In the fall of 1947, an impressionable young scholar finds herself seduced by the spirit of a Hollywood pulp detective….

This serpentine saga opens at a New England women’s college, where the ever-playful Betty escapes a meddlesome narrator by slipping her friend a mickey and assuming her identity. Undaunted, the plucky storyteller adopts said friend—the literarily precocious Willie—and accompanies her to L.A.

Meanwhile, the pulp-inflected ghost of Skip Ryker—a recently atomized Hollywood detective—tries in vain to solve his untimely demise. What he needs, it quickly becomes apparent, is a willing instrument.

The ensuing collision of these disparate narratives sparks a battle royal for control of Willie’s suggestible psyche—and subsequently, movie rights to the book.

Kirkus Reviews:  “…Chandler-esqe prose ...at times so florid, one suspects the second coming of S.J. Perelman’s parodic homage, ‘Somewhere a Roscoe…,’ complete with a luger’s ka-chows. But Meegs means business. Once Ryker’s disembodied spirit enters, the pages turn at a machine gun’s pace.”  

Keywords:

humorous comedic black comedy humor parody satire, farcical, 20th century, 1940s, postmodern, metafiction, Willie Biddle Byblos Foretold novaplex saga noir, Skip Ryker, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Smith College, LA, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, bebop, unreliable narrator, intrusive narrator, female protagonist, private investigator eye, hardboiled detective, pulp detective pulp metafiction, pulp mystery