THE CLOSE-UP By Pip Drysdale

Pip Drysdale is ‘must read’ for those who enjoy dark, edgy, first person suspense thrillers with a hot, contemporary feel to them. Her books feature young, quirky, slightly unreliable female narrators, who mix bad decisions, usually about men, with courage and a willingness to push through. Her books have progressively gotten better over the short span of her career and her latest, The Close-Up (Harper Collins, 30 October 2024), is probably her best so far.

The Close-Up opens with once promising author Zoe Ann Weiss in a slump. Her debut thriller flopped, and now she has a mountain of debt and a job working for an LA florist. Worse of all, she has severe writer’s block and is on the verge of losing her agent and her contract for a second novel. Things change, however, when Zoe reconnects with an old flame, Zach, who is now a famous Hollywood actor with an entourage, NDAs and lots of paparazzi following him around. They start casually dating, but when it becomes public, courtesy of some nude pool photos, Zoe finds herself being stalked by an obsessed fan. Not only is this fan following her, they are also recreating the creepy scenes from Zoe’s failed first novel, but with Zoe as the victim this time. The really scary thing, however, is that Zoe knows what happens to her protagonist: “in the final chapter, she dies.”

It is an intriguing premise and Zoe’s snappy, engaging narration quickly draws the reader into the story. Written as Zoe’s account of happened, it starts a little slowly, with lots on her stalled writing career and her previous relationship with Zach, but her narration style is very natural and it is easy to drift through these early pages. Once the threats start, the suspense and the pace picks up, and the final third is very exciting with lots of twists and surprises, and a knock-out ending.

Pip has always been very good at the breezy first person narration, and the inclusion of social media threads to push the story along, and this is all on display again in The Close-Up. The plotting, however, is much stronger this time around. The various strands of the story are smoothly woven in, and the book moves confidently in unexpected directions. There is a good complexity to the story, as well as some nice dashes of dark humour. The characters are also sharply observed, and the Hollywood scenes have a juicy insider feel to them.

In all, The Close-Up is a good contemporary thriller with vivid settings, clever twists and not too much romance.  

The Close-Up is released in Australia on 30 October 2024 and in the United States and the United Kingdom in early December 2024.

Here is the link to a review of one of Pip’s earlier books, The Strangers We Know: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/the-strangers-we-know-by-pip-drysdale-simon-schuster/