Dead to Me
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
"Don't believe anything they say." Those were the last words Alice's older sister, Annie, said to her before she turned her back on their parents and left home forever. Alice spent four years waiting and wondering when the impossibly glamorous sister she idolized would return to her--and what her Hollywood-insider parents had done to drive her away. Now it's 1948 and Alice isn't a kid anymore. When she gets the phone call from the hospital, she knows it's up to her to help Annie, in a coma after being beaten and left for dead in MacArthur Park. The search for Annie's attacker leads Alice into a dark and dangerous world of tough-talking private eyes, psychopathic movie stars, and troubled starlets--and onto the trail of a young runaway who is the sole witness to an unspeakable crime. What this girl knows could shut down a criminal syndicate and put Annie's attacker behind bars--if Alice can find her first. And she isn't the only one looking. Debut novelist Mary McCoy evokes the dangerous glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age, a corrupt world where the people who live in the nicest houses have the dirtiest secrets and no drive into the sunset can erase the crimes of past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McCoy debuts with a gritty, noir-style thriller about the Gates sisters, two teenagers coming of age in Los Angeles during Hollywood's Golden Age. After four years apart, 16-year-old Alice finds her older sister, Annie, in a hospital bed after being beaten close to death. With the help of a private investigator, Alice works to untangle the events leading up to her sister's attack, plunging into a seamy world of dangerous movie stars and the henchmen who will do anything to please them. Although McCoy keeps noir archetypes alive and well, from dirty cops engaged in cover-ups to ink-stained reporters hungry for their next scoop, she develops her characters well beyond facsimiles of black-and-white Rita Hayworth esque figures on darkened street corners. Far from damsels in distress, McCoy's heroines are fierce crusaders for justice despite their own fears or the dangers they face in protecting each other. The examination of the glamorous face of fame and what lurks behind the scenes is rife with twists to keep Alice and readers guessing. Ages 12 up.
