The Hot One

June 1, 2017
A New York media worker tries to comprehend a glamorous friend's murder.In her debut book, Murnick, an online editor at New York magazine, considers heady themes of sexuality, violence, and childhood loyalties. She writes in a breezy, flowing style that is observational yet inconsistent, at times parsing details with sharp terseness, elsewhere turning her consideration toward inward ruminations. She and Ashley, her best friend from suburban New Jersey, were already drifting apart when, in 2001, 21-year-old Murnick was shocked by news of Ashley's murder in Los Angeles, particularly since Ashley had revealed to the author her dabblings in the sex-and-drugs underground of LA celebrity culture. "Eight months later she was dead," writes Murnick, "and I was reading about it in the paper, trying to convince myself that it didn't matter to me as much as it did. I knew that I had just about let her go in the months leading up to things, and it was impossible to know if we would have found our way back together." The case was cold for years until the startling arrest of Michael Gargiulo, a neighbor and suspected serial killer. Linked by DNA evidence to at least two similar slayings, he'd ingratiated himself into Ashley's social circle by offering conveniently timed home repairs (Murnick's depiction of this provides an excellent guide to spotting sociopaths). The author attended the long pretrial hearings for the accused, meeting Ashley's still-mourning LA friends and reconstructing a fuller portrait of Ashley's "secret" life, which under scrutiny appeared both decadent and naive: "Ashley didn't deserve any of this. She had suddenly been made into a public figure for the worst possible reason." There are powerful vignettes throughout, as the author describes her encounters with figures ranging from the meditative defense attorney to jaded reality TV journalists, but since Gargiulo's trial has been delayed indefinitely, the narrative feels unresolved, with an increasing emphasis on inward observation. An original and engaging, if uneven, fusion of memoir and true-crime.

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June 1, 2017

Murnick (online editor, New York magazine) and Ashley Ellerin were best friends in grade school, but their lives diverged when Murnick went to college and Ellerin moved to L.A., dating movie stars (including Ashton Kutcher) and partying the night away. Ellerin's brutal murder in 2001 filled Murnick with shock and guilt, and when, eight years later, a break in the cold case came, she used her journalism skills and contacts to try to get a handle on what had happened and how their lives could have turned out differently. Navigating the long, tedious, and unsatisfying process of the trial, Murnick also meditates on female friendship, its closeness and competitiveness, and how and why girls get pegged as "the smart one" and "the hot one," and how it can warp their lives. As the author struggles to understand Ellerin, she grieves the child she was and the woman she would never become. Seeking "closure" from the trial of the accused killer, she discovers "a verdict is certainly not the same as the truth." VERDICT This fusion of memoir and procedural should be welcomed by readers of autobiography as well as true crime.--Deirdre Bray Root, MidPointe Lib. Syst., OH

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