Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy
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Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy
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"Don't believe anything they say."Those were the last words that Annie spoke to Alice before turning her back on their family and vanishing without a trace. Alice spent four years waiting and wondering when the impossibly glamorous sister she idolized would return to her--and what their Hollywood-insider parents had done to drive her away. When Annie does turn up, the blond, broken stranger lying in a coma has no answers for her. But Alice isn't a kid anymore, and this time she won't let anything stand between her and the truth, no matter how ugly. The search for those who beat Annie and left her for dead leads Alice into a treacherous world of tough-talking private eyes, psychopathic movie stars, and troubled starlets--and onto the trail of a young runaway who is the sole witness to an unspeakable crime. What this girl knows could shut down a criminal syndicate and put Annie's attacker behind bars--if Alice can find her first. And she isn't the only one looking Evoking classic film noir, debut novelist Mary McCoy brings the dangerous glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age to life, where the most decadent parties can be the deadliest, and no drive into the sunset can erase the crimes of past.
Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy - Amazon Sales Rank: #412861 in Books
- Brand: Mccoy, Mary
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.75" h x 1.00" w x 6.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy From School Library Journal Gr 9 Up—Sixteen-year-old Alice imagines herself to be as good a private eye as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe from the 1940s film noir classics. Like the Maltese Falcon and other detective films, Alice is surrounded by flawed and compromised characters, including her parents, the LAPD, and other young people involved in crime. The book opens with Alice finding her estranged sister, Annie, in a coma. She makes it her business to find the perpetrators of this crime, delving into Annie's dark past and her association with Conrad Donoghue, a devastingly handsome leading man with secrets of his own. Alice is helped and hindered by corrupt police, undercover agents, witnesses, and friends of Annie. Readers may have difficulty remembering so many characters without a scorecard. Plot twists and turns that might have made sense in a film are harder to follow in this medium. Even after solving the crime, everyone connected to this story emerges tarnished, including Alice. For fans of melodrama and mystery.—Lillian Hecker, Town of Pelham Public Library, NY
Review A privileged girl turns detective in a gritty noir thriller about the not-so-glamorous side of Hollywood in the 1940s. Alice Gates has always lived a comfortable life in her spacious Hollywood home. Her father does PR for a prestigious studio, and Alice and her sister, Annie, have spent their childhood hobnobbing with famous movie stars and attending glitzy parties. Suddenly, when Alice is 12, Annie leaves home with no explanation. Four years later, Alice receives a call that her sister is in the hospital, beaten and unconscious. As Alice tries to track down Annie's assailant, she finds herself in the thick of a Tinseltown that isn't quite so shiny, one full of runaways, pornographers, malicious gangsters, crooked cops and psychotic movie stars. As she begins to pick her way through the tangled web, she learns that the present-day events may ultimately lead back to the truth about her sister's leaving home all those years ago. McCoy's mystery unfolds slowly and cautiously, offering enough clues-and red herrings-to keep readers hooked. Its conclusion is tidily, perhaps a bit too conveniently, resolved, but against the richly envisioned backdrop of golden-age Hollywood's sinister underbelly, this minor quibble is easily forgiven. Step aside, Nancy Drew; this dark mystery holds nothing back. (Historical mystery. 13 & up) Kirkus"Gr 9 Up Sixteen-year-old Alice imagines herself to be as good a private eye as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe from the 1940s film noir classics. Like the Maltese Falcon and other detective films, Alice is surrounded by flawed and compromised characters, including her parents, the LAPD, and other young people involved in crime. The book opens with Alice finding her estranged sister, Annie, in a coma. She makes it her business to find the perpetrators of this crime, delving into Annie's dark past and her association with Conrad Donoghue, a devastingly handsome leading man with secrets of his own. Alice is helped and hindered by corrupt police, undercover agents, witnesses, and friends of Annie. Readers may have difficulty remembering so many characters without a scorecard. Plot twists and turns that might have made sense in a film are harder to follow in this medium. Even after solving the crime, everyone connected to this story emerges tarnished, including Alice. For fans of melodrama and mystery. Lillian Hecker, Town of Pelham Public Library, NY SLJ"McCoy debuts with a gritty, noir-style thriller about the Gates sisters, two teenagers coming of age in Los Angeles during Hollywood's Golden Age. After four years apart, 16-year-old Alice finds her older