by Cynthia Chow

This week we have a review of the first in a brand new mystery series by Marjorie McCown, along with an interesting interview with Marjorie. Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase the book from Amazon.

Final Cut: A Hollywood Mystery by Marjorie McCown
Review by Cynthia Chow

Despite months of preparation and planning, professional costumer Joey Jessup is anxious before her next job’s first day of a film’s principal photography. Joey is always nervous before the start of a new job, be it for live theater or a big budget film, but this superhero blockbuster has her on edge. While having the base camp near her home in Malibu was tantalizing, the director Marcus Pray has a reputation that lived up to his name.

They’ve barely begun shooting before Marcus demands an entourage of Victoria’s Secret models, not to mention bullying the lead actress into wearing a flimsy bikini. His disregard for safety measures results in the resignation of the stunt coordinator, multiple stunt people being sent to the hospital, and justifiable bad publicity. At the edge of that is Popvibe journalist Maggie Fuller, who is pressuring Joey for information about Marcus Pray’s horrific predatory behavior and treatment of employees. Having fought her way up through the often-brutal Hollywood system, Joey is leery of giving up any of her hard-earned success, especially with an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement looming over her and threatening dire repercussions.

When the second assistant director is killed on set, though, it’s Joey and not Marcus who becomes the rumored primary suspect. Courtney Lisle was dating the first assistant director Eli Logan, who just happened to be Joey’s ex-boyfriend. On the receiving end of mean girl sniping and menacing texts, Joey comes to rely on a few supportive friends and especially an eager production assistant. An amped up production schedule has Joey scrambling to find and complete $100,000 costumes, tasks she must somehow fit in between attempts to convince the police that she’s not a part of an attention-getting scheme.

Anyone who loves to read all of the behind-the-scenes details about their favorite movie and television shows will adore the first of this debut mystery series. Considering the recent Writers’ Strike and upcoming DGA and SAG union negotiations, not to mention the ongoing #MeToo struggles and fatal shooting on the Rust movie set, this novel couldn’t be more timely or relevant. It is at times difficult to observe the blatant abuse Joey and many of the actresses endure, as is the moral dilemma they face about whether to report it or make sacrifices for their careers. The author, who has decades of costume experience working on Oscar-winning and superhero blockbuster movies, shares her vast knowledge and creates the ultimate insiders’ look into the fascinating world of movie-making. Names are dropped and famous cameos pop up throughout, making this a must-read for those fascinated by the entertainment business.

Despite Joey’s frequent meetings with those who are known throughout the world and often chased down by paparazzi, she faces very relatable challenges over being a woman in a male-dominated profession. In a business where women are pitted against one another as they compete for jobs, should they be willing to bear the cost of breaking down barriers or should they continue the cycle in the belief that it makes one stronger and is worth it for success in the end? Readers will become extremely invested in the choices Joey makes and be rooting for her to succeed, while also sympathizing with her anxiety and confusion. Despite the weighty topics, this remains an extremely entertaining examination of the movie-making business and kicks off a very compelling and fun new mystery series.

Cynthia Chow is the branch manager of Kaneohe Public Library on the island of Oahu. She balances a librarian lifestyle of cardigans and hair buns with a passion for motorcycle riding and regrettable tattoos (sorry, Mom).

Interview with Marjorie McCown:

KRL: How long have you been writing?

Marjorie: I’ve been writing for my own enjoyment and self-expression since I was 8. I was so entranced by The Wind in the Willows (and so sad when the book ended) that I decided to write my own set of adventures for Badger and Mole. I never stopped writing, and I even had a mystery novel published by a small press in 2000 when I was still making my living as a costume designer for movies. I didn’t give my full attention to the craft of writing until I retired from film in 2017.

KRL: When did your first novel come out, what was it called, and would you tell us a little about it?

Marjorie: My first novel Death by Design was published in 2000 by a small Northern California press that’s no longer in business. The protagonist, Maggie McGrath, is a Los Angeles private investigator who’s hired by Sara Landesmann, the daughter of an Oscar-nominated costume designer, Faye Symington, to find out who is stalking her mother. Faye, who turns out to be a very unpleasant person, doesn’t take the situation seriously and seems intent only on mining the potential threat for publicity on the run-up to the Oscars.

Marjorie McCown

KRL: Have you always written mysteries/suspense and if not, what else have you written?

Marjorie: Except for my grade school foray into fan fiction inspired by The Wind in the Willows, I’ve written only mysteries.

