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 London
Telegraph: Song Is You chosen a 2009 Crime Book of the
Year
"One can only assume that Megan
Abbott’s house is haunted by the ghost of Raymond Chandler, who is
whispering the secrets of his prose style to her. The Song
Is You (Pocket Books, £6.99), which has fictional
characters caught up in the real-life disappearance of the Hollywood
starlet Jean Spangler in 1949, goes beyond homage and pastiche to
become an original work of art."
—Jake Kittredge, Telegraph
(UK)
French
publication by
Sonatine (French cover at left) in November, 2009
NOW
IN
PAPERBACK
“Megan Abbott: Superb
storyteller, film noir scholar, deconstructionist suffused with a
true artist’s passion. Poised to ascend to the top rung of crime
writing and quite possibly something beyond.”
—James Ellroy
"Few novels break your heart,
and even fewer mystery ones. This one broke me heart ... in
smithereens. Such a wrenching poetic noir vision of loss and regret
I've rarely encountered. Written in a style of such conversational
élan, you nearly miss the absolute artistry. Superb evocation of the
era and the legendary characters live and breathe in glorious dark
reality. Megan Abbott is the song and a song of such yearning, such
granite tenderness ... This is the most poignant novel you'll ever
come across."
—Ken Bruen, Priest,
The Guards
"Megan Abbott continues to be my absolute favorite new author, and
her second novel, The Song Is You, is even better than her
first—super-sexy, superbly written, richly atmospheric, and with an
ending you'll never see coming."
—Lisa Scottoline, Dirty
Blonde
On October 7, 1949, dark-haired starlet Jean Spangler kissed her
five-year-old daughter goodbye and left for a night shoot at a
Hollywood studio. “Wish me luck,” she said as she crossed her
fingers, winked and walked away. She was never seen again. The only
clues left behind: a purse with a broken strap found in a nearby
park, a cryptic note and rumors about mobster boyfriends and
ill-fated romances with movie stars.
Drawing on this true-life missing person case, Megan Abbott’s The
Song Is You tells the story of Gil “Hop” Hopkins, a
smooth-talking Hollywood publicist whose career, despite a
complicated personal life, is on the rise. It is 1951, two years
after Jean Spangler’s disappearance and Hop finds himself
unwillingly drawn into the still-unsolved mystery by a friend of
Jean’s who blames Hop for concealing details about Jean’s
whereabouts the night she vanished. Driven by guilt and fears of
blackmail, Hop delves into the case himself, feverishly trying to
stay one step ahead of an intrepid female reporter also chasing the
story. Hop thought he’d seen it all, but what he uncovers both
tantalizes and horrifies him as he plunges deeper and deeper into
Hollywood’s substratum in his attempt to uncover the truth.
In the tradition of James Ellroy’s Black Dahlia and Joyce
Carol Oates’s Blonde, The Song Is You conjures a
heady brew of truth and speculation, of fact and pulp fiction,
taking the reader on a dark tour of Tinseltown, from movie studios,
gala premieres and posh nightclubs to gangsters, blackmailing
B-girls and the darkest secrets that lie behind Hollywood’s luminous
façade. At the center of it all is Hop, a man torn between
cut-throat ambition and his own best intentions.
"I thought I was an ace student when it came to Hollywood
Babylon-type stories, but [with The Song Is You] Megan leaves
me in the dust. Leaves me in the dust, throws her Lucky in my face
and grinds it out with a dainty twist of her stiletto."
—Laura Lippman, To the Power of Three, Every Secret Thing
"This sensationally good
novel proposes a solution to a real-life mystery: the
disappearance in 1949 of a bit-part actress called Jean
Spangler. . . . The prose is ersatz Chandler but Megan Abbott
handles it brilliantly, leaving us in no doubt that Hollywood
was more hell-on-earth than dream factory."
—Jake Kerridge, The
London Telegraph
". . . even better [than Die a Little] . . . with a
spellbinding retro-milieu. Abbott has a real flair for the era's
lingo and style, which she renders with a breathless sensual
elegance."
—Eddie Muller, San
Francisco Chronicle
Read Eddie Muller, noir titan, on The Song Is You in the
San Francisco Chronicle.
"Megan Abbott continues to be my absolute favorite new author,
and her second novel, The Song Is You, is even better
than her first—super-sexy, superbly written, richly atmospheric,
and with an ending you'll never see coming!"
—Lisa
Scottoline, author of Dirty Blonde and Devil's
Corner
"A chilling second novel from Edgar-nominated Abbott spins the
conventions of noir fiction into something fast, fierce and
fresh . . . a whiz-bang adventure through Tinseltown's
underbelly. With abundant style and a tight convincing story,
Abbott provides a retro thrill ride. . . . Cain and Chandler are
evoked in the rough-and-tumble period language . . . but Abbott
has her own voice, avoiding the genre's macho conventions, to
evoke the young women who live 'in a gasp of tension.'"
—Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
"Sex, drugs and glamour, it's like a 242-page US Weekly
from the '40s."
—Marie Claire
"The book leaves no doubt
that Abbott is an artful practitioner of fem noir. This one will
heat up a winter night at International Falls."
—Jay Waggoner, Deadly
Pleasures
"I thought I was an ace student when it came to Hollywood
Babylon-type stories, but [with The Song Is You] Megan
leaves me in the dust. Leaves me in the dust, throws her Lucky
in my face and grinds it out with a dainty twist of her
stiletto."
—Laura
Lippman, author of To the Power of Three and Every
Secret Thing
"From its absolutely gorgeous, period-perfect cover to its
evocative portrait of the 1940s Hollywood studio system in
action, Megan Abbott's new novel is a sensual feast."
—Dick Adler, Chicago
Tribune
"Few novels break your heart, and even fewer mystery ones. This
one broke me heart ... in smithereens. Such a wrenching poetic
noir vision of loss and regret I've rarely encountered. Written
in a style of such conversational élan, you nearly miss the
absolute artistry. Superb evocation of the era and the legendary
characters live and breathe in glorious dark reality. Megan
Abbott is the song and a song of such yearning, such granite
tenderness. . . . This is the most poignant novel you'll ever
come across."
—Ken
Bruen, author of The Dramatist and The Guards
Read an excerpt.
The Song Is You: A Novel by Megan Abbott
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: January 2007
ISBN-10: 0-7432-9171-9
Buy it at one of these
wonderful independent bookstores:
Aunt Agatha's (Ann
Arbor, MI)
Murder by the Book
(Houston, TX)
Poisoned Pen
(Scottsdale, AZ)
Murder on the Beach
(Delray Beach, FL)
Dead End Books online
Partners and Crime (New
York, NY)
The Mystery
Bookstore (Los Angeles, CA)
Mystery One Bookstore
(Milwaukee, WI)
Mysterious Bookshop
(New York, NY)
Mysteries to Die For
(Thousand Oaks, CA)
M Is for Mystery (San
Mateo, CA)
Seattle Mystery
Bookstore (Seattle, WA)
Book Em Mysteries
(Pasadena, CA)
and many more! (If you are a bookseller, please
send an email )
Also available on Powells and other online book retailers,
including
Amazon and
Barnes
and Noble.
And available as an e-book at retailers everywhere.
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