Die A Little - Megan Abbott
Vic Buckner

Megan Abbott's Die a Little is an original paperback, and after the fashion of hard-boiled, punchy, 1950s crime fiction, it is the real deal. It's deliciously retro but, crucially (and originally) by a female author and with a female lead, celebrating and subverting the pulp genre at the same time. If you're an admirer of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett or James Ellroy, this is for you. Ellroy himself said of her 'Megan Abbott: superb storyteller... Poised to ascend to the top rung of crime writing and quite possibly something beyond', which is a solid encomium.

1950s LA: when schoolteacher Lora King's brother Bill gets involved with the glamorous yet mysterious Alice Steele, she uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution and, ultimately, murder. The deeper Lora digs to uncover Alice's secrets, the more her own life begins to resemble Alice's sinsister past...and her present.

Megan Abbott has written three novels, all published in the USA to widespread acclaim. Die a Little was her first. She has won plaudits across the States; Die a Little was short-listed for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and, most recently, her novel Queenpin, published by us in the UK next year, won an Edgar for Best Paperback Original. It's been a while since I've come across something written with such panache and style, that is so evocative of the time and place it's set; full of shadows, dark alleys, seamy LA streets, guns and murder, Die a Little is terrifically cool, dark and dynamic, and is crime literature at its best.

Posted at 2:47PM Monday 16 Jun 2008