Night Film, Marisha Pessl's first novel since her 2006 debut, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, is a mystery built around two absences that chip away at the psyche of the novel's narrator, disgraced investigative journalist Scott McGrath. His immediate concern is the apparent suicide of former musical prodigy Ashley Cordova; beneath that lies the even greater enigma of Ashley's father, reclusive film director Stanislas Cordova, whose later films are said to be so disturbing that they're no longer distributed by Hollywood, but have literally gone underground in screenings organized by his cult-like fan base.
Solving Ashley's death is a personal mission for McGrath: his career went on the skids five years ago when he recklessly accused Cordova of committing crimes against children and was sued for slander. So he's determined to prove that he was on to something back then--but is it the story he thought it was? Meanwhile, he picks up two unwanted research assistants: Hopper, a young drug dealer lurking around the construction site where Ashley's body was found, and Nora, a coat-check girl who may have been the last person to see Ashley alive. The two 20-somethings provide a running commentary on each new development (and, frequently, on McGrath's fitness of character).
Pessl builds the dark tone of Night Film to a fever pitch. Ultimately, she has to define the rabbit hole down which McGrath has fallen, and once she's made her choice she sees it through, while readers become deeply invested in the theories they've constructed about the possible solutions, only to realize that Pessl is steering them down a different path. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com