sister, Annie, in a hospital bed after being beaten close to death. With the help of a private investigator, Alice works to untangle the events leading up to her sister's attack, plunging into a seamy world of dangerous movie stars and the henchmen who will do anything to please them. Although McCoy keeps noir archetypes alive and well, from dirty cops engaged in cover-ups to ink-stained reporters hungry for their next scoop, she develops her characters well beyond facsimiles of black-and-white Rita Hayworth esque figures on darkened street corners. Far from damsels in distress, McCoy's heroines are fierce crusaders for justice despite their own fears or the dangers they face in protecting each other. The examination of the glamorous face of fame and what lurks behind the scenes is rife with twists to keep Alice and readers guessing. Ages 12 up. PW"McCoy debuts with a tale of murder and mayhem in post-World War II Hollywood. Alice Gates, daughter of Tinseltown insider wannabes, was 12 when her 16-year-old sister Annie ran away from home. Four years later, Annie reappears, comatose in the hospital with Alice as the only contact. Alice is determined to find out who beat her sister into a coma. Her search involves an assortment of friends and foes, including a hard-boiled private eye, Alice's dysfunctional parents, her loyal and enduring best friend, and a ruthless movie star. Alice is bright, brave, and plucky in her pursuit of answers, sometimes at her own peril. The nourish narrative reveals the grit and squalor beneath Hollywood's glitter, and the ultimate revelation literally hits Alice where she lives, forcing her to learn that there is no such thing as a perfect ending and she must accept what she gets. While the plethora of breathtaking twists and turns and colorful characters may strain credulity at times, the novel is true to the genre, and readers will enjoy the ride. Donna Scanlon Booklist"Alice never fully knew the reason her older sister, Annie, left home as a teenager and dropped off the map. Now Annie lies comatose in the hospital, brutally beaten and left for dead, and sixteen-year-old Alice is the only family member who knows where she is. A friend of Annie, private detective Jerry Shaffer, turns up, but he is reluctant to allow Alice to assist him in finding Annie's attackers. Of course there's no putting Alice off. She and her sister used to pass the time playing with ciphers, pretending they were World War II spies, and Alice knows how to crack the clues her sister sparingly left behind. They all lead straight to trouble: her sister, her father, and now she herself have been pulled into a web of crimes surrounding a movie idol and his penchant for underage girls. Noir homage can reasonably be considered its own subgenre in youth fiction, and McCoy's debut novel suggests she will run at the head of the authorial pack. She paints a convincing picture of the seamy side of 1948 Hollywood, where tangled alliances among studio honchos, corrupt cops, and screen glitterati conspire to keep the stars' sins tucked well into the shadows. Alice is as hardboiled as the fictional detectives she admires, and her gritty, cynical voice is no comic parody but that of a smart teen who has just dis- covered her parents are more venal than she thought. There are enough twists and turns, feints and deceits to rival The Big Sleep for inscrutability, but Alice's descent into the underworld of murder, child pornography, and statutory rape will keep readers in thrall. EB BCCB"3Q 2P J S Alice's sister Annie has been missing for four years before she turns up beaten and unconscious in a Hollywood hospital. Alice knows that something is amiss and decides it is up to her and her amateur detective skills to figure out what landed Annie in the hospital. At the hospital, Alice meets a detective who says he is helping Annie, but Alice is not sure if he is trustworthy. Setting these worries aside, Alice uses the detective and her own sleuthing skills to search into Annie's past and present. The more she digs, the more she finds that all in glamorous, movie-star Hollywood-land is not what it seems; her parents, movie stars, cops, and talent agents all have secrets to hide. Over the course of a few short days, Alice has run-ins with Hollywood gangsters, dirty cops, double-crossing informants, and movie stars who might be murderers-all while she is searching for a teen runaway whom her sister was trying to protect. Dead to Me is described as a film noir book and this description is fitting. For adults, it will bring to mind the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle scandal, but teens without knowledge of Hollywood lore will think of this as a Boardwalk Empire meets Sopranos-esque tale.-Charla Hollingsworth. VOYA"
