Pamela Carr (What's a Poor Girl to Do‪)‬

What's a Poor Girl to Do

This is Hollywood, 1948. You are a beautiful young actress. He is a ruthless and powerful film producer. He can make you a star or send you back to the sticks, and you have something he wants, right now. What are you willing to do? How much of yourself are you willing to give?

She came to Hollywood in 1948 to be a star. She was beautiful, smart, and ambitious. What she found there would shock and disgust you today, but this was a different time, and she learned how to do what she had to do, and live with what she had to live with. She would succeed but lose everything she'd once dreamed of. Or she would find revenge, and lose the only future she'd ever wanted.

You'll notice there is no question mark or period at the end of the title. That's because these poor girls are tough, ambitious, and very human. They are going to do something. Only question is what?

Another description:

A Broadway Baby, a dark-eyed, seemingly innocent beauty. A refugee from destroyed Berlin, a hardened blonde angel. They both arrive in Hollywood just after World War II. They both have brains and ambition. One will become a star but sacrifice everything she loves; the other will become the victim of a sexual predator too powerful to be denied-or prosecuted.

What's a Poor Girl to Do is a stand-alone book that shares a couple of characters with and briefly refers to my previous Hollywood murder mystery, Lily Torrence. It is set at the end of World War II in Germany, New York and Hollywood. Though there are a couple of deaths, a sleuth, some tough cops and lying suspects, this is not so much a murder mystery as a catalogue of deadly sins, particularly lust, ambition, and arrogance, all of which are most especially seen in the pattern of abuse and denial that we now call #metoo, and that in 1948 they called business as usual.