A.L Gaylin: What remains of me, Arrow (Penguin Random House), paperback, 9781784756192, September 22, 2016 (hardback 9780062369857, William Morrow, available)

The author A.L. Gaylin worked as a journalist for a celebrity tabloid and was nominated for the Edgar for her first novel, “Hide your Eyes”.  One  can attribute her talent of spinning a twisted story set amongst Hollywood celebrity teenagers and the quality of her writing to both of these facts with her latest book ”What remains of me”. It is also a perfect summer read, too bad the paperback will only be published in September; the hardback is out already, also available as a download for EBook readers.

When seventeen year old Kelly Michelle Lund shoots and kills Oscar nominated director John McFadden at a party in his home, she becomes an immediate media star.  She refuses to reveal her motive why she shot this famous celebrity and with an incompetent defense by her lawyer at her trial she ends up spending the next 25 years in prison.

What makes this book so thrilling is that the writing is done with two story lines running parallel in alternating chapters. One set in 1980, leading up to the very day when Kelly shoots McFadden and the other 30 years later, in 2010, when she is a free person again, living quietly with her husband Shane Marshall in their house in Joshua tree desert outside of Hollywood. Shane is no other than the younger brother of her former best friend Bellamy Marshall, both Hollywood royalty and part of the gang she hung out with before the tragic event. Their father and now Kelly’s father-in-law is movie legend Sterling Marshall who one day is found dead in his home, shot very much in the same fashion as John McFadden. It doesn’t take very long before the police are suspecting Kelly of having committed this second murder particularly since Marshall and McFadden were best friends. This time however a few people from her past believe she is innocent, one a tabloid journalist, all trying to help her to prove her innocence?  Or is she guilty after all one asks oneself the more pages one turns?

It was absolutely fascinating to uncover secrets from Kelly’s youthful past with each alternating chapter: her troubled and controlling mother, a sweet and weak father, the death of her sister Catherine, the lives of some seriously disturbed Hollywood kids she hung out with and how these deeds from the past still reverberate into her present life.  The book holds many surprises, discovering some sad and heart wrenching truth until the very end.