About the Author Mary McCoy is the Senior Librarian in Teen'Scape, the young adult department at the Los Angeles Public Library. She's also worked as a hot dog vendor, a hotel maid, a bass player, a fundraiser for public television, and a contributor to On Bunker Hill and the 1947project, where she wrote stories about Los Angeles's notorious past. Mary grew up in western Pennsylvania and holds degrees from Rhodes College and the University of Wisconsin. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. A Promising Debut Novel Set in Los Angeles 1948 By L. M. Harnisch Set in Los Angeles in 1948, Mary McCoy's “Dead to Me” is narrated by 16-year-old Alice Gates and the book is intended for young adults, meaning that – as far as Amazon is concerned – “Dead” is for ages 12 through 18. But that’s somewhat misleading. Despite Alice’s age, “Dead” is in many ways an adult story. Alice certainly faces adult problems and she shows a surprising precocity in reasoning far beyond her years – except for her knack of getting into trouble with various unsavory Hollywood types, of which there are many.The book starts simply enough with Alice’s older sister Annie, 19, who ran away four years earlier, in the hospital after being found unconscious and badly beaten in MacArthur Park.We are introduced to the monumentally dysfunctional Gates family in which the parents are quarreling alcoholics and the father is the sort of studio fixer one reads about in tawdry books on Hollywood. Then there’s the seedy private detective, the has-been starlet who served time for drugs and the egotistical movie idol with a taste for underage girls who has part of the police force on his payroll. And in keeping with the mystery genre, there are secret codes, hidden compartments and plenty of plot reversals to keep readers guessing all the way to the last page.In writing a period piece, McCoy shows that her knowledge of Los Angeles history is far better than that of most authors and anachronisms are hard to find. Was DU nkirk a real Los Angeles telephone exchange? (Yes). Did the LAPD use batons rather than saps in 1948? (Yes). And McCoy gets bonus points for using one of the big scandals of the era, the dirty picture racket called Smut Inc., although not by name.But “Dead” is more than a detective story. McCoy’s female characters are finely crafted, especially Alice, a likeable 16-year-old with a fresh, genuine, natural voice. One of the best aspects of “Dead” is the way McCoy explores the complex chemistry between Alice and Annie, the older sister who has always overshadowed her.(From Page 15) I missed spending all my time with [Annie] but I also liked not being half of a set – the boring, tagalong half. The more Annie fought with our parents, the more I tried to be the perfect daughter, clearing the table while they screamed at each other across it. After she stormed out, I’d sit in the living room and do my homework. I made good grades, friends they more or less approved of – I did whatever they asked me to do. The better I was, the less attention they paid to me.Here’s a sample of one of the more insightful passages in the book (Page 64): Cassie (Alice’s friend) knew how much my mother had started drinking after Annie left home, but she didn’t know what it was like to live with her. It wasn’t like at the movies, where the drunks are always yelling and throwing vases at other people’s heads. Living with my mother was more like living with a very well-behaved ghost who occasionally woke you up in the middle of the night rattling the doorknobs or crying softly.In one of the more memorable sections, Alice describes the family outing to Musso & Frank for her 12th birthday. What’s supposed to be a happy occasion degenerates into an ugly, drunken scene between Alice’s parents and the restaurant staff. Stripped of its historical setting, it’s as fresh as if it had just occurred.This is not the Bayport of the Hardy Boys or the River Heights of Nancy Drew. Los Angeles in 1948 as portrayed in “Dead” can be a cold, cruel place where stories do not always have a Hollywood ending – or at best a Hollywood ending through the prism of “Chinatown.”Cudos to McCoy for an extremely promising debut novel and the hope of more to come.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Dead On and Delightful By Glen C. Creason As a lover of crime/mystery fiction and native Angeleno "Dead to Me" seemed to be a book right up my scuffed up alley but it had to pass some tests. First, is the novel set in an LA I know fairly well accurate even though the author was a mere pollywog in the time frame described. Actually, the recreation of the mileau of old LA is spot on and would pass muster with the most dedicated local history buff. Second, are the characters believable. Yes, the cast is plentiful and exceedingly well developed, especially the leading young lady who is endearing without ever being sappy or cliched. Third, is the plot engaging enough to keep the pages turning. On this count I was surprised at what turned out to be an absolute exhilarating ride through streets I have seen on paper but have never quite experienced like the colorful place McCoy brings to heart-pumping life as the mystery unfolds. This is a very fine first novel but what really separates Ms. McCoy from other noir writers is her brilliant command of dialogue and descriptions of spaces that burn into the readers memory. You move from wanting to see how the tale turns out and rooting for the tough and talented protagonist toward hoping there is more from this author and her complex characters.