PURIFIED is a thrilling story that explores many dark subjects, including what it does to those who have to live in the world of killers in order to stop them.
When a mutilated body of an African American girl is found in a park sandbox, the media shows no interest. Instead, their attention is riveted on the disappearance of Olivia Safra, a college student and only child of the powerful and dangerous Richard Safra. Suspended ADA, Beck Oldman, demoted to a rookie PI is assigned her first cases to find a missing teenager and Olivia Safra.
Leads connect the murders to the Safra case. The investigation into her client's private life reveals a dark side in the relationship between a father and daughter and exacts his wrath against Beck. More girls are found murdered, putting Beck in a race to stop a serial killer and stop her own client from destroying her.
PURIFIED is a thrilling story that explores many dark subjects, including what it does to those who have to live in the world of killers in order to stop them.
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Chinatown, Drought, Murder
California is trying to survive its worst drought in recorded history. Northern California residents, I am one, think secession from southern California when water is the topic. Writers and cinephiles think Chinatown. The neo noir film was based on true events. Hollis Mulwray whose murder precipitated many grisly events, the least of which the slitting of Jake Gittes’ nose, was inspired by William Mulholland who was the chief engineer of what was once called The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He was the engineer who designed and oversaw the Los Angeles Aqueduct which brought water from Owens Valley to LA.
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| A scene taken at the formal opening for the Los Angeles aqueduct in November 1913. (Los Angeles Times) |
Eventually this suck of water dried out the Owens Valley but not without a fight. Check out California Water Wars. See why the word secession creeps into our thoughts. The St. Francis dam was built to store and regulate the water but it broke, resulting in a murderous flood. Six hundred people died. This number is second in terms of the number deaths behind the 1906 earthquake. The dam was considered the worst American civil engineering disaster of the twentieth century. It ruined Mulholland, though he did get a very famous road named after him and two noir movies.
The story of water and Mulholland have all the ingredients for scintillating noir fiction. Greed, desperation, reputation and of course, the all-time reigning champs, money and power. Noir is always the best when it its roots are planted in reality. Real crimes and real people motivated or pushed to the wall. Writers mix up the real with the imagined, create a femme fatale or a female cloaked in intrigue and the intrepid, but stupendously flaw investigator; the reader can’t helped be sucked in, sorry for the water sound. Why? Because of the true element. Whether it be water, money, love, or power, we find our lives intersecting with the story.
Purified, the neo noir novel I wrote has the nonfiction elements of race, gender, and a horrifying tradition practiced on real women worldwide. These themes are interwoven in the whodunit race to stop the killer. As we look up to the sky and dance for rain, it seems like inspiration for writers of murder is in the very dry air.
About the author:
Elizabeth S. Sullivan was born in Chicago and grew up in the LA area. Impassioned by social justice issues, inspired by her parents, she pursued teaching and earned a law degree. She has written five screenplays, one short. Her screenplays have placed or won such as: Nicholl, Austin, Page, and American Zoetrope. These recognitions garnered her a manager, Alexia Melocchi, Little Studio Films. Her first novel, PURIFIED, portrays a strong female protagonist in the genre of a noir thriller. Sullivan explores issues of race, gender, privacy in the cyber age. She has written several blogs on of women in fiction featured on Venture Galleries. She is busy working on the sequel to PURIFIED and a new screenplay.
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