Maybe they hadn’t even been talking about a real desert, but a set: a cinematographer’s idea of a desert. His hunt leads him to Sudden Lake, a ghost town in the middle of the Mohave Desert where a luxury hotel used to stand. This is an elaborately plotted historical mystery, rich in fascinating detail; the horror stuff is fun, but – surprisingly – far from my favourite thing about the story. For a book set in a city overwhelmingly associated with sunshine, bright lights and cameras, there is a dark and brooding, almost atmospheric edge to the book that I absolutely loved. The Devil’s Playground, set partly in a richly evoked 1920s Hollywood, plays like Chinatown meets The Ring, and it’s the most sheerly entertaining novel I’ve raced through in at least a year … fresh, forceful, elegant but wild.

He takes a step toward her, and a dog—­a huge, dark beast of a dog—­emerges from doorway shadow and sniffs the air as if it has caught the odor of fresh meat. A large cast of characters and extensive use of red herrings make this a complex and atmospheric novel, perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The dialogue is excellent and the main character, Mary O’Rourke, is a smart mouth movie studio fixer turned investigator. As I said, Norma and I had a beast of a row over lunch, after I told her I’d have to break it off, and she stormed out.In an age when far too many same-old-same-old books are clogging the charts, The Devil’s Playground – fresh, forceful, elegant but wild – deserves to crash the bestseller party. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. In 1967 film historian Paul Conway hunts for the rumoured only copy left of The Devil's Playground, a quest that take him to the desert and Sudden Lake. Now, unbidden, as he drives across the desert, the final scene of von Stroheim’s Greed is projected onto the screen of his mind. But when I do, I find you in the middle of nowhere in an abandoned hotel that happens to have a cinema screening room.

Mary’s boss, Harry Carbine, realizing a murder could ruin his already financially tapped-out studio, sends her to find the killer. Robert Huston, heartthrob star who is known worldwide for buckling his swash in a number of historical epics. I just don’t understand why you gave it all up, back then, at the height of it all—­why you went to such lengths to disappear.

When I first started reading this book it had vibes of Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell but so much better.