March 1, 2024
Richter draws on her knowledge as a TV and film producer in her debut. Jenny St. John lands the lead role in an indie film with Serge Grumet, but the movie tanks. Decades later, when Serge is murdered and his ex-wife goes missing, Jenny is pulled into the case because she looks like the missing woman. Prepub Alert.
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June 3, 2024
An actor turned psychic stumbles into the center of an LAPD murder investigation in Richter’s winningly offbeat debut. Twenty-five years ago, Jenny St. John starred in The Divide, a never-released movie directed by first-timer Serge Grumet. Despite the film’s failure, Serge went on to become a major Hollywood player. In the meantime, Jenny’s star faded, and she rebranded as an “intuitive counselor” who uses her talent for reading people to provide life advice. When Serge turns up dead, the prime suspect is his ex-wife, painter Genevieve Santos, who flees Los Angeles. The problem? Genevieve and Jenny look exactly alike, and authorities come to believe they’re the same person. To clear her name, Jenny interviews friends, family, and associates of Serge and Genevieve, applying tricks she’s learned in the psychic trade to ferret out the truth, only to unwittingly make herself a target for Serge’s killer. Though the case of mistaken identity that jump-starts the plot feels far-fetched, Richter comes through with sparkling prose, a consistently surprising mystery, and an engrossing portrait of contemporary Los Angeles. Fans of Hollywood neo-noir will relish this fresh update on an old formula. Agent: Kerry Sparks, Levine Greenberg Rostan.
July 1, 2024
After moving to Los Angeles at 18, Jenny St. John starred in exactly one film, The Divide, a high-concept, low-budget sf thriller. The film's theatrical release fell through, and Jenny's career floundered. Two-and-a-half decades later, she's barely scraping by as a (fraudulent) psychic and is shocked when a detective shows up to question her about the murder of Serge Grumet, whose directing career took off after he helmed The Divide. Even more jarring is the fact that the detective believes Jenny is Serge's ex-wife, Gena Santos, who is a dead ringer for Jenny and has apparently been claiming that she played Jenny's role in The Divide. Not only is Gena is missing, she's also the prime suspect in Serge's murder. One of Gena's famous friends wants to prove Gena's innocence and enlists Jenny to use her psychic powers to find the real killer, leading Jenny to make some truly shocking discoveries about Gena and herself. Richter's absorbing debut is pure L.A. noir, though an sf-tinged twist might surprise some readers of this otherwise grounded mystery.
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August 1, 2024
A former actress turned fake psychic finds herself embroiled in a Hollywood murder. Jenny St. John knows she's not much of a psychic. But since her fortunes fell apart in Hollywood, she's not sure how to scrape together a living other than by using her distinctly un-supernatural powers of observation. Jenny's path to screen success was once bright: At 18, like so many aspiring actresses, she left her home in the Midwest and arrived in Los Angeles full of hope and promise. She landed a role in an indie film, working with up-and-coming director Serge Grumet. The movie failed, but Serge exceled, sailing up the auteur ranks as swiftly as Jenny's career disintegrated. Now, years later, Serge has been found murdered, and his ex-wife, Gena, an artist of note, has disappeared, too. When a cop shows up with questions and Jenny realizes the missing Gena looks exactly like her and has been taking credit for her movie role for years, she finds herself drawn into the mystery of who killed Serge. Richter isn't afraid to ask a lot of her audience: Not only must readers accept the doppelg�nger story--could two women look that much alike?--but they must also buy the idea that one of Gena's friends would pay an unsuccessful fake psychic to investigate a murder instead of hiring a private investigator or just waiting for the police to solve the crime. If you're able to gloss over such unlikely developments, you'll discover a strange originality in this book, which offers a bit of a twist on the standard Tinseltown crime story. This Hollywood thriller requires a suspension of disbelief but offers a few unique twists.
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