Crime Fiction: Megan Abbott

Crime Fiction: Die a Little by Megan Abbott

I’m a longtime Megan Abbott fan, and I can’t believe how long it has taken me to get to her first novel, Die a Little. Why, oh why did I wait so long? I was depriving myself of something golden.

I wish I lived inside Abbott’s brain because to live there would be to live in a time machine. Die a Little pulled me deep into Los Angeles in the early fifties. Every sentence of the book oozes with the era. It pulled me into two distinct worlds, one of which history attempts to erase.

The idea of Eisenhower’s America is so attractive that for decades people have tried to return to those so-called golden days. I certainly can’t say I’m immune to the appeal—the lists of midcentury kitchenware and recipes in this book are practically porn for me.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and towheaded tykes and Ricky and Lucy sleeping in separate beds. Human trafficking existed in this era, just as it has in every era, and Abbott gives us a chilling glimpse into the seedy underbelly of Hollywood.

In the era of Me Too, it isn’t hard to imagine men treating women poorly in the old studio days, but the way sex trafficking and Hollywood walk hand and hand in this book is utterly chilling.

Die a Little follows the story of an orphaned schoolteacher, Lora, who lives with her cop brother Bill in southern California. When Bill marries Alice, a seamstress from a Hollywood studio, the world becomes bigger for Lora. Her relationship with her sister-in-law brings her places she thought she’d never go and leads her to do things she’d never ordinarily do. Lora is a “good,” upstanding girl in this mid-century world filled with the oppression of the patriarchy and the pressure of intense gender roles. Her new sister slowly and subtly opens her eyes to the world beyond her view.

Alice is an extraordinarily interesting character. She is obviously infatuated with the trimmings of mid-fifties suburban society, but can’t let go of her ties to her sordid past. She has every opportunity to make a leap in society, to crawl out from beneath the arms of powerful Hollywood men who view her as an expendable plaything. But she can’t let it go. It’s part of her.

But is it part of Lora, the narrator? That question, and the difficulty of answering it, is central to the novel. Lora is a character with a genuinely caring nature. She’s drawn to help Lois because she can’t not give into her concern. Her urge to help takes over. Then her sense of responsibility runs out of control.

I identify with Lora, perhaps because I’m a teacher myself, perhaps because my family tried to keep me so innocent for so many years. But I see the appeal of the naughty life, and so does she.

It’s fascinating to see the way law enforcement in the book react to the homicide of a lower-class character. We see the same problem we’ve always seen: “They fell in with a bad crowd—got what was coming to them.” They did this even in the perfect California world of the 1950s, where the air smelled of oranges and picket fences lined the streets of Pasadena. There was a lack of compassion then just as there is now. No human being deserves to end up faceless in a ravine without anyone able to identify them.

Abbott is a master of noir. She knows how to craft a sentence better than any writer I know. I can't recommend this one enough. Go read Die a Little!

5/5 Stars!

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