In the early-morning hours of August 5, 1962, Los Angeles County deputy coroner Ben Fitzgerald arrives at the home of the world's most famous movie star, now lying dead in her bedroom, naked and still clutching a telephone. There he discovers The Book of Secrets - Marilyn Monroe's diary - revealing a doomed love affair with a man she refers to only as "The General." In the following days, Ben unravels a wide-ranging cover-up and some heartbreaking truths about the fragile, luminous woman behind the celebrity. Soon the sinister and surreal accounts in The Book of Secrets bleed into Ben's own life, and he finds himself, like Monroe, trapped in a deepening paranoid conspiracy. The Empty Glass is an unforgettable combination of the riveting facts and legendary theories that have dogged Monroe, the Kennedy's, the Mafia, and even the CIA for decades. It is an exciting debut from a remarkable new thriller writer.
The Empty Glass: A Novel
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for THE EMPTY GLASS by J. I. Baker:
“The Empty Glass comes rampaging out of the gate and keeps on roaring and roistering until the sad, salutary shock of its final pages. After I started, the vivid writing and the presence of the unhappy latter-day Marilyn Monroe kept me reading all the way to the end. I want to tell everyone within the sound of my voice to buy this splendid novel. It's really punchy and really good, and you really should read it.”
—Peter Straub, award-winning author of In The Night Room
“J.I. Baker takes a bold run into Cain and DeLillo territory and scores. The Empty Glass is chilled and redolent of a good gin martini, leaving you primed to order another.”
—Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
“Stylishly written and perfectly paced, The Empty Glass is noir fiction re-imagined for the modern era, a novel that is sharp, smart and breathlessly fast-paced, yet somehow manages to convey the slow burn of an old regret. As such, it marks the auspicious debut of a new voice in American suspense.”
—Thomas H. Cook, Edgar Award-winning author of Taken
“[In The Empty Glass] Baker conjures a suitably paranoid atmosphere and crackling dialogue in this look at the seedy intersection of celebrity, politics, and power.”
—Booklist
“The Empty Glass is riveting, brilliant, and endlessly fascinating. Writing from a wholly original perspective, J.I. Baker has combined the history and myth surrounding one of the most intriguing deaths of last century and created a shocking, unputdownable thriller. ”
—Jason Starr, author of The Craving
“J. I. Baker has spun a gripping and pulse-pounding conspiracy. Smart, perfectly atmospheric, and ultimately heartbreaking, The Empty Glass is one not to miss. It will stay with you long after the final page.”
—Andrew Gross, author of 15 Seconds and co-author of six #1 NYT bestsellers with James Patterson
“[An] imaginative 1960s yarn.”
—US Weekly
“Marilyn Monroe is dead...by suicide. So why does all the evidence suggest that she was murdered? Los Angeles County deputy coroner Ben Fitzgerald’s relentless search for answers leads him down a dangerous path away from his sanity—and [he] takes readers along with him....a totally credible imagining of [Monroe’s] uncensored speech: breathy, sparingly punctuated and a little bit lost.... but Baker is totally in control, and watching him lead his hero along a precarious tightrope of reason is scary—and totally exhilarating.”
—Nathalie Gorman, Oprah.com
“It's LA CONFIDENTIAL meets the Bio channel with a little TMZ thrown in for fun.”
—ELLE
“Baker imagines Marilyn Monroe’s death through the eyes of the coroner. Mixing fact and theory, this taut thriller explores conspiracies around her as well as the official’s own psychological turmoil.”
—InStyle
“James Ellroy fans will relish Baker’s impressive first novel, a dark paranoid thriller … barbed prose makes a familiar story fresh. Fluent in the noir idiom, Baker maintains the depressing atmospherics throughout.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
About the Author
J. I. Baker is the executive editor of Conde Nast Traveler, and a former development editor at Time Inc. He has also worked at Real Simple, Glamour, and US Weekly and is a founding editor of Time Out New York. This is his first novel.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
By Cynthia
Format:Hardcover
`The Empty Glass" is an interesting murder mystery told from an unusual perspective. We're kept guessing who Deputy Coroner Fitzgerald is recounting his story to. It's August 5th, 1962 and Marilyn Monroe has just been found dead in her Brentwood bungalow. Why did it take 5 hours to contact police? Who are all the people in her home when police arrive? Why does the body position look `staged'?
I love how Baker intersperses political and historical information into the story. In fact the book covers some old ground i.e. the Kennedy's connection to Marilyn, US relations with Cuba, possible LAPD corruption, speculation about the role of the Mafia, and possible FBI involvement in Monroe's death, etc. This isn't just a re-hash. Baker includes theories and the why's behind those theories that I'd never heard before and they don't sound like mad innuendo. They seem plausible. Baker's sense of place and time is extraordinary. His descriptions of the city add depth.
