A page-turning thriller for readers of Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, and Stieg Larsson, Night Film tells the haunting story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a troubled prodigy—the daughter of an iconic, reclusive filmmaker.
On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova—a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years.
For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself. Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova’s eerie, hypnotic world. The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.
Night Film, the gorgeously written, spellbinding new novel by the dazzlingly inventive Marisha Pessl, will hold you in suspense until you turn the final page.
About a million years ago (not really), I read Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and loved the shit out of it. Weird school teacher-student relationship that winds up with bad/crazy/unexplained stuff going down in the woods? Yes, please. Now Pessl is back with a horror movie novel and, whoa ever, is it crazy.
First up: I have to thank Random House Reader's Circle for sending me an ARC of Night Film. I won it, a contest entry I apparently forgot about, so thank you for drawing my name.
Second: Holy crap. Is this the best, best novel to read in the dog days of summer. It will put so many chills up your back that you'll need a fuzzy blanket, warm cocoa, and the urgent need to sleep with the lights on. There is a point in this novel where reality and belief and scaring-the-hell out of oneself starts to blend in a really cracked out way. Nothing in this book is real (practically dripping with major Hollywood script bait here).
So, if you want to read a super crazy-weird-multilayered-creepy-trippy-ballsy-intricate-bullshitting-notbullshitting-realist-magical-magicalrealist-surreal-sublime novel, Night Film is for you. If not, well, you're missing something really fun.
Dear FTC: I won a copy of the ARC from the publisher.
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