KRL: What brought you to choose the setting and characters in your latest book/series?

Marjorie: The inspiration for the series came from all the amazing experiences I had working on movies for 27 years. I’ve thought for a long time that a big movie in production would be a good setting for a mystery because a movie company is its own unique community, like a very specific kind of small town with its own set of relationships and drama brewing. The film industry offers such a huge variety of people, activities, and locations that are just part of the normal moviemaking process, there’s always plenty of raw material to inspire an endless number of stories.

KRL: How fun! Can you tell us a bit about that background?

Marjorie: After I graduated from the University of Virginia, I started my costume design career in New York City and designed for theater and opera companies all over the country (including the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center) for more than ten years. I loved my work in theater, but I was also curious about film and the opportunities that medium provides to tell stories on a much bigger scale, both in terms of the resources that are available when you’re working on an A-list feature film as well as the size of the audience that film can potentially reach.

So, I decided to go to Los Angeles because I wanted to learn how to make movies in the city where they’ve been making films for over a hundred years to see if that might be a good choice for me professionally. I was fortunate to find work right away on the feature film version of The Addams Family, assisting the costume designer, Ruth Myers. Ruth was a wonderful mentor; I worked with her for the next 2 years and learned the nuts and bolts of designing and making costumes for movies. And I stayed with film work for the rest of my costume career.

KRL: Do you write to entertain or is there something more you want the readers to experience from your work?

Marjorie: My primary goal is to entertain readers. But my books are set in Los Angeles, a city that is quite diverse in every aspect of its composition, and there are certainly social issues that are woven into the stories because they’re part of the cultural landscape where my characters live and work.

KRL: Do you have a schedule for writing or just work whenever you can?

Marjorie: I generally write for 3 – 4 hours in the morning then take a break around noon or so, ride my stationary bike to get my exercise and clear my head, then go back to the writing until around 5. That’s what I aim for, anyway.

KRL: What is your ideal time to write?

Marjorie: Mornings and early afternoon are my most productive times.

KRL: Do you outline? If not, do you have some other interesting way that you keep track of what’s going on, or what needs to happen in your book when you are writing it?

Marjorie: I am an outliner, but my outline is very fluid and continues to change throughout the process of writing the book. I’ll start with a 15 – 20-page outline that sketches out the bullet points of the plot, but is very spare when I begin the book, almost like the short list of camera setups on a movie – or the scaffolding framework for a building. Then when I reach a particular chapter or sequence, if I want to work through the action in more detail, I’ll flesh out that portion of the outline.

Mostly I don’t like to get too specific about the action in a scene too far ahead of time because I find (more often than not) there’s an organic component to the writing that will take over when I really dig into the scene, and what develops spontaneously is better – or more authentic – than the original plan I had. Which doesn’t mean I’ll ever be a pants-er. I’m sure I’ll always do my outlines – I like starting out with that roadmap in front of me, even if I decide to take a different route along the way.

KRL: Did you find it difficult to get published in the beginning?

Marjorie: My wonderful literary agent, Ann Collette, made that process much easier, and had I heeded her excellent advice (“write what you know”) from the beginning, I believe the path to publication would have been even smoother. She wanted me to set my mysteries in the film industry and at first, I resisted – not from any bad feeling, but because I wanted to immerse myself in a new and different world. Ann was patient. When I wrote a manuscript with a traditional private detective protagonist, she pitched it beautifully to prospective publishers. But after I’d received a batch of polite rejection letters, she said, “Now if you want to sell a book, write what you know.” Then I wrote Final Cut, and she sold it to Crooked Lane Books on the first round of submissions.

KRL: Do you have a great rejection/critique or acceptance story you’d like to share?

Marjorie: I’m not sure this is exactly on point for the question, but one critique note I received during the editing process for Final Cut from my developmental editor (whom I love working with – she’s incredibly perceptive) I found particularly instructive and made me take a more critical look at my own method of building a complete character. Marcus Pray, the producer/director of the movie that my protagonist Joey Jessop is working on, is a malignant narcissist inspired by a composite of real people I have worked with in the movie industry – although I need to add here, that was a small minority of the people I worked with in film.

But Pray is a bad dude and very powerful in the business. My editor suggested that I might want to tone down his malevolence, even though everything he does in the book is something that I have witnessed or know to be accurate. Even so, my editor thought Pray was in danger of being dismissed as a caricature of evil. I understood she had a point. If I wanted readers to be appropriately disgusted by Pray’s abusive behavior to the people on his film crew, I needed to make him a more fully realized human being – to give him an empathetic dimension – which I tried to do by showing that he’s devoted to his dogs. Because my goal is to make him believable.

