Night Film

24 year old Ashely Cordova, the enigmatic and talented daughter of reclusive horror filmmaker Stanislas Cordova, is found dead by apparent suicide.

Enter disgraced journalist Scott McGrath. Several years back he calls out the director as a predator and then on national television says “Someone needs to terminate this guy with extreme prejudice.” Apparently not a good move as far as your career goes, especially when it's based on some innuendo from the supposed chauffeur to the director. (Really? This guy was a respected and hard hitting journalist?)

Being a disgraced journalist must pay well. Seemingly unemployed, McGrath lives in a tony New York brownstone and when his white whale reappears in his life he's got the cash to pay interns, bribe informants and jet off to where he pleases. Naturally he's got a beautiful ex-wife and finds two 20-something proteges, including a beautiful coat-check girl, willing to follow him on his investigative journey from sex clubs, mental hospitals, backwoods shacks, tattoo parlours and witchcraft shops. We're in Dan Brown territory here and at times it's just trying too hard. We're told that to see a Cordova film is to “leave your old self behind, walk through hell, and be reborn.”

Marisha Pessl does a fine job of wrapping up the story and turning it into something else. A different examination altogether. But this bit of metafiction would have been better served up as a novella instead of this full blown tome.