Abbott, Megan E. 1971–

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Abbott, Megan E. 1971–

PERSONAL: Born 1971. Education: University of Michigan, B.A.; New York University, Ph.D., 2000.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Office—Department of English, State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, NY 13126-3599.

CAREER: Taught literature and film at New York University; State University of New York at Oswego, assistant professor of English.

WRITINGS:

The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Charles Meade) Assessing Federal Research and Development for Hazard Loss Reduction, RAND (Santa Monica, CA), 2003.

(With Mark V. Arena and John F. Schank) Shipbuilding & Force Structure Analysis Tool: A User's Guide, RAND Corporation (Santa Monica, CA), 2004.

Die a Little (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: A professor of film and literature, Megan E. Abbott is the author of The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, a feminist study of the motifs in many novels and movies featuring the classic tough private eye. She has also produced technical studies on dealing with natural disasters and on naval force structure for the federal government. In 2005, she entered the realm of fiction with her first novel, Die a Little.

Set in the 1950s, Die a Little takes place in a suburb of Los Angeles, where Lora King, a prim schoolteacher, is determined to find out the truth about her brother Bill's new wife, Alice Steel. At first, Lora finds life with Alice exciting, and she begins to visit the kind of bars and nightclubs she has avoided in the past. But when she starts running into some odd characters from Alice's past, she grows suspicious of the glamorous beauty who has entered her quiet life. Lora begins her own private investigation of Alice's friends, and soon discovers a number of unsavory connections, including a trashy friend named Lois. When Lois is murdered, shortly after a friend of Bill's commits suicide, Lora is convinced that Alice is caught up in something criminal. While she is certainly justified in her suspicions, Lora is also revealed to have mixed motives of her own. As Harriet Klausner explained in MBR Bookwatch, "Lora is a fascinating character who loves her brother too much to let him throw his life away on a criminal and is a bit jealous of the hold Alice has on her sibling." Soon Lora is "pocketing address books filled with cryptic code and tailing shady characters like a grown-up Nancy Drew," in the words of Booklist contributor Frank Sennett.

Critics generally noted the moody atmosphere of the novel, reminiscent of the films and other works that Abbott had discussed in The Street Was Mine. For Hollywood Reporter contributor Chris Barsanti, "This is a powerfully sexy tale that just reeks of classic noir paranoia—everyone has a secret to hide." Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer found that Abbott "crafts a stylish, sensuous tale with picture-perfect period trappings." At the same time, this is not simply a reconstruction of older motifs. As a Kirkus Reviews contributor noted, "Not for Abbott are the self-conscious pastiches of Chandler imitators or the crazed spewings of a James Ellroy, but instead she gives us the true dark heart of the city in sharply contrasted blacks and whites, dense with heartache."