Watching Marilyn

by Jack Chapman

In the heatwave summer of 1962 Frank Watson is hired by Jack Scalligan, a man he believes is working for Twentieth Century Fox, to plant illegal phone taps in the Hollywood home of Marilyn Monroe whose escalating problems with barbiturates and the Kennedys is disrupting the studio’s filming of Something's Got To Give.

Watson has recently been dismissed from a clandestine posting at the Havana Embassy after the CIA failed to save Batista's government. Now he’s helped by his partner and brother-in-law, Tommy Guppy, an ex-LAPD detective. A man whose family relationships have dissolved in alcohol and cynicism but whose basic ideals somehow survive.

As they watch Monroe’s glamorous life disintegrate Frank becomes personally involved. Similarities between the star’s vulnerability and the fate of a young cabaret singer he rescued from the Havana revolution haunt him, a woman at the other end of success but sharing the same self-destructive core. He feels a guilty complicity with the Hollywood dream that seduced and destroyed her.

Marilyn’s personal crisis is echoed on the wider stage by the political turmoil between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the world on the edge of nuclear war - the clock in Kennedy’s words at ‘five to midnight’ - Frank Watson comes to believe the Secret Service are conspiring to protect the President by other than legitimate means.

There are rumours that Monroe has kept a diary, a red book, detailing her affair with John F. Kennedy, the record of a scandal that could bring down the President.

After her death in strange circumstances - some claim suicide, rumours say murder - the book vanishes. Tommy Guppy, suspected of stealing the diary, is killed as shadowy factions scramble for the evidence.

Dealing with the aftermath of Guppy’s death on his estranged family, Watson fights to resolve ambiguities and shifting allegiances as he searches a city of lost beliefs. A Los Angeles where failed politician Richard Nixon and has-been actor Ronald Reagan walk the same streets as Sinatra’s Rat Pack and Mafia dons, a time when naked ambitions create reality out of Hollywood noir.

215 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

I used to work and now I'm a writer. Lately I'm mostly interested in the early days of Hollywood through to the height of the studio system. It's a magic period and the seeds of its decline feature in my novel Watching Marilyn
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Reviews

[Anita Hargreaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone spied on her, what an awful life for a young woman.

[J.W. Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't normally read anything that involves celebrities etc, however, I found Watching Marilyn compelling and finished it pretty quickly. The writing style is a tad convoluted for my tastes which is the reason for only four stars instead of five. Having said that, my husband disagrees with me, so others may not find the same issue. The style IS correct for time frame of the book, early 1960's. The dialoge is correct for the time as well and I did enjoy the verbal interactions between the characters. The whole book has a film noir feel and it was smoothly done. The action and pacing were well thought out. I loved the Sol Marx hairdresser character, he brought a little humor to the story and looking at Marilyn Monroe from the author's point of view was actually quite fascinating. Totally worth buying and reading!

[Lewis Attrib · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the early 60's, the Rat Pack are riding high and the Beatles are still over the horizon. The Cuban Missile Crisis is looming and there seems to be some link between the threat of nuclear war and the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe. But however far-fetched the premise seems there's an authentic feel to this story, It's hard to tell which are the real events and real characters and which are the not very obvious inventions. And even if we all know how things turned out it's still fascinating to read how the historical events affect the characters. A compulsive read.

[Jack Chapman]

Not for me to give a rating as I'm biased by the fact I wrote it. But I list it on my shelf because (not surprisingly) it represents a lot of the things I like in books : larger than life characters, fast action, mystery, and in homage to my favourite author, the great Raymond Chandler, cynicism tempered by a tarmished but uncompromising honour.