Fitzgerald is portrayed as a family man with an estranged wife and a young son he loves. He's had prior scuffles at work so he's perfect to play the fall guy especially since he won't let this murder mystery alone. His family is his Achilles heel and a tool for the bad guys to use. It's his love, especially for his son, that keeps Fitzgerald moving in his investigation. Sadly he's only one step ahead of his pursuers....and sometimes a half a step behind. This is a gritty film nourish book. You can feel the streets of 1960's Los Angeles breath. "The Empty Glass" is as film ready as anything Chandler wrote. My only issue with the book is it feels disjointed and a little too slick. Suspend belief and get ready for a wild ride.
The review is based on an e-galley provided by the pulisher.
I love how Baker intersperses political and historical information into the story. In fact the book covers some old ground i.e. the Kennedy's connection to Marilyn, US relations with Cuba, possible LAPD corruption, speculation about the role of the Mafia, and possible FBI involvement in Monroe's death, etc. This isn't just a re-hash. Baker includes theories and the why's behind those theories that I'd never heard before and they don't sound like mad innuendo. They seem plausible. Baker's sense of place and time is extraordinary. His descriptions of the city add depth.
Fitzgerald is portrayed as a family man with an estranged wife and a young son he loves. He's had prior scuffles at work so he's perfect to play the fall guy especially since he won't let this murder mystery alone. His family is his Achilles heel and a tool for the bad guys to use. It's his love, especially for his son, that keeps Fitzgerald moving in his investigation. Sadly he's only one step ahead of his pursuers....and sometimes a half a step behind. This is a gritty film nourish book. You can feel the streets of 1960's Los Angeles breath. "The Empty Glass" is as film ready as anything Chandler wrote. My only issue with the book is it feels disjointed and a little too slick. Suspend belief and get ready for a wild ride.
The review is based on an e-galley provided by the pulisher.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As far as conspiracy theories go the one described in The Empty Glass seems quite valid.
It's not that the author offers -fact wise- something new when it comes to the death of Marilyn Monroe; it's that he takes that incident and turns it into an exciting novel, rich in twists and turns, that keeps the reader guessing from first page to last.
Did Marilyn kill herself or did someone have her killed in a way that looked like suicide? The author and his hero, Deputy Coroner Ben Fitzgerald, have no doubt whatsoever that her death was in no way an accident. And there are a lot of facts that support their theory, facts that are buried or distorted by the police and the feds.
If I had to describe this book with just a few words I would say that this is the story of a man with an obsession. And then a man with a mission. And then a man on the run.
Ben Fitzgerald is one of the first people to arrive at the scene, after the police has been belatedly called in and he's really not happy with what he sees: sloppy police work, too many people contaminating the scene and the placement of the body in such a way that suggests that it's been moved. To make things even worse he spots a reporter inside the house as well.
He does find though a thing that he likes: Marilyn's diary. He takes a brief look at it, before he goes away, and not long after he returns to retrieve it, as he believes that within its pages lie the secrets behind the star's death.
As time goes by, things start to become more hazy than clear. As it seems the authorities are determined to rule Marilyn's demise a suicide, even if they have to plant evidence to do so, and Ben feels at a loss.
Why? He asks himself. Why is everyone in such a hurry to close the case? But that's not the strangest thing that happens: all of a sudden, one after the other, all the people who were involved in the investigation, start leaving on holiday, and people who in the recent past were eager to talk about the incident, now keep their mouths shut.
In the end it's just Ben who's left behind to investigate at his own time and expense the case, along with the journalist he met at the scene of the crime. And the more his higher-ups are trying to bury it, the more he becomes obsessed with it.
Thus he starts moving from one place to the next asking questions, he reads the diary again and again, he replays in his head like a movie all the events and keeps wondering what the hell is going on?
Everybody seems to lie and everybody seems to have an agenda. It's obvious that same very powerful people are pulling the strings behind the scenes, but who and why? Could someone really benefit from the death of the star? Does the mob have something to do with it? But, if it did, why would the government want to protect them?
His investigation, his obsession, will lead to his fall, and this is no spoiler since we know that from the very beginning. What we don't know are the facts that will pave the way for this fall and that's exactly where the author has put the most emphasis.
This is one of those novels that can be read in a single sitting and which can offer the reader a few hours of pure (thoughtful) entertainment. I'd say that if Baker is a gambling man and he's placed a bet with himself that he can make his story work, he has won that bet.
It's not that the author offers -fact wise- something new when it comes to the death of Marilyn Monroe; it's that he takes that incident and turns it into an exciting novel, rich in twists and turns, that keeps the reader guessing from first page to last.
