Scenes of the Crime - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Jilly Gagnon is the author of All Dressed Up and the young adult novel #famous . Her humor writing, personal essays, and op-eds have appeared in Newsweek, Elle, Vanity Fair, Boston magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Toast, and The Hairpin, among others. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her family and two black cats. Klappentext "A remote winery. A missing friend. And they all had sour grapes. It should have been the perfect getaway. Five girlfriends. A remote winery on the Oregon coast. An infinite supply of delicious wine at their manicured fingertips. But then their center-beautiful, magnetic Vanessa Morales-vanished, never to be seen again. Emily Fischer was perhaps the last person to see her alive. But now, years later, Emily has caught a glimpse of her again at her local cafâe. Or so she thinks. At the end of her rope working a lucrative yet mind-numbing gig on a network sitcom, Emily is inspired to finally tell the story that's been percolating inside her for so long: Vanessa's story. But to do that, she needs to know what really happened on that fateful night. So she puts a devious plan into motion. She gets the girls together again under the guise of reconnecting and they return to the scene of the crime. There's Brittany, Vanessa's cousin and the inheritor of the winery; Paige, a former athlete, bullish yet easily manipulated; and Lydia, the wallflower of the group. One of them knows the truth. But what have they each been hiding? And has Emily, the narrator of her own story, failed to acknowledge her involvement in the yarn she's been spinning? Suspenseful, entertaining, and interspersed with scenes from Emily's blockbuster screenplay, Scenes of the Crime is an unforgettable mystery that examines culpability, the shiny rearview mirror of Hollywood storytelling, and the pitfalls of female friendship"-- Leseprobe 1 I’d made it about thirty percent of the way through the most glaringly inane round of script notes known to man when a ghost walked into the coffee shop. Actually, let’s back up about five minutes. As a screenwriter, I should know to set the scene at least slightly. I closed my eyes, breathing deeply in through my nose, out slowly through my mouth, trying to let the white noise of the coffee shop fall away, let my mind go blank, keep my focus on the breath moving through my body, all the way down to my fingertips, weaving through my leg muscles on its way to the soles of my feet, slithering along my vertebrae and pooling in my tailbone, whispering up into the tips of my eyelashes. Calm. Lower your vibrations and be calm. It would be weird anywhere but LA. But eventually I had to open my eyes again, and that same idiotic script note was still staring back at me, maddening in its Feedback 101 simplicity. Motivation? Why is she still here? Let’s dig deeper. She’s still here because this is an episode of Back of House, the broadest of network comedies, a slurry of gender stereotypes, cheap sight gags, and plotlines so dull they couldn’t even cut the mental mashed potatoes we’ve been serving up for five seasons now, Mike. She’s here because the loving but slightly exasperated wife character—literally, in early versions of the pilot her name was Wife—exists exclusively as an eye-rolling sounding board to her husband’s constant string of wacky mishaps in the restaurant they run together. And not for nothing, you don’t need motivation to stay when the A story for the episode is “Hector accidentally locks himself and Maria into the staff bathroom before an all-important VIP dinner. But Maria’s new get-fit focus on hydration means soon she’s gonna have to go . . . when neither of them can go anywhere!” I could feel a thin layer of my molars sanding away as I tried to cling to those “breathe deep” vibes. Useless. Say goodbye to your enamel...

Product details

• Authors: Jilly Gagnon
• Publisher: Bantam Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 05.09.2023
• EAN: 9780593598023
• ISBN: 978-0-593-59802-3
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 20 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense