In Morgan Richter's The Divide, a murder mystery mixes with an enthralling tangle of identity, trauma, and an exploration of art versus commerce. The novel begins on a hot November day in Los Angeles, Calif., when an officer from the sheriff's department shows up at the shabby office where Jenny St. John (illegally) lives and works as a struggling faux psychic--or, in her words, "an intuitive counselor."
Serge Grumet, a prominent film director, has been shot to death, and abstract painter Genevieve "Gena" Santos, his ex-wife, has disappeared. What makes the incident delightfully complicated is that 40-something Jenny not only bears a striking resemblance to Gena but, years ago, she was the lead in Serge's first movie, The Divide. Even more: Gena had claimed that she was the actress in The Divide and that her name was Jenny St. John before she changed it. Jenny's regrets infuse this identity interplay; she's haunted by failed artistic ambitions that would have led her to a life like Gena's, if she had sustained them.
When Gena's friend Elizabeth "Boots" Pontifex hires Jenny as a psychic adviser to help find the murderer and, hopefully, Gena, too, the novel takes flight. Richter artfully arranges a full spectrum of Hollywood types, including greedy managers, influencers, up-and-comers, and has-beens, further inquiring into the relationship between fame and capitalism. The added layer makes this novel more than a simple whodunit. Richter wraps the mystery in a cat-and-mouse game of memory versus truth, and readers won't be sure they've uncovered who is who until the very end. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator