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The Song Is You is Megan Abbott's 2007 take on the actual disappearance of Jean Spangler, a 26-year-old aspiring actress who walked into Griffith Park one September night in 1949 and was never found. Abbott's narrator is Gil Hopkins, a studio publicist whose job is to fix problems for actors, and who realizes very late in his life that he should have done more for Spangler than he did.
The novel is partly investigation, partly confession. Hopkins moves through a Los Angeles of mob-connected nightclubs, blackmail studios, and women whose careers have already ended without anyone telling them. Abbott's research is meticulous. The book has the lacquered surface of a James Ellroy LA novel with a different and quieter moral center.
The reveal lands honestly rather than spectacularly. The book is not interested in solving the case so much as in being honest about why it was never solved. Four stars. Recommended to fans of LA noir who like their endings cold.
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