The best written of these is
Chapter One
MAE
The Chateau Marmont
Los Angeles burns.
Some sicko is torching homeless camps. Tonight they hit a tent city in Los Feliz near the 5. The fire spread to Griffith Park. The smoke makes the sunset unbelievable. The particles in the air slash the light, shift it red. They make the sky a neon wound.
Mae waits outside the secret entrance to the Chateau Marmont. She watches Saturday-night tourists wander Sunset Boulevard, their eyes bloodshot from the smoke. They cough and trade looks. They never thought the Sunset Strip would smell like a campfire.
Mae moves around the sidewalk like a boxer before the fight. Her face is sharp and bookish, framed in a Lulu bob. She wears a vintage floral jumpsuit. She’s got eyes like a wolf on the hunt—she hides them behind chunky oversized glasses. Nobody ever sees her coming.
She shifts her weight from foot to foot—these heels weren’t made for legwork. She put them on for a first date she canceled twenty minutes ago when she got the text from Dan. No big loss—the date was with a stand-up comedian she met on Bumble. Comedians on a date tend to treat a woman like a test audience, or like their shrink, or they think you’re a chucklefucker and they don’t even have to try.
Dan’s text had read HANNAH CHATEAU ASAP followed by the number for Hannah Heard’s new assistant. Dan’s text was cryptic per usual. The rules say keep as much as possible UNSAID.
The Chateau Marmont: the hippest no-tell hotel in the world. This shabby-chic Gothic castle slouching against the base of the Hollywood Hills. The way to the hotel proper is up a small winding road to Mae’s left. This secret entrance on Sunset leads straight to the grotto where the private cottages are. The unmarked door built into the white-brick wall is made of green cloth—someone could slash it easily and go marauding among the rich and famous. But no one ever does.
Chateau jobs tend to be messy. They tend to be drama. They tend to be a fucking blast. Hannah Heard increases the odds of all three exponentially.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BOOK CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
'Cinematic and insightful. Everybody Knows is a tour de force.' GUARDIAN
'A heart-racing journey of danger and redemption.' DAILY MAIL
'I doubt there will be a better American crime novel this year.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
In Hollywood, nobody talks. But everybody whispers.
Welcome to Mae Pruett's LA. A 'black-bag' publicist at one of Hollywood's most powerful crisis PR firms, Mae's job isn't to get good news out, it's to keep the bad news in and contain the scandals. But just as she starts to question her job and life choices, her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and everything changes.
Investigating with the help of an ex-boyfriend, Mae dives headlong into a neon joyride through the jungle of contemporary Hollywood. Pitted against the twisted system she's worked so hard to perpetuate, she's desperately fighting for redemption, and her life.
