Cross Agatha Christie (Hollywood equivalent of an English country house with dead body) with Joan Didion (the protagonist does a lot of driving in the Hollywood Hills and feels numb much of the time) and Bruce Wagner (many dissolute Hollywood characters) and you get this well-written, compelling murder mystery that goes deeper than most.

A exclusive birthday party of successful Hollywood director’s Hollywood Hills mansion ends with director’s choking on his own vomit: in medical terms: he died because of asphyxiation! But could that narcissistic man who highly believes his perfectionist ways and his genius mind who fascinates to play dark games with people dare to take his own life so dramatically?

As the officers dig out more about 7 guests of the special night, evaluating the evidences, listening more about their back stories, they figure out there are so many secrets they kept! All of them have motives to get rid of poor Richard Bryant ( trust me ! He isn’t truly deserved your pity on him as you learn more about his interactions with his so called best friends!) and is it the murder instead of suicide attempt?

The birthday party gives eerie vibes from the beginning. All the guests are invited at different time schedules, ironic food combinations specialized for them consisted of one asparagus, Thanksgiving Turkey, tiramisu, donut, sushi etc. which are symbolizing some memories they’d experienced with Richard.

From the beginning, we feel like Richard has a great scheme to bring those people together including his ex wife Elspeth who is not happy to be here and she’s tricked to come this party because she thinks their daughter Lilly will also be there.

And Elspeth is the one who found her husband dead. As we learn more about her dysfunctional past about the couple, we suspect Elspeth also has quiet concrete reasons to take his life as like the others who have abused by the decease in different ways!

So was it a real murder? If it was, who took life of Richard?

The book is advertised as mash up of Mulholland Drive and Agatha Christie books with its claustrophobic, locked room murder mystery premise. In my opinion only common thing with Mulholland Drive is the story takes place in LA. But it doesn’t give us surreal, complex, mind bending vibes like the alternative universes created by David Lynch’s restless mind. But it is surely having resemblances with Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. There’s a big bad wolf and the other guests truly hate the guts of him!

I like the conjecture moving back and forth help us more insider information about the characters’ pasts and empathize with the motivations behind their actions. It was slow burn, high tension read deserves your patience which made me round up 3.5 stars to 4 mysterious, dark side of Hollywood, karmic stars.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine Books for making my wish come true by sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

This is noir at its best. I very seldom read current books that do it this well. Absolutely transfixing to read. I highly recommend it.

Elspeth Bell is attending the 50th birthday of her ex-husband, Richard out of a sense of duty. He helped launch her acting career after all. But instead of a blow out bash, there are only 7 guests, and Richard’s pet octopus. Still, the party gets pretty wild, and in the morning the birthday boy is dead. All of the guests are suspects and Elspeth begins to probe into the background of her fellow party goers, wondering who could be capable of murder…and what Richard had done to enrage someone enough to kill him.