Did Marilyn kill herself or did someone have her killed in a way that looked like suicide? The author and his hero, Deputy Coroner Ben Fitzgerald, have no doubt whatsoever that her death was in no way an accident. And there are a lot of facts that support their theory, facts that are buried or distorted by the police and the feds.
If I had to describe this book with just a few words I would say that this is the story of a man with an obsession. And then a man with a mission. And then a man on the run.
Ben Fitzgerald is one of the first people to arrive at the scene, after the police has been belatedly called in and he's really not happy with what he sees: sloppy police work, too many people contaminating the scene and the placement of the body in such a way that suggests that it's been moved. To make things even worse he spots a reporter inside the house as well.
He does find though a thing that he likes: Marilyn's diary. He takes a brief look at it, before he goes away, and not long after he returns to retrieve it, as he believes that within its pages lie the secrets behind the star's death.
As time goes by, things start to become more hazy than clear. As it seems the authorities are determined to rule Marilyn's demise a suicide, even if they have to plant evidence to do so, and Ben feels at a loss.
Why? He asks himself. Why is everyone in such a hurry to close the case? But that's not the strangest thing that happens: all of a sudden, one after the other, all the people who were involved in the investigation, start leaving on holiday, and people who in the recent past were eager to talk about the incident, now keep their mouths shut.
In the end it's just Ben who's left behind to investigate at his own time and expense the case, along with the journalist he met at the scene of the crime. And the more his higher-ups are trying to bury it, the more he becomes obsessed with it.
Thus he starts moving from one place to the next asking questions, he reads the diary again and again, he replays in his head like a movie all the events and keeps wondering what the hell is going on?
Everybody seems to lie and everybody seems to have an agenda. It's obvious that same very powerful people are pulling the strings behind the scenes, but who and why? Could someone really benefit from the death of the star? Does the mob have something to do with it? But, if it did, why would the government want to protect them?
His investigation, his obsession, will lead to his fall, and this is no spoiler since we know that from the very beginning. What we don't know are the facts that will pave the way for this fall and that's exactly where the author has put the most emphasis.
This is one of those novels that can be read in a single sitting and which can offer the reader a few hours of pure (thoughtful) entertainment. I'd say that if Baker is a gambling man and he's placed a bet with himself that he can make his story work, he has won that bet.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By MamaK
Format:Hardcover
I was so excited when this book was released and really looked forward to reading it for our LitChix April book selection. Boy was I totally off base with this one. The writing style is excruciating to follow, the characters had flat lined and there is nothing new or different revealed in this supposed "historical fiction". Most books have a least one redeeming quality, I can honestly say this one did not.
Don't waste your time - a terrible book!
Don't waste your time - a terrible book!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Empty Glass
I was interested in reading this book and thought it might make a good discussion for book club.
But I wasn't happy with the way it was written. Read more
But I wasn't happy with the way it was written. Read more
Published 12 hours ago by Judith Ann Weller
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bizarre...and horrible
I was excited about this book because I've always loved reading about the Kennedy family, especially the many conspiracy theories surrounding them, including the speculation that... Read more
Published 12 days ago by Sarah's Book Shelves
5.0 out of 5 stars
A thrill ride of conspiracy and cover-ups
The Empty Glass
"After a while everything started to blur." Starting with the first line on the first page I knew I was in for a great read. Read more
"After a while everything started to blur." Starting with the first line on the first page I knew I was in for a great read. Read more
Published 13 days ago by Jodi Hanson
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good story poorly writeb
The narrative of this book is very confusing. It skips from place to place person to person and is hard to keep track of when and where it is.
Published 1 month ago by mmart23
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Empty Glass
I am a real Marilyn fan a and I've changed my opinion recently about what really happened to Marilyn the night she died
This book reflects exactly what i believe happened and... Read more
This book reflects exactly what i believe happened and... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sarah Stolze
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Empty Glass
If you have a fascination with Marllyn and the Kennedy connection then you will find this book helpful. Good writing,
Published 1 month ago by Lorri
5.0 out of 5 stars
book
Quality item & shipping. Interesting therory. Any story about Marilyn is an interesting one and we'll never know the real story will we?
Published 3 months ago by cyh
3.0 out of 5 stars
Middle of the Road
This book is, in parts, more than a bit hard to follow. It's written in a sort of first person noir style, with witty remarks and clever quip exchanges that, while entertaining,... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Hydra M. Star
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Empty Glass
This book really doesn't deserve one star. Very poorly written, hard to follow, and boring, boring "The Empty Glass" is truly empty.
Published 4 months ago by Susan Vago
2.0 out of 5 stars
trying too hard
I didn't finish reading this one. Maybe I've read too much about MM since 1976 but I didn't like the protagonist's back story and found the "factual" evidence contrived.
Published 4 months ago by Kate Gallagher
