DIE A LITTLE: MEGAN ABBOTT

I was sent recently Megan Abbott's first two novels, and although they were not my usual reading matter Karen of Euro Crime thought I might enjoy them. Possibly because the front covers have on them pictures of women, and the back cover blurb mentions "seamy, sexy corruption".

I read Die A Little as a bit of light relief while I was entangled with a blockbuster, and thought that it was a well written atmospheric thriller. The female first person point of view narrative was a little bit difficult to get used to, but Megan Abbott tells a good story taking the reader back to Chandler's 1950s Los Angeles.

Schoolteacher Lora King is worried when her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the District Attorney's office marries Alice Steele, a beautiful Hollywood wardrobe assistant with a mysterious past. Lora begins to investigate but complications ensue when she is introduced to handsome debonair Mike Standish, an old friend of Alice.

He knows the right restaurants to be at and the right times to beat them, he knows the drinks to order, the maitre d's to grease.........

And it always helps that he is from Connecticut and went to Columbia [and nearly graduated] and has the sheen of class and breeding everyone he works for lacks.

This novel made me think of the television series Mad Men in its meticulous recreation of a period in the quite recent past.

It is a book about obsession and corruption set in an interesting time as the child like city of Los Angeles grows into adulthood.