Book review - Queenpin

Megan Abbott’s third novel, Queenpin (2007) surpasses her excellent previous books, The Song Is You (2005) and Die A Little (2007). She has since published another six crime novels.

The Queenpin of the title is a mob moll called Gloria Denton, who’s ice-cold, calculating and exceedingly good at her business, having been at the top of her game for a couple of decades, reliably transporting stolen diamonds, race-track winnings, fixing the odds, all for the bosses. 

Maybe because age or the business is catching up with her, Gloria takes the narrator, an unnamed young woman under her wing, rescuing her from hum-drum book-keeping in a lowly nightclub and trains her as a go-between.

As we’ve come to expect by now, Abbott gets under the skin of the narrator with ease. This is all so believable, almost like a confessional, with plenty of wisecracks and slick one-liners and period description.

Slowly, Gloria’s tuition pays off and our narrator looks, sounds and acts like a younger version of the Queenpin. But then things start to slide into noir territory as the protégé falls heavily for a loser, a guy who is never going to win the big score, no matter how often he tells himself he will. From there, the tension mounts.

Then there’s a shocking murder, a disinterment, and more than one betrayal along the way, told with grim precision and word-economy.

Riveting, page-turning stuff.

Book review - The Song is You

Megan Abbott’s second noir novel, The Song is You (2007), though set in 1950s Hollywood, is topical in light of the #MeToo furore. 

Based on the real-life disappearance of actress Jean Spangler, this novel peels off some of the gloss from Tinseltown. Spin doctor Gil ‘Hop’ Hopkins, former reporter, is tasked with running interference for the movie stars, ensuring that no mud sticks, that scandal stays buried. He’s pretty good at what he does, turning a blind eye to debauchery and traumatised starlets.

There are a number of appropriate name-drops from that period.

On the night when Jean went missing, Hop had been among the crowd she was with, and now he has to retrace the steps of a male double act in order to muddy the water and inter memories. Drugs, sex, and violence – it’s all here, though not too graphic. The few clues from the real case are inserted in the story, with convincing explanations. The real mobster Dave Ogul of the time also features.

While covering tracks, Hop becomes entangled with girl reporter Frannie Adair who’s also on the case. ‘She had been easy for Hop to spot, the sole pair of heels and the only ass worth a glance in the sweeping room full of sweat-stained unshaven ginks. … all ginger curls and round cheeks, like three months off the farm, until she spoke. Twitching her freckled nose, she shot back at him, “What’s it like going over to enemy lines, turning stooge for the plastic factory?”

She didn’t take prisoners, it seems: “I hear you’ve done more white-washing than Tom Sawyer.” (p47)

Besides wit and one-liners, Abbott delivers an atmospheric hard-boiled tale. Despite his less than savoury character, you’re drawn to Hop, a flawed man who wanted to be good, but that didn’t pay enough. We’re with him as he turns over stones and sees what crawls out from under; even when he stumbles upon a corpse, ‘Hop felt his body rise out of his skin, hover there a second, and then thud back down to earth.’

If noir fiction is your thing, then The Song is You is worth your while.

In the real world, the case of Jean Spangler remained unsolved; in the novel Hop gets to a solution.

Editorial comment

The sparse number of chapter headings seems odd.

Over-use of the word ‘something’. On pages 190-191 it appears 7 times; it crops up a lot elsewhere, too. Something to think about, anyway.