Two superb thrillers for you today, one from last year and in my #20booksofsummer and one brand new out.
Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper
I love the tag line of this novel, ‘In Hollywood, nobody talks, but everybody whispers.’ It immediately drew me in, and simultaneously got me humming Leonard Cohen’s wonderful song that shares its title with this book. It was published last autumn, and went on to win the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2024 – a well-deserved accolade – I loved this book!
First we meet Mae Pruett at the Chateau Marmont – I mean, where else is there?! – She has been called to spin a story on a client’s black eye, said client being due to start filming the next day! Mae works for a PR agency, she’s one of the best at turning stories around or preventing them from getting out at all. Hannah Heard was a child superstar, now moving up to make her name in young adult roles. As her assistant Shira ushers Mae into her chalet, it’s obvious she’s been partying, it’s ‘beyond trashed’. Hannah tells Mae sort of what happened. Mae can put the pieces together:
The whisper network calls it yachting. Women get flown overseas to party on boats with rich men – rich as in numbers so big the human brain wasn’t built to understand them. The yachts circuit the globe, chasing bikini weather, staying in international waters 24/7/365/all the way around the world. The women are the party favors. (…) Rumor is now flights from L.A. are more selective. Rumor is now it’s famous faces only, flown out in private jets for six figures a night. It looks like the rumors are true.
Mae knows the rumors are always true. Even the false ones.
Mae patches her up and comes up with a story that is just credible enough to get Hannah out of trouble, and mollify the studio – they film and upload a video. Soon Mae’s boss Dan calls.
“Her fucking dog?” Pure joy in his voice.
“Give them horror or give them heartstrings. Nothing else sticks. Somebody told me that once.”
As an opening chapter, this tells you all you need to know about the Hollywood rumor mill and PR industry that serves it. In the next chapter, we meet the other main protagonist of this novel, British ex-cop turned bodyguard Chris Tamburro – who happens to be Mae’s ex. Chris works for the top security firm, often with Mae’s company. We then alternate roughly between Mae and Chris throughout.
Mae’s boss Dan was on to something big, so big, he set up a private meeting with Mae to bring her into the fold. Mae is also concerned he might finally make a pass at her, but is intrigued enough to take the meeting – it might offer a way out of the publicity mill, she’s feeling ready to move on should the opportunity present. She’s on her way but stuck in traffic arriving at the Beverley Hills Hotel a little late – just after her boss had been gunned down in front of it. She is beyond shocked, but realises that if they knew about Dan’s meeting, she could be in danger too. What was it that Dan had found out that cost him his life? Mae can’t help but start investigate.
When she bumps into Chris and discovers he’s also investigating from his firm’s side, they team up. And as they begin to uncover dastardly goings on that link back to the death of another former child superstar and parties, it becomes an act of social justice for them and they must strike out alone from their companies to uncover dark secrets at the heart of the Hollywood system. It’s a dangerous game they’re playing!
Mae and Chris are both fantastically well-drawn characters, and naturally, we all hope they’ll get back together by the end. They work really well together, taking each other’s observations to the next level, working it all out. As you may imagine, the plot twists and turns all over the place, and violence and nasty behaviours are never far away. This gritty page-turner felt sickeningly plausible, all clad in Hollywood gloss. I found this thriller essentially unputdownable, devouring it in a couple of sessions. I would love to know what Mae and Chris did next – can we have a sequel please?
I shall leave you with Leonard Cohen and that wonderful song ‘Everybody Knows‘ from I’m Your Man, here in a live version.
Source: Review copy – thank you! Faber paperback, 394 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s or Amazon UK via my affiliate links.
Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh
I’m new to reading former lawyer Cavanagh’s books, although I was vaguely aware of the 4th one, Th1rt3en, it having won a major prize and having that interesting title, (his others have won prizes too!). Witness 8 is the 8th in his series of Eddie Flynn novels, but I was assured by Cavanagh’s own website that the plots all stand alone and that although characters recur, that wouldn’t affect the fun. I didn’t realise he’s from Belfast, as his books are set in New York, but you wouldn’t know!
His main protagonist, Eddie Flynn, is a former conman turned lawyer, and it seems an ideal change of occupation as both require the art of persuasion and a lot of psychology.
Before I became a lawyer, I was a con artist. When I worked the bars, the hotels, the businesses, seeking out my targets for short-cons, I looked for men who wanted to make a fast buck and didn’t care who they hurt in the process. I went after those who had taken a wrong turn in life and never looked back. As a lawyer, I was on the lookout for the same kind of people.
Once you realize that cash is king in this city, things get a lot easier and much clearer.
Eddie and his team are now working on a case of a racially motivated illegal stop and search. Unfortunately, Eddie’s client had a gun in his glovebox. The veteran cops whose reputations and pensions are now on the line are after Eddie, and when he ridicules the arresting officer in court, the case is dismissed. A while later Eddie will find out he has had a price put on his head.
Meanwhile, Ruby Johnson, a nanny/babysitter for the rich families that own the townhouse apartments on West 74th Street, is hatching a plan to get her own back – she used to live there, but something happened and now she can only be there vicariously. On her way home that night, she sees a man murder Margeret ‘Maggs’ Blakemore in her front room – and it wasn’t her husband. She knows who it is though … and sees the man disappear back into the Schwartzman’s party down the road. She’ll make an anonymous call and name the murderer – only she lies, because ‘there’s something wrong with Ruby Johnson’.
Eddie and his team are brought in by the accused’s posh lawyers to defend an innocent man, whom all the evidence seems to point towards. There’s lawyer Kate who is precise and does the research; Harry Ford, a retired judge and mentor to Eddie; Denise, Eddie’s assistant and secretary; and Bloch – no forename – but she is their investigator.
They have their work cut out for them. Not only proving John Jackson’s innocence, but also keeping Eddie alive as word of the bounty gets out to various hitmen. And Ruby continues with her plan, planting seeds of doubt about the Jacksons, whose children she looks after often. There will be more bodies before this case is through – but whose?
Witness 8 felt very much like a novel with two parallel stories to it. There’s the psychological chills of Ruby’s story, and there’s the legal process and courtroom thrills of Eddie and his team’s narrative, with the contract on his head making things more difficult. I loved the latter much more, particularly how Eddie could show the posh lawyers a thing or two, without rubbing it in though! I loved the drama of the courtroom, whether it was Kate or Eddie asking the questions, outwitting the DA, using their careful choice of words to manipulate the witnesses into saying what they already knew the answers to be. There will be spanners thrown in the works – late arrival of evidence etc., which just make it all the more exciting. Kavanagh excels at the legal thriller side of things. We need Ruby’s story of course to drive the rest but that was secondary for me.
Having discovered Kavanagh and Eddie Flynn, I will certainly be back for more. I’m sure the others will be as pageturning as Witness 8 was!
Source: Review ARC – thank you! Headline hardback, 400 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s or Amazon UK via my affiliate links.
Everybody Knows sounds like it might be taking inspiration from the Weinstein and Epstein cases—that idea of flying women around the world to be “the party favours”, especially former child stars…
Definitely an inspiration, but this thriller has an interesting extra on the #MeToo bit also. A superb thriller.
Yeah–I guess I was thinking of the intersection of the Weinstein case(s) with the MeToo movement, since it felt like a phenomenon that gained a higher profile, faster, when the case broke. But yes, absolutely.