Night Film by Marisha Pessl

On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova—a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years.

For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.

Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova’s eerie, hypnotic world.

The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more. @goodreads 

MY REVIEW:

4 STARS 

I am adding a good bit of pictures from the book to my review. There are too many to show them all but I wanted you to get an idea. They are not the greatest of pictures but I hope you enjoy them because it took quite a bit of time to get this set up. ****SOME MILD SPOILERS****

The book centers around Ashley Cordova's death. She was the the daughter of the macabre film maker, Stanislas Cordova. She's said to have jumped down an elevator shaft in an abandoned building. But did she? This whole book is a question within a question in my opinion.



Scott McGrath is a journalist who got in trouble years ago when he tried going after Cordova for other things. Now, he's on the case again to find out what happened to Ashley. He ends up getting some sidekicks, Nora and Hopper. They both have some connections to Ash but some more than others. I loved them all together but Nora is my favorite character in the book.

There is a creepy website where fans can go and write things about Cordova's films etc. Nora managed to get Scott hacked in a sense into the website but if you are found out as a fake they boot you right out. There were a few disturbing things on the site but it adds to the mystery of the freaks and what not.





The picture below is speculated to be Cordova's son Theo who came running out of the woods needing to get to the hospital because he managed to cut his fingers off. Cordova put him in the film and later took him to the hospital where they could not re-attach the fingers. I mean ewwww.



Creepiness continues . . .



Ooops, you were found out!



This next picture is of Inez Gallo, she ran everything for Cordova. He never appears in public and there are a few questionable pictures of him. He wanted to remain out of the public eye in more ways than one.



Everything about Cordova himself is a mystery. Scott, Nora and Hopper had a very hard time finding things out about him in particular.



Cordova had a home he lived in with his family and where he made his films. There was a 20 foot military fence around the whole property, for reasons.



Scott and Nora act like a father and daughter that go to the mental facility where Ashley was reported breaking out of right before her death. It went okay until they found them out. But Nora found a very creepy picture of Ashley and stole it.

She rummaged through her purse and handed me a colored photograph. I assumed she was showing me a member of her family, but then realized with surprise it was a photo of Ashley.

Her gray eyes, hollowed by dark circles, seemed to fasten onto me.

"When I disappeared from the tour of Briarwood and got in trouble? That's what I went back to get. I saw it on those bulletin boards by the dining hall under 'Weekly Picnic.' It's her, isn't it?"

Le cara de la muerte, the Waldorf maid had said. 'The face of death.

I understood what she meant.





This is a supposed picture of Cordova with his mom when he was a baby.


The rest are just some random pictures.









The ending I never saw coming. Not one bit. It's bizarre and sad and understandable. And I will miss Scott, Nora and Hopper.


"Where the mermaids sing." I added quietly, reminded of the Prufrock poem. As Hopper had explained it, the mermaids were the one thing the family was always seeking out, always fighting for--life's most stunning and precarious razor edge. Where there was danger and beauty and light. Only the now. Ashley said it was the only way to live.

GOODREADS REVIEW:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1847631598