Night night, sleep tight
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15
Ratings1
Average rating4
Los Angeles, 1985. When Deirdre Unger makes the drive from San Diego to Beverly Hills to help her father put his dilapidated house on the market, she's expecting to deal with his usual kvetching and dark moods. But she gets a lot more than she expected. In a cruel Sunset Boulevard twist, Deirdre arrives home to find her father facedown in his too-small swimming pool -- dead. At first, Deirdre assumes her father's death was a tragic accident. But the longer she stays in town, the more Deirdre begins to suspect that everything isn't as open-and-closed as she first presumed. The sudden resurfacing of Deirdre's childhood BFF Joelen Nichol -- daughter of the famous and infamous Elenor "Bunny" Nichol -- seems like more than a coincidence. Back in 1963, Joelen confessed to killing her movie-star mother's boyfriend. Deirdre was at the Nichols' house the night of the murder, which was also the night she suffered her own personal tragedy. Could all these events be connected? As Deirdre digs deeper into the past, she becomes increasingly convinced that her father's death is merely the deadly third act in a story that has long been in development. And if she isn't careful, she might be its final victim.
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Since I had recently attended a workshop that Hallie Ephron did on Voice and Point of View at the Surrey International Writers Conference, I wanted to read one of her works. The story moved well and the ending surprised me, which is what you'd expect from any clever mystery writer.
Soon after I started reading it the story seemed vaguely familiar. Like the author, when I was a child, I had heard of a murder that a Hollywood star was involved in. Ephron reveals in her author's note that that same story had inspired her to write this novel.
Ephron, whose own parents were Hollywood screenwriters, sprinkles celebrity names throughout and for any old-time movie lover, those parts are fun to read. Night Night, Sleep Tight was a quick read. It's been nominated for an Edgar mystery award.
