American screenwriter and novelist Megan Abbott is a modern queen of feminist noir, who has proven herself a virtuoso at exploring the cracks and crevices in female lives. From gangster moll and protégé in her Edgar Award-winning Queenpin to exposing the darker side of American cheerleading in Dare Me (which she adapted into a hit Netflix drama) or ballet-loving sisters in The Turnout, Abbott has a deft touch for bringing inner messiness – ambitions, desires, jealousies, and frustrations – to the page.
She again delves into sisterhood and complex family relationships in her latest excellent thriller, El Dorado Drive. Abbott, a Detroit native, ‘returns home’ in a way, with a tale of three middle-aged sisters, Pam, Debra, and Harper – all in dire financial straits for various reasons – who join ‘The Wheel’. This is an exclusive women’s club promising wealth and empowerment, that proves irresistible for the once upper middle-class sisters who are looking for a return to the wealthy lives they feel they deserve – or at least a lifeboat from their current troubles. It’s a women’s club designed to uplift women, but turns fatal.
Set against the global financial crisis and downfall of Detroit’s auto industry, El Dorado Drive is elevated ‘domestic noir’, skipping along on Abbott’s fine prose, incisive observations and compelling characterisation. A subversive, dark and clever thriller illustrating that old biblical chestnut: the love of money is the root of all evil. Very, very good.
Reviewed by Craig Sisterson.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in the Detroit area, Megan Abbot graduated from the University of Michigan and received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and the New School University.
Megan Abbott is the Edgar-winning author of the novels Beware the Woman, The Turnout, Give Me Your Hand, You Will Know Me, The Fever, Dare Me, The End of Everything, Bury Me Deep, Queenpin, The Song Is You and Die a Little. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. She has been nominated for many awards, including three Edgar Awards, Hammett Prize, the Shirley Jackson Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Folio Prize.
0 Comments