Megan Abbott: Superb storyteller, film noir scholar, deconstructionist suffused with a true artists passion. Poised to ascend to the top rung of crime writing and quite possibly something beyond James Ellroy On October 7, 1949, dark-haired starlet Jean Spangler kissed her five-year-old daughter good-bye and left for a night shoot at a Hollywood studio. She was never seen again. The only clues left behind: a purse with a broken strap found in a nearby park, a cryptic note, and rumours about mobster boyfriends and ill-fated romances with movie stars. Drawing on this true-life missing person case, Megan Abbotts The Song Is You tells the story of Gil Hop Hopkins, a smooth-talking Hollywood publicist whose career, despite his complicated personal life, is on the rise. It is 1951, two years after Jeans disappearance, and Hop finds himself unwillingly drawn into the still unsolved mystery by a friend of Jean who blames Hop for concealing details about Jeans whereabouts the night she vanished. Driven by guilt and fear of blackmail, Hop delves into the case himself, feverishly trying to stay one step ahead of an intrepid female reporter also chasing the story. Hop thought hed seen it all, but what he uncovers both tantalizes and horrifies him as he plunges deeper and deeper into Hollywoods substratum in his attempt to uncover the truth.