The Empty Glass

Starred review from May 7, 2012
James Ellroy fans will relish Baker’s impressive first novel, a dark paranoid thriller. On August 5, 1962, Ben Fitzgerald, an L.A. deputy coroner specializing in suicides, answers a summons to go to the modest Brentwood home of Marilyn Monroe. His colleagues and her friends are keen to classify the movie star’s death as a suicide, but Fitzgerald has his doubts, which only intensify after he stumbles across Monroe’s diary, loaded with cryptic references to “the General” and Cuba. The possible suspects in a potential murder case won’t surprise those versed in the rampant speculation surrounding Monroe’s death, but barbed prose makes a familiar story fresh, as does the effective use of flashbacks and flash-forwards, starting with Fitzgerald’s account of his shooting of a police captain who tried to get him to swallow a fatal dose of pills. Fluent in the noir idiom, Baker, Condé Nast Traveler’s executive editor, maintains the depressing atmospherics throughout. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management.

February 1, 2012

Baker, executive editor of Conde Nast Traveler, offers a first novel about a woman who's starred in a lot of fiction lately: Marilyn Monroe. Maybe it's the 50th anniversary of her death, coming in August 2012--or maybe she just seems so relevant as both symbol and victim of an outsize celebrity culture. Here, Los Angeles County deputy coroner Ben Fitzgerald arrives at the scene of Monroe's death and finds her diary, which reveals a doomed affair with "The General"; soon he scents a cover-up in the making.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2012
August marks the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death, and, in the vein of Max Allan Collins' Bye Bye, Baby (2011), Baker's debut novel re-creates the circumstances surrounding her mysterious demise, using a mixture of fact and fiction. L.A. County Deputy Coroner Ben Fitzgerald is called to Monroe's modest house in Brentwood during the early morning hours of August 5, 1962. He immediately notices several things amiss at the scene. Gossip columnist Jo Carnahan, claiming to work for the coroner's office, is attempting to steal Monroe's diary, and the position of the star's dead body means she couldn't have died of an overdose. It soon becomes apparent that a number of powerful people are invested in covering up the actual cause of Monroe's death, among them, the Kennedy brothers, the Mafia, and the LAPD. As Ben comes under the sway of the sultry Jo, who is obsessed with deciphering and publishing the secrets contained in Monroe's diary, the two find themselves in increasing danger. Baker conjures a suitably paranoid atmosphere and crackling dialogue in this look at the seedy intersection of celebrity, politics, and power.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)