From the award winning author of There Was an Old Woman comes a mystery tinged with Hollywood glamour, set in a town where fame and infamy are often interchangeable.
Los Angeles 1986: When Deirdre Unger makes the drive from San Diego to Beverly Hills to help her father put his dilapidated house on the market, she is expecting to deal with his usual kvetching and dark moods. But she gets a lot more than she expected… In a cruel Sunset Boulevard-ian twist, Deirdre arrives home to find her father face down in his too-small swimming pool—dead.
At first, Deirdre assumes her father’s death was a tragic accident. But the longer she stays in town the more Deirdre begins to suspect that this is merely the third act in a story that has long been in the making.
The sudden re-surfacing of Deirdre’s childhood BFF Joelen Nichol—daughter of the famous and infamous Elenor “Bunny” Nichol—seems like more than a coincidence. Back in 1958, Joelen confessed to killing her movie star mother’s boyfriend. It just so happens that Deidre was at the Nichols’ house the night of the murder, which was also the night she suffered her own personal tragedy. Could all of these events be connected?
As Deirdre struggles to uncover the truth about the past, is forced to confront a truth she has long not wanted to believe: even beneat the slick veneer of Beverly Hills, darkness can take hold.