Trashed

If you've ever gazed at the tabloids in the supermarket check-out line and secretly wanted to buy one to see what was behind the headline, this book is for you! It's also for you if you've ever bought a tabloid...and supposedly a lot of us do. Allison's Gaylin novel takes place in the LA world of music, movies, and sex secrets of the stars. People are dying, and it's up to LA newcomer Simone Glass to get to the bottom of the deaths before she becomes the next victim. Engagingly told, but with a cast of characters a bit too large, this book was fun to read.

The truth is I bought this book for my wife for Christmas along with Alison Gaylin's two previous books. The reason was her work was highly endorsed by my wife's favorite author, Harlan Coben. My wife flew through the first two and read this book in a sitting. So I am really recommending the book based on her enjoyment. Every other book she has recommended to me has been superb. It is funny, fast moving and, obviously, holds the reader's attention. As an aside, if you know the publishing industry, the fact that the third of her books is issued first in hardcover means she's meeting with increasing interest and success. My wife says five stars and recommends it highly.

Alison Gaylin makes her hardcover debut with "Trashed," the story of Simone Glass, an ambitious young journalist trying to make it big in L.A. Unfortunately, the only job she can get is working at Asteroid, a bottom-feeding tabloid that makes the Enquirer look like the Economist. Glass' first assignment is to root through the garbage of the hot TV celeb of the moment, a foul task that turns up an intriguing find: a shoe belonging to a recently murdered actress. After the TV star is murdered in turn, a possession of hers is found in the trash of the killer's next victim. The murder mystery of "Trashed" is creepy and suspenseful, but the real pleasure of the book is the witty look at the inner workings of a gossip rag and the tart spoof of Hollywood celebrity and buffoonery. "Trashed" could have been trashy, but instead Gaylin makes it a fun and juicy read.

Beautifully written, tautly plotted. Gaylin's debut hardcover is suspenseful and fun and her heroine Simone is so realistically depicted you'd swear you know her. This book kept me reading well into the night. Highly recommended for those who love mystery with a good measure of quirky humor thrown into the mix.

In Trashed, her third novel, upstate New York-based Alison Gaylin (Hide Your Eyes and You Kill Me) has written a tense murder mystery in which a psychopath terrorizes Tinseltown. When Simone Glass, 26, a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School, moves from the Big Apple to L.A., she becomes desperate when she cannot find employment. She finally lands a job at the Asteroid, a supermarket tabloid described by the National Enquirer as "the lowest form of sleaze." The Asteroid's editor demands "heartwarming, eye-popping, gut-wrenching" copy. In other words, dig up the dirt, expose sordid secrets, and publish anything short of legal liability. Working for this scandal sheet, Simone becomes a "domestic refuse expert," snooping around the dumpsters and garbage bins of Hollywood's stars and starlets, sorting through their trash and finding juicy items to titillate a gossip-loving public. Simone finds more than she had bargained for: the sick handiwork of a serial killer that will place her own life in jeopardy. Halfway through the book, we read: "The first victim's shoe in the second victim's garbage. The second victim's bracelet in the third victim's garbage. . . . Three dead young women, their throats all slashed. Connected by what someone had forced them to throw away. Their favorite belongings, their secrets, their lives. Trashed." At Columbia, Simone had received high honors in journalistic ethics, but now she finds herself ensnared in a web of lies and deceit, wondering if she can trust anyone. "Maybe lying was part of the atmosphere here," she muses, "in this city where everyone wanted to act or write or direct--to make up stories and play them out. Maybe fiction was in the air like smog, and there was no avoiding it." Highly entertaining and satisfying, Trashed has a complex plot (in the best sense of the word), dozens of colorful characters, and smart, snappy dialogue. The author impresses us with her deft use of metaphors, similes, analogies, and witticisms, and she skillfully keeps the story moving. Gaylin scatters numerous red herrings along the plot's pathway, and only a Sherlock Holmes could deduce the psychopath's identity until the very end.