The hot one A memoir of friendship, sex, and murder

In 2001, when Murnick, now an editor at New York, was in her early twenties, she learned that her childhood best friend, Ashley, had been stabbed to death in her Hollywood home. Murnick had last seen her friend alive a year earlier, when Ashley visited her in Manhattan for a somewhat strained weekend, in which the author felt their friendship flickering out. As the years passed, and Murnick grew into her career in journalism, thoughts of Ashley and what had been going on in her life, beyond her working in a strip club, which she told Murnick little about, increased and deepened. And so she begins to painstakingly follow the case its new developments, apprehended suspect, hearings, crime sites perpetually explaining her obsession as a need to know what happened to her friend. Including worthwhile consideration of how female victims are often blamed for their own attacks (the defense paints Ashley as a sexually active party girl to cast reasonable doubt on its client's guilt) and women's friendships in general, Murnick's memoir will shock and fascinate.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2017 Booklist

Murnick (online editor, New York magazine) and Ashley Ellerin were best friends in grade school, but their lives diverged when Murnick went to college and -Ellerin moved to L.A., dating movie stars (including Ashton Kutcher) and partying the night away. Ellerin's brutal murder in 2001 filled -Murnick with shock and guilt, and when, eight years later, a break in the cold case came, she used her journalism skills and contacts to try to get a handle on what had happened and how their lives could have turned out differently. Navigating the long, tedious, and unsatisfying process of the trial, Murnick also meditates on female friendship, its closeness and competitiveness, and how and why girls get pegged as "the smart one" and "the hot one," and how it can warp their lives. As the author struggles to understand Ellerin, she grieves the child she was and the woman she would never become. Seeking "closure" from the trial of the accused killer, she discovers "a verdict is certainly not the same as the truth." -VERDICT This fusion of memoir and procedural should be welcomed by readers of autobiography as well as true crime.-Deirdre Bray Root, MidPointe Lib. Syst., OH © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A New York media worker tries to comprehend a glamorous friend's murder.In her debut book, Murnick, an online editor at New York magazine, considers heady themes of sexuality, violence, and childhood loyalties. She writes in a breezy, flowing style that is observational yet inconsistent, at times parsing details with sharp terseness, elsewhere turning her consideration toward inward ruminations. She and Ashley, her best friend from suburban New Jersey, were already drifting apart when, in 2001, 21-year-old Murnick was shocked by news of Ashley's murder in Los Angeles, particularly since Ashley had revealed to the author her dabblings in the sex-and-drugs underground of LA celebrity culture. "Eight months later she was dead," writes Murnick, "and I was reading about it in the paper, trying to convince myself that it didn't matter to me as much as it did. I knew that I had just about let her go in the months leading up to things, and it was impossible to know if we would have found our way back together." The case was cold for years until the startling arrest of Michael Gargiulo, a neighbor and suspected serial killer. Linked by DNA evidence to at least two similar slayings, he'd ingratiated himself into Ashley's social circle by offering conveniently timed home repairs (Murnick's depiction of this provides an excellent guide to spotting sociopaths). The author attended the long pretrial hearings for the accused, meeting Ashley's still-mourning LA friends and reconstructing a fuller portrait of Ashley's "secret" life, which under scrutiny appeared both decadent and nave: "Ashley didn't deserve any of this. She had suddenly been made into a public figure for the worst possible reason." There are powerful vignettes throughout, as the author describes her encounters with figures ranging from the meditative defense attorney to jaded reality TV journalists, but since Gargiulo's trial has been delayed indefinitely, the narrative feels unresolved, with an increasing emphasis on inward observation. An original and engaging, if uneven, fusion of memoir and true-crime. