This Book Review originally appeared in The Post & Courier, July 17, 2005

DIE A LITTLE. By Megan Abbott. Simon & Schuster. 241 Pages. $23.

A few words, to start, about Joe Avalon:  “He lived on the rooftop of every house on our block, and could slither down the chimney at night.  He was, is, and always will be your four-leaf clover and dangerous as hell.  He’s always been here.  This town will always have guys like him, as long as it keeps going.”  In the film noir 1954 Los Angeles of “Die a Little,” the dark, dangerous, and enticing world of men like Avalon curls itself around schoolteacher Lora King.  More than she’ll admit, she awakens to herself in its cool embrace.

Lora’s brother, Joe, a junior investigator with the district attorney’s office, has married Alice Steele, a bewitching dark-haired beauty with unsettling secrets.  The underbelly of Hollywood: glamour paid for in pills, needles, and costume girls sent off to dark rooms.  When Alice Steele’s not-quite-past connections threaten to shred the façade of her present world and destroy Joe in the process, it is Lora who acts.  “He wouldn’t tell me at all.  He’d just make it go away.”

“Die a Little” is a delicious page-turner, purposely evoking the mood and imagery of classic noir such as “Double Indemnity” or “The Big Sleep.”  Lora King’s journey from good girl to hardboiled walks the mean streets right alongside the bygone detectives of black-and-white film and she delivers the goods in the end with the same match-to-cigarette cool.

 Reviewer Jason A. Zwiker is a freelance writer based in Charleston.

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