From Edgar® -nominated novelist Megan Abbott, who makes “devotees of Cain and Chandler fall down and beg for mercy” ( The Hollywood Reporter ), The Song Is You imagines a thrilling conclusion to the still unsolved since 1949 Black Dahlia murder case. On October 7, 1949, dark-haired starlet Jean Spangler kissed her five-year-old daughter good-bye and left for a night shoot at a Hollywood studio. "Wish me luck," she said as she crossed her fingers, winked, and walked away. She was never seen again. The only clues left behind: a purse with a broken strap found in a nearby park, a cryptic note, and rumors about mobster boyfriends and ill-fated romances with movie stars. Drawing on this true-life missing person case, Megan Abbott's The Song Is You tells the story of Gil "Hop" Hopkins, a smooth-talking Hollywood publicist whose career, despite his complicated personal life, is on the rise. It is 1951, two years after Jean Spangler's disappearance, and Hop finds himself unwillingly drawn into the still unsolved mystery by a friend of Jean who blames Hop for concealing details about Jean's whereabouts the night she vanished. Driven by guilt and fear of blackmail, Hop delves into the case himself, feverishly trying to stay one step ahead of an intrepid female reporter also chasing the story. Hop thought he'd seen it all, but what he uncovers both tantalizes and horrifies him as he plunges deeper and deeper into Hollywood's substratum in his attempt to uncover the truth. In the tradition of James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia and Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde , The Song Is You conjures a heady brew of truth and speculation, of fact and pulp fiction, taking the reader on a dark tour of Tinseltown, from movie studios, gala premieres, and posh nightclubs to gangsters, blackmailing B-girls, and the darkest secrets that lie behind Hollywood's luminous façade. At the center of it all is Hop, a man torn between cutthroat ambition and his own best intentions. "Megan Abbott continues to be my absolute favorite new author, and her second novel, The Song Is You, is even better than her first -- super-sexy, superbly written, richly atmospheric, and with an ending you'll never see coming!" -- Lisa Scottoline, author of Dirty Blonde Megan Abbott is the author of three acclaimed novels, the Edgar Award–winning Queenpin , The Song Is You , and Die a Little . She lives in New York City. The Song Is You A Novel By Megan Abbott Simon & Schuster Copyright © 2008 Megan Abbott All right reserved. ISBN: 9780743291729 1949 The Petty Girl The whistle isn't jaunty, not Doris Day. It's low and slow and the actor Bob Cummings would remember its hot zing for some time. Ah yes, that bit player of definite note. "You sound happy," he says to her, his head half turned, leaning back in his springy dressing-room chair so he can catch a glimpse of her in the corridor. She stops, swivels her hips, and looks back at him, black eyes crackling. "I am," she says, almost a husky coo. She laces her long, red-tipped fingers along the door frame. "I have a new romance." "Is it serious?" he says, flirting hard. Has he played this game with her before? He lets his arms dangle boyishly from the sides of his chair. "Not really," she replies, tilting her head. Then, with a klieg-light leer lewd as a burlesque dancer but with infinitely greater appeal: "But I'm having the time of my life." With that, she twists her long hips back around and, with a kittenish wave of the hand, continues down the corridor, heels lightly clacking, matching her whistle in perfect time. What is she humming? He can almost name it, taste it even. It reminds him of close quarters, mouth pressed against folded satin, sparkled fishnets, music throbbing unbearably, pressure in the chest and fast, jerky leg kicks in the air. A long-ago peccadillo with a clap-ridden chorus girl in a curtained booth at the Top Hat Café, an encounter so quick and so urgent that it felt like a sucker punch in the stomach. Of course. That was it. You're so much sweeter, goodness knows... Honeysuckle rose... He will tell this story hundreds of times in the weeks and months to come under official and unofficial circumstances. He will tweak it occasionally, leave details out, add a shading of provocation or a whiff of heat. Or he'll tell it as if it were a cool exchange between temporary colleagues. He'll tart it up or iron it out, depending. But this is how it really happened and it has lodged tightly, uncomfortably in his head on a continuous loop, winding itself through his thoughts, unfurling in his dreams. He may barely recall the movie they were shooting (The Petty Girl, right?), but he remembers everything about the costume she wore as she walked down that hall, all china silk and shocks of pleats, a curling blue flame. And the lipsticked mouth folding around the coarse and delicious whistle. His creaking, squeaking chair as he leaned back, makeup b