in power live by their own rules and those who cross their paths pay with their lives. They must find a murderer, before the murderer finds them…

A Mask of Shadows by Oscar de Muriel (Michael Joseph/ Penguin)

Frey & McGray are back for their biggest and best case yet...1890. The Scottish Play is coming home. But before the darling couple of London theatre, Henry Irving & Ellen Terry, take their acclaimed Macbeth north of the border, terror treads the boards on closing night in the capital. A supposed banshee leaves a message written in blood, foretelling someone's demise. But whose? With the company's arrival in Scotland, comes another death threat and Edinburgh's own beloved pair - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray & Inspector Ian Frey - enter the scene. Frey scoffs, believing it to be a publicity stunt, while McGray is convinced it's a supernatural affair. As they scrutinise the key players, they discover that Terry, Irving, and his peculiar, preoccupied assistant (one Bram Stoker) all have reasons to kill, or be killed...By occult curse or human hand, death will take a bow the night the curtain rises.

Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolás Obregón (Michael Joseph/ Penguin)

Setagaya ward, Tokyo Inspector Kosuke Iwata, newly transferred to Tokyo's homicide department, is assigned a new partner and a secondhand case. Blunt, hard as nails and shunned by her colleagues, Assistant Inspector Noriko Sakai is a partner Iwata decides it would be unwise to cross. A case that's complicated - a family of four murdered in their own home by a killer who then ate ice cream, surfed the web and painted a hideous black sun on the bedroom ceiling before he left in broad daylight. A case that so haunted the original investigator that he threw himself off the city's famous Rainbow Bridge. Carrying his own secret torment, Iwata is no stranger to pain. He senses the trauma behind the killer's brutal actions. Yet his progress is thwarted in the unlikeliest of places. Fearing corruption among his fellow officers, tracking a killer he's sure is only just beginning and trying to put his own shattered life back together, Iwata knows time is running out before he's taken off the case or there are more killings ...

Not Single Spies by Michael Ripley (Harper Collins)

An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her thrillers helped save the world. With a foreword by Lee Child.  From 1953, with the publication of Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, Britain ruled the waves when it came to thriller novels, and HarperCollins stood at the forefront of this.  Not Single Spies presents an engaging, informal history of British thrillers, from Ian Fleming up to Lee Child, and it will tell the story of how thrillers would take over from crime, transporting readers from the cosy, class-ridden detective novels of Golden Age’ authors such as Agatha Christie to the exotic, international settings of Fleming, Le Carre and Deighton.  In turn these writers and their books would help Britain stagger out from under the yoke of rationing into a bright new golden age of the 1960s and 70s. Excitement was in, and it would be the dominant literary genre for almost four decades.

The Intrustions by Stav Sherez (Faber & Faber)

When a distressed young woman arrives at their station claiming her friend has been abducted, and that the man threatened to come back and 'claim her next', Detectives Carrigan and Miller are thrust into a terrifying new world of stalking and obsession. Taking them from a Bayswater hostel, where backpackers and foreign students share dorms and failing dreams, to the emerging threat of online intimidation, hacking, and control, The Intrusions explores disturbing contemporary themes with all the skill and dark psychology that Stav Sherez's work has been so acclaimed for. Under scrutiny themselves, and with old foes and enmities re-surfacing, how long will Carrigan and Miller have to find out the truth behind what these two women have been subjected to? 

Incendium by A D Swanston (Transworld)

 Summer, 1572 and England is vulnerable. Fear of plague and insurrection taint the air, and heresy, fanaticism and religious unrest seethe beneath the surface of society. Rumour and mistrust lead to imprisonment, torture and sometimes murder. To the young lawyer Christopher Radcliff and his patron and employer, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the prospects for peace are poor. As Leicester's chief intelligencer, Radcliff is charged with investigating both rumours of rebellion at home and invasion from abroad. That the queen's own cousin, the Duke of Norfolk, is found guilty of treason is a sign of just how deep the dissent goes. Supporters of the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots foment revolt, but the papist threat doesn't just come from within. Across the channel, France is being swept up in a frenzy of brutal and bloody religious persecution while England's other enemy of old, Spain, makes preparations to invade. Christopher's own life is far from orderly. His relationship with the widow Katherine Allington is somewhat turbulent and he knows full well that the cut-throat world of court politics leaves no room for indiscretions. So England is a powder-keg, waiting for a spark to ignite it. And then a whisper of a plot that could provide that spark reaches Christopher. All he has to go on is a single word - 'incendium'. But what does it mean and who lies behind it? He must find the answers before it is too late...

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Books to Look Forward to from Oneworld (Point Blank Books)

March 2017

The Pictures is by Guy Bolton.  Hollywood 1939. The year that The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind were made. Detective Craine has spent his life working as a studio fixer, whitewashing the misdemeanours and crimes committed by the studio players and stars.  But now he’s trying to turn his back on that life following the recent death of his wife as he’s determined to be a better parent to his young son. But then Craine’s services are called upon one last time. MGM need him to smooth over the press coverage of the suicide of one of their producers. And soon, what should be a straightforward case proves anything but when connections are made between it and a brutal murder across town. And that’s just the start of the story.  It’s only a matter of time before Craine must decide whether to follow orders, or to attempt to redeem a career of concealment by going in search of the ugly truth. It’s a choice he knows that cannot end well.

April 2017

Agent 10483 carried out his missions perfectly. Too perfectly. When a top agent in the Israeli Organization receives a disturbing notebook written by the mysterious 10483, supposedly dead for years, he realizes that something went terribly wrong.  Is 10483 a psychopath who outwitted his handlers for years? Or was he manipulated by his superiors to carry out the most monstrous assassinations in the history of the state of Israel? And why was he the only agent to receive three envelopes with targeted killing assignments instead of one, as part of a lethal and top secret operation? Was he responsible for locking up his victims and staging their deaths, or was he himself merely the victim of a brilliant scientist whose cutting-edge discoveries enabled her to manipulate his brain waves?  Three Envelopes is by Nir Herzoni

Lola is by Melissa Scrivner Love. Lola stands next to Garcia while he mans the grill in their

craggy square of backyard. The barbeque has just begun, and the women are gossiping, while the men hold sweating beers. Business has been good lately in their tiny nugget of South Central Los Angeles, where a legit man has two choices: landscaping off-the-books for West Side white cash, or sweating through twelvehour factory shifts. Garcia does not make his living either way. And if Lola were like the other women at her barbeque, she would spend her day perched on a stool behind a dollar-store cash register. Suddenly: a sharp knock on the front door, probably a cop. Lola has never met the man standing there, but she knows his name. Everyone in this neighbourhood knows his name. He’s The Collector, and he won’t give them long.

May 2017

New Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, a journalist, travel to Italy with their friends from Maine—Finn; his wife, Taylor; and their daughter, Snow. “From the beginning,” says Taylor, “it was a conspiracy for Lizzie and Finn to be together.” Told Rashomon-style in alternating points of view, the characters expose and stumble upon lies and infidelities past and present. Snow, ten years old and precociously drawn into a far more adult drama, becomes the catalyst for catastrophe as the novel explores collusion and betrayal in marriage. With her inimitable psychological astute­ness and uncanny understanding of the human heart, Ephron delivers a powerful meditation on marriage, friendship, and the meaning of travel. Set on the sun-drenched coast of the Ionian Sea, Siracusa unfolds with the pacing of a psychological thriller and delivers an unexpected final act that none will see coming. Siracusa is by Delia Ephron.