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The Hot One 1 FRONT PAGE SHE WAS FOUND by her roommate in the hallway of their split-level bungalow at 1911 Pinehurst Road in the Hollywood Hills at approximately 9 a.m. and pronounced dead by paramedics at 9:28, February 22, 2001. Her body was faceup on the carpeting near the entrance to their bathroom, and when Jen opened the front door that morning and saw her from across the room, she at first thought it was some sort of practical joke. Ashley was known for her occasional put-ons and tricks, but as Jen got closer, it was impossible to miss all the blood. It was trailing from Ashley's nose and mouth and matted in her hair. It had drenched the green terry-cloth robe she was wearing as well as the blue tank top that was stretched around her torso and the shorts that were bunched around her thighs. It covered her arms, legs, and hands with a sickening sheen, nearly obscuring the bracelet tattoo she had around her left ankle. It had turned the carpet around her body a dark, angry red. Jen bolted out the door to her car to call 911, not wanting to remain in the room for another second. She would never spend a night in that house again. The fire truck was the first to arrive, and then came Detective Thomas Small of the LAPD, Hollywood Division. He noted that the victim was a twenty-two-year-old Caucasian female who was last known to have been alive as of 8:15 p.m. the previous night. He noted that there had been no forced entry into the residence, and no obvious weapons had yet been recovered. He also noted that due to the time lapse, she wasn't a viable candidate for tissue donation. An external examination of the body revealed forty-seven stab wounds, twelve of which were later deemed fatal. Defense wounds were also observed on her right forearm and hands. Ashley's neck organs had suffered extensive trauma, and her windpipe and right artery had been cut in two. Stab wounds blanketed her back, stomach, and arms, and her head had been partially dislocated from her spinal column. Bloody shoe prints were noted in the house entryway. The official report from the deputy medical examiner wouldn't be filed for another two weeks, but the manner of death was obvious: homicide. She was officially identified at approximately 11 p.m. via DOJ fingerprints as Ashley Ellerin, of Los Altos, California. An hour later, a local police sergeant was sent to notify the next of kin: her parents. It took another five days for the news to reach me. *  *  * We sat around the kitchen table, my parents and I, with the paper between us. The story had made the front page of The Bernardsville News, below the pictures from the latest hospital benefit and an article on deer population control. I read it while they stared at me. I was just under two months out of college; in a few weeks I'd turn twenty-two, just as she had been. I had graduated a semester late, and although I still had my same apartment in the city, something about the new stretches of unstructured weekend time unnerved me. How did you fill it all, all by yourself with no essays to write or assigned reading to get done? I had taken to visiting my parents in New Jersey more regularly while I sorted things out. At the end of February there was a bit of snow left on the ground, and my eyes kept settling upon the patches of whiteness outside every few sentences as I read. "Former Peapack Resident Murdered in Los Angeles," the headline shouted. I blinked and knew instantly what was coming. The article quoted a family friend--someone I had never heard of--who said Ashley had recently transferred from UCLA to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, and called her "an accomplished pianist and a talented artist." There would be a private funeral in California, the article said. Her remains would be cremated and her ashes scattered in Hawaii, "a place the family had visited frequently and where Miss Ellerin had wanted to live and work." I felt detached, numb. The time-appearing-to-stop thing you hear about, that was there. The feeling of floating on my back in the middle of a cold lake, staring up at birds chirping in the trees above my head but not being able to hear them--that was there, too. I wondered if my parents expected some sort of emotional display from me and how they'd handle it if I produced one, or if I didn't. Should I cry? Should I drop my head into my hands and wait for my mother to say something? Should I excuse myself? Nothing seemed appropriate, so instead I stayed silent. I wanted to tell my parents what I knew about Ashley, but I didn't know how. I wanted to tell them the things that would shock them, scare them, and cause them to shake their heads and go silent. I wanted to unburden myself and push them up against the limits of their parental aptitudes. How would they make sense of this one? There was no way to. I felt angry at her, and I wanted them to be as well. How could her life have ended up this way? But maybe it wasn't my place to share what I knew. They could find out from someone else, or maybe not at all, or perhaps there'd be another occasion to talk about it when things weren't so fresh. I would wait this time. There were still a million questions yet to be answered. I knew I had secrets about Ashley I was quite certain she had told few others, but I still didn't know what had happened to my oldest friend at the end. So what did I really know, anyway? Excerpted from The Hot One: A Memoir of Friendship, Sex, and Murder in the Hollywood Hills by Carolyn Murnick All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.