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A Gripping YA Mystery/Thriller Set in Hollywood During the Late 1940s! By Stephanie Ward 4.5 Stars'Dead to Me' is a gripping young adult historical mystery/thriller based in Hollywood during the late 1940s. The story revolves around our main character, Alice, as she digs into her sister's life for the past four years - since she left home without a trace. Now, Annie is in a coma and fighting for her life after being nearly beat to death one night. The hospital called Alice after finding her picture and phone number in Annie's shoe, and Alice can't believe that she's found her sister after all these years - and is more determined than ever to find out the truth of why Annie left home and never reached out to her. Alice also knows that her parents are lying to her about something big - and she has a hunch that it has to do with Annie and why she left. She's not about to lose her big sister again, so Alice feels it's up to her to find out what Annie's being doing since she left and who could want her dead? She'll have to go through the shady underbelly of Hollywood - with all of the dirty and nasty secrets that are hidden there - in order to save her sister and to answer the questions that have burdened her for years. What she finds will shock her to the core and she'll have to rethink everything she thought she knew about Hollywood, the so-called glamorous life of actors, and even her own life.I love a good mystery or thriller and never pass up a chance to read one that sounds promising. I'm usually complaining that the YA genre doesn't have enough good thrillers out there, which I'm happy to say is starting to change, and this novel can definitely be added to that list. The plot of the book really isn't anything terribly original - a teen girl runs away from home after a big fight with her parents and isn't heard from again - until she turns up in a hospital, leaving nothing but more questions. The fact that the story is set in Hollywood during the late 1940s makes it much more fascinating. A lot goes on during the story, especially as Alice digs through her sister's past to figure out what happened to her. There are tons of smaller stories that are brought up during this time in the book - and all of them somehow tie in together to create the backbone of the central plot. These smaller story lines are detailed and intricate, which I feel only adds depth to the book as a whole. It's like a puzzle - all of these smaller stories and characters that Alice discovers are the pieces, and when put together in the right way, they show the entire picture of what happened to Annie and why.I always try to figure out the mystery in the book before the main character does, but I wasn't really able to pin it down with this one. I kept building up theories in my mind, only to have a big twist in the story knock me back to where I started. When I can't figure out a mystery of any sort before the character, I consider it a strong indication of the writer's talent and ability. I loved the author's writing style throughout the book - all of the various elements were each done precisely and in great detail. After putting all of the different parts of the story together, the big picture behind it all is revealed in striking detail. When I found out that this is the author's debut novel, I could hardly believe it. The book is written with the skill and grace of a seasoned author and showcases the incredible talent the writer possesses. Part of the reason I loved the writing so much was the author's use of first person point of view - that of Alice. By using this technique, the reader gets a much deeper and intimate understanding of what happens during the book, sometimes actually feeling as if we've been transported to that specific place and time. With this novel, I felt as if I had stepped back in time and was experiencing the glamorous Hollywood of the 1940s, as well as the dirty underside that is kept hidden from the world. We experience everything as Alice does and are privy to her personal thoughts, fears, dreams, hopes, and emotions - among several other things. This style also allows the reader to connect with the character in a whole new level than would be possible using a different technique. The reader is almost immediately connected to Alice and can easily identify with her from the start of the book. I love being inside the main character's mind during a story - experiencing everything from their standpoint. Emotions, inner thoughts and dialogues, and other sensory information is vividly detailed and described from the character's viewpoint - which makes the reader feel as if they are inside the story itself and experiencing everything that happens alongside the character. This is a huge benefit of using first person point of view, in my opinion, and I believe it makes a book and it's characters all the more realistic.Each part of the story - from the setting and scenery to the secondary characters and the events that unfold - is described in fantastic detail with lots of description and vivid imagery. It feels so realistic that the reader will get lost inside the pages, forgetting about the outside world, until they have finished the book - which is another sign for me that an author has true talent. Overall, I found this novel to be an exceptionally well written story with an imaginative plot and a mystery full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the very end. I very highly recommend this book to fans of mysteries, suspense, and thrillers - along with those looking for magnificent writing and a twisting narrative that will have you reading as fast as you can to find out the truth and who's behind it all. I'll most definitely be following this author and eagerly awaiting her next release!Disclosure: I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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