KRL: What are your future writing goals?

Marjorie: My only definite writing goal is to continue to improve my craft.

KRL: Who are your writing heroes?

Marjorie: I have too many to give a complete list, but some of my favorites are Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier, A.A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame, Charles Dickens, Ross Macdonald, Lawrence Wright, Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Tony Hillerman, Jane Harper, Robert B. Parker, Robert Crais, Peter Heller, Lou Berney, Walter Mosley, and Don Winslow. I also have to add to that list 2 screenwriters whom I admire and who have definitely influenced my own writing – Eric Roth and John Sayles.

KRL: What kind of research do you do?

Marjorie: Since my books are set in the movie industry where I worked for many years, I’m very comfortable with the world I’m writing about, the characters, activities, customs, and vocabulary of the business. But when I’m writing about specific locations, even places with which I’m very familiar, I like to go to those places and take photos to look at while I’m writing, for visual inspiration and so that my descriptions can be specific and detailed – and hopefully paint a more vivid word picture for readers. Sometimes there are practical considerations, too. When I was writing the second Joey Jessop mystery, Starstruck (to be published in 2024) I wrote a chase scene that moves through the fabric district in downtown LA. Even though I have driven and walked through that area hundreds of times, I used both a street map and recent photos I took for that purpose as reference while I wrote the action of that sequence.

Sometimes I’ll also include a bit of historical background about a Los Angeles landmark or location, or just some information I think might be interesting to readers or give a flavor of the local color of the city. Then if I’m not positive about all my facts, I’ll do research to be certain what I’m writing is accurate.

KRL: What do you like to read?

Marjorie: I love mysteries and enjoy the whole spectrum – cozy, humorous, traditional, police procedural, and dark suspense. I generally prefer contemporary mysteries, though I also love to read authors from different periods in history whose writing is contemporary to their time.

KRL: What are your favorite TV shows or movies?

Marjorie: TV: Law and Order (the original that ended in 2010), The West Wing, Broadchurch, The Fall, Bloodline, Bosch, Arrested Development, The Last of Us.

Movies: Casablanca, North by Northwest, When Harry Met Sally, The Verdict, A Few Good Men, Philadelphia, The Last Samurai, Argo.

KRL: Have you any advice for aspiring or beginning writers?

Marjorie: Read continually and read a broad selection of authors. Start with authors whose voices you love and read all their work, then branch out. Try new authors. It’s amazing what you can learn by reading other people’s work. Find a writing group of like-minded writers, both for the community support that will offer you and the opportunity to have your work critiqued by people who are on the same path and whom you know and trust. This will also give you a new pool of inspiration and the chance to see others in the midst of their own writing process. And just as important, make writing part of your routine – daily, if you have that option. But just make sure to allow yourself some regularly scheduled time that is dedicated to writing, so that you continue to practice and hone your craft. There’s no substitute for sitting in the chair, doing the work.

KRL: What is something people would be surprised to know about you?

Marjorie: That I’m a mechanical genius who restores classic cars in my spare time. JUST KIDDING. I thought about this for a long time, trying to come up with a legitimate answer, but honestly, I couldn’t think of anything about me that would be all that surprising. I guess I’m your proverbial open book. Sorry if that analogy is a little too on-the-nose!

KRL: LOL Do you have any pets?

Marjorie: I have two cats, my 16-year-old heartthrob, Max, a big gray and white tabby who’s one of the sweetest souls in the world, and my feisty little girl, Monkey, who’s very bossy with me, but she adores Max. She’s part Russian blue and a polydactyl who has two extra toes on each of her paws.

KRL: Is there anything you’d like to add?

Marjorie: Thank you very much for inviting me to answer these questions and for your interest in Final Cut.

KRL: Website? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram?

Marjorie: marjoriemccown.com
twitter.com/eastlamm
instagram.com/marjoriemccownbooks
facebook.com/marjorie.mccown

To enter to win a copy of Final Cut, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “cut” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen June 17, 2023. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If you ented via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Also listen to our new mystery podcast where mystery short stories and first chapters are read by actors! They are also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. A new episode went up this week.

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Cynthia Chow is the branch manager of Kaneohe Public Library on the island of Oahu. She balances a librarian lifestyle of cardigans and hair buns with a passion for motorcycle riding and regrettable tattoos (sorry, Mom).

Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.