Hush, My Inner Sleuth

In the fall of 1947, the pulp-inflected ghost of Skip Ryker—a recently atomized Hollywood detective—hijacks the head of a literarily precocious young woman named Willie Tigue. The results are anything but predictable.

The serpentine saga opens at a New England women’s college, where the ever-playful Betty escapes a meddlesome narrator by slipping her friend Willie a mickey and assuming her identity. Undaunted, the plucky storyteller adopts Willie as her new protagonist and travels with her to L.A.

Meanwhile, the ethereal Ryker—whose corporeal being is reduced to lawn fertilizer when his pool house is provisioned with plastic explosive—tries in vain to solve his untimely demise. What he needs, it quickly becomes apparent, is a willing instrument.

The ensuing collision of these disparate narratives sparks a battle royal for control of Willie’s suggestible psyche—and subsequently, movie rights to the book.