Night Night, Sleep Tight

June 29, 2015
This well-crafted whodunit, set in 1986 Los Angeles, gets underway when Deirdre Unger drives from San Diego to the Beverly Hills home of her screenwriter father, Arthur, and discovers his body at the bottom of the swimming pool. Later, while sifting through pages of his proposed memoir, she remembers another major tragedy—an automobile accident 28 years before that cost her the use of her right leg. The accident occurred the same night that Deirdre’s best friend, Joelen Nichols, stabbed the abusive boyfriend of her actress mother. But what happened the night of the stabbing isn’t completely clear. Reader Lee possesses the kind of soft, breathy voice perfect for a glossy, semi-gossipy woman-in-jeopardy thriller, which this is in spades. Her interpretation of Deirdre—a heroine whose initial confusion and sadness is gradually hardened by determination to find her father’s killer—is on point. Though it is undercut somewhat by Lee’s breezy reading, and the novel’s cynical ending may turn off some listeners, others will be amused by this look at Hollywood.
A Morrow hardcover.

Starred review from February 16, 2015
Old Hollywood glamour, scandals, and lies infuse this captivating thriller set in 1985 from Mary Higgins Clark Award–finalist Ephron (There Was an Old Woman). Screenwriters Arthur Unger and his ex-wife, Gloria, used to work in the movies, but the film industry moved on without them. Gloria now lives in a Buddhist retreat, and financial strains force Arthur to sell his Beverly Hills home. When their grown daughter, Deirdre, arrives from San Diego to help prepare the house to go on the market, she finds her father floating dead in the swimming pool. Meanwhile, Deirdre’s childhood best friend, Joelen Nichol, resurfaces. Back in 1963, when Joelen was 15 years old, she confessed to fatally stabbing the abusive boyfriend of her actress mother. But what happened the night of the stabbing isn’t completely clear, nor are the circumstances of a car accident in which Deirdre was crippled years before. Ephron deftly links all the story lines en route to the surprise ending. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents

February 1, 2015

Deirdre Unger has just driven from San Diego to Beverly Hills and is in no mood to be locked out of her screenwriter father's house. After all, he asked her to come and help put it on the market. When she discovers his body floating in the pool, her world turns upside down. Her father's death seems like an accident, but when a detective shows up to question her brother and Deirdre, she really gets upset. As she struggles to understand what happened, childhood memories of an earlier Hollywood murder involving her best friend, Joelen, and her movie star mother's boyfriend (think Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, and Johnny Stompanato) are dug up and what seemed to be old history resumes new life. VERDICT Set in Hollywood in the 1960s and the 1980s, the latest from Ephron (There Was an Old Woman) is an entertainingly suspenseful read with its mix of movie stars, scandal, gossip, and mystery.--Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
A 1963 celebrity murder has a violent aftermath as its secrets bubble to the surface decades later."It has everything. Old Hollywood, glamour, sex, intrigue and violence." Two of Ephron's (There Was an Old Woman, 2013, etc.) characters are talking about a memoir a third has written, but they could just as well be describing the book in which they all appear, a mystery with those same ingredients. When Deirdre Unger finds her father, Hollywood screenwriter Arthur Unger, dead in his swimming pool, she initially has trouble believing there was foul play. Soon, however, she's the prime suspect, and family members and friends are behaving as if they have something to hide. Somehow, it all relates to the night 22 years earlier when both a murder and a car accident changed Deirdre's life. That night, Deirdre was sleeping over at her best friend Joelen Nichol's house. After a raucous adult party at which the Unger parents were guests, Joelen ended up stabbing to death her movie star mother's abusive boyfriend. Deirdre can't remember much about that night-there's a gap in her memory between that night and the day she woke up in the hospital, permanently crippled in a wreck that occurred when her father drove her home. Ephron-like her sisters Nora, Delia and Amy-grew up in Beverly Hills with screenwriter parents who had a troubled marriage. That autobiographical basis gives this novel emotional authenticity and scenic clarity. Furthermore, as Ephron explains in an afterword, the house where Lana Turner's daughter murdered her mother's boyfriend in 1958 was just blocks from the Ephron home, and the girl was just a few years older than she. A page-turner with juicy Hollywood insider details.

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January 1, 2015
In 1985, Hollywood screenwriter Arthur Unger is writing a memoir that he hopes will resuscitate his career. Before that can happen, however, he's killed in his swimming pool. His daughter, Dierdrecoming to help her father prepare his Beverly Hills home for salefinds his body, and the next day she discovers a fire in the garage, where he kept his office. As Dierdre becomes a suspect, with her alibis turning thin, events come to revolve around a decades-old crime that was never fully explained. In 1963, after a party at the home of Hollywood star Bunny Nicholthe mother of Dierdre's best friend, JoelenBunny's lover was stabbed to death, with Joelen admitting guilt but not charged; further, in a car accident on the way home from the party, Dierdre was crippled. As the daughter of screenwriters, Ephron (There Was an Old Woman, 2013) knows the old Hollywood scene and re-creates it vividly in her fourth novel, inspired in part by the 1958 stabbing of Lana Turner's lover. A fast-moving tale, with building suspense and the price of fame at its center.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)