Ann Whitehead is sick of her job. She's a movie critic for a counterculture rag in Los Angeles and she needs a break. Instead of a break, she gets a murder. A beautiful woman dies in Ann's bathtub and Ann feels compelled to investigate. The victim is a film school grad and Industry hopeful: it's the Hollywood story Ann has always wanted to write.

LAPD is also working the murder. Douglas Lockwood is the lead investigator, a talented detective whose career has been derailed by scandal.

Ann falls hard for him but won't let herself know it. She's too busy chasing leads, digging at the victim's past, and turning Lockwood into a journalistic challenge: he never talks to the media. On his side, Lockwood wishes Ann would go away. He doesn't need a girl journalist running loose, messing with his crime scene and upsetting the witnesses.

Ann's search for the killer becomes a search for the victim's missing script. The lost script tells of another murder, yet another dead woman, in L.A. in 1944. Suddenly there are two killers and a complicated conspiracy spanning decades. As the number of dead and dying women grows, Ann has a revelation: the people she meets want into Hollywood so bad they'll commit any crime to get there.

"[A] juicy portrait of contemporary L.A. in which Hollywood's elite kill one another for script ideas....Some of these images feel overly familiar....Still, Knode's clever, sophisticated plotting packs a punch. L.A. noir fans ? and Hollywood buffs ? will be rapt." Publishers Weekly

"[A] very entertaining novel with a busy plot and attitude to spare." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

"An underground chase and some family melodrama push matters over the top. Still, Knode lands a final, affecting point: even in a day of a 'human prophylactic' like Cruise, some lost souls still believe in the ultimate good of the movies. A promising start down the mean streets of Culver City." Kirkus Reviews

"Knode features lots of intriguing backlot history and tales of Hollywood's first generation of the rich and famous linked with those of the present generation who would kill for just one more break. This well-done debut is recommended for most popular fiction collections." Library Journal

"Part noir lament, part witty liberal rant, this masterful first novel...is fast paced and complex....Knode has a keen eye for everyday details and an unusually polished cast of characters....Ann's crankiness in the face of bad taste and bad art is a particular pleasure." Stephanie Foote, Book Magazine

In this stunning debut crime novel, a movie critic in Los Angeles finds a film school grad murdered in her bathtub. It's the kind of story Ann Whitehead was born to write, but suddenly she finds herself in the middle of a complicated conspiracy spanning decades.

"An astonishingly muscular, poetic, nerve-cauterized literary debut.

Helen Knode is a thoroughbred provocateuse." — Bruce Wagner, author of I'm Losing You

"Helen Knode is so canny about noir atmospherics and gestures that her still more cunning emotional refinements slip up on you like a silent stalker down one of the secret tunnels that underpin her coruscating vision of Hollywood past, Hollywood future. Ann Whitehead is a sly, challenging, and ultimately dazzling creation. As a wounded and damaged daughter turned bored and sardonic LA film critic, Whitehead comes to discover how little she knows about the movies, or her own desires. Elegiac and electrifying, The Ticket Out is her — and our — education, and a shrewd, troubling book." — Robert Polito

Ann Whitehead is sick of her job. She's a movie critic for a counterculture rag in Los Angeles and she needs a break badly. Instead of a break, she gets a murder. A woman dies in Ann's bathtub: the victim is a film school grad and Industry hopeful. It's the kind of story Ann was born to write, but the disgraced LAPD detective leading the investigation is determined to stop her. The search for the killer turns into a search for the victim's missing script, the story of another woman murdered in 1944.

Suddenly there are two killers, and a complicated conspiracy spanning

decades. Ann is smack in the middle and everyone she meets wants into the

film business--whatever the price.

There's never been a thriller hitched as brilliantly to the new underbelly of Hollywood as this one. Helen Knode is a startling and original voice.

Helen Knode was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1957. She worked as a film critic and columnist for the L.A. Weekly from 1985 to 1991. She now lives in Northern California with her husband, bestselling author James Ellroy. This is her first novel.