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Blaine Barrow is writing a biography of his late grandfather, Jake Barrow, a famous movie director from the 1940's through the 1960's. In the process of conducting research for the book, Blaine discovers some disturbing information: In 1953 his grandfather was involved in a sensational murder case in which blonde boys were abducted, raped and killed. When the case broke, Jake Barrow was directing Death Song, starring Marilyn Monroe. The studio never released the film-indeed, at the time they issued a press release simply stating that the film negative had been destroyed. In Hollywood lore, Death Song soon became known as 'The Lost Monroe."
Why was the film destroyed? How was it connected to the murder case? Newspaper clippings from the time tell part of the story but not all of it. To try to get at the truth about his grandfather and the case of the blonde boys, Blaine visits a nursing home to interview Death Song's only surviving star, Carmen Calais. Flattered by the young man's attention and amused by her own cynicism, the eighty-year old Carmen decides to tell him what she has never told anyone else-the full story of 'The Lost Monroe." In the process, she takes him and the reader back to the world of Hollywood in 1953. There they meet characters both real and fictional-a talented but insecure Marilyn Monroe, a carefree but conflicted Rock Hudson, a savvy and demanding mogul, Lew Wasserman, and a Los Angeles missing persons detective, Lefty Bouchard, whose search for five lost boys leads to the discovery of a serial murderer in Tinsel Town.
The Lost Monroe employs suspense and humor against the historical backdrop of Hollywood in its heyday to tell a story of the price people pay to survive in a world where perception matters more than truth.
