{"id":1696,"date":"2024-02-21T17:11:29","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T01:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/?page_id=1696"},"modified":"2025-02-13T17:06:34","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T01:06:34","slug":"the-divide","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/the-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"THE DIVIDE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Now available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook format wherever books are sold<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA wild ride of a novel. . . . Richter, an industry veteran and pop culture critic, writes with the energy of a freshly charged battery, full of bright sparks, quick wit and vivid color.\u201d \u2014Sarah Weinman, The New York Times<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMs. Richter\u2019s novel starts as an offbeat mystery and turns into an emotional tour de force. The redoubtable Jenny strives to redeem her disappointing life by accomplishing something exceptional. Darned if she doesn\u2019t do just that.\u201d
\u2014Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"THE<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Double Indemnity meets <\/em>The Big Lebowski in this smart and compelling mystery.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Jenny St. John was eighteen, she moved to Los Angeles from her rural midwestern hometown and scored the lead role in an independent film called The Divide<\/em>. Under the intimate direction of young auteur Serge Grumet, Jenny was on her way to becoming the next indie darling. But then the movie tanked, and Jenny never caught a second break. Now, two decades later, after floundering on the fringes of the entertainment industry, she\u2019s barely keeping afloat running a low-level grift as a psychic life coach.

But when news surfaces that Serge has been murdered, Jenny\u2019s life is turned upside down. Unbeknownst to Jenny, Serge\u2019s ex-wife, painter Gena Santos, looks alarmingly similar to Jenny. So much so that when Gena goes missing, the cops think Jenny is<\/em> Gena.

Jenny finds herself pulled into Gena\u2019s world and manages to leverage both her resemblance to Gena and her faux psychic abilities to infiltrate the affluent yet unstable inner circle of friends, which include a Korean pop idol\u2013turned\u2013social media star and an Oscar-winning actress\u2013turned\u2013wellness guru. Soon Jenny\u2019s search to find Gena unearths dark secrets about her own past while putting her squarely in the sights of a killer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cA riveting neo-noir thriller about mistaken identity and what it means to live and die in LA. Weird and wonderfully addictive\u2014reads like Agatha Christie on acid, or maybe Raymond Chandler adapted by the Coen Brothers.\u201d
\u2014Ernest Cline, #1\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0best-selling author of\u00a0Ready Player One<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRichter\u2019s novel moves and reads quickly without feeling rushed, paced like a brisk ninety-minute film noir that focuses more on character than convoluted plots. . . .\u00a0The Divide<\/em>\u00a0has echoes of Raymond Chandler\u2019s hard-boiled novels mixed with the humor and warmness of\u00a0Psych<\/em>\u2014with a touch of Otto Preminger\u2019s\u00a0Laura<\/em>\u00a0to keep things interesting. . . .\u00a0A\u00a0<\/em>soul-searching novel, using its \u201cwhodunit\u201d plot to probe about the \u201cwhat-ifs\u201d in life that define a person\u2019s trajectory.\u201d
\u2014Las Vegas Review of Books<\/em><\/strong>

\u201cIn the utterly refreshing THE DIVIDE, a slightly grifty \u2018intuitive\u2019 life coach finds herself at the center of this devilishly clever mystery. Morgan Richter uses her fresh voice and a modern noir vibe to bring Jenny St. John and Los Angeles to life.\u00a0 A slow burn you won\u2019t be able to put down.\u201d\u00a0
\u2014Alafair Burke,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0best-selling author of\u00a0Find Me<\/em><\/strong>

\u201cAn ingenious tale of intrigue, deception and doppelg\u00e4ngers, Morgan Richter\u2019s\u00a0The Divide<\/em>\u00a0is utterly absorbing and completely original. This deviously sharp, sublimely strange modern-day noir took me hostage and wouldn\u2019t let me go until I\u2019d devoured every last delicious word!\u201d\u00a0
\u2014Katherine Wood, author of\u00a0Ladykiller<\/em><\/strong>

<\/em><\/strong>\u201cAn actor turned psychic stumbles into the center of an LAPD murder investigation in Richter\u2019s winningly offbeat debut\u2026Richter comes through with sparkling prose, a consistently surprising mystery, and an engrossing portrait of contemporary Los Angeles. Fans of Hollywood neo-noir will relish this fresh update on an old formula.\u201d\u00a0
\u2014Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[In] The Divide<\/em> a murder mystery mixes with an enthralling tangle of identity, trauma, and an exploration of art versus commerce. . . . More than a simple whodunit. Richter wraps the mystery in a cat-and-mouse game of memory versus truth, and readers won\u2019t be sure they\u2019ve uncovered who is who until the very end.\u201d
\u2014Nina Semczuk, Shelf Awareness<\/em><\/strong>
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<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong>\u201cAbsorbing. . . pure LA noir.\u201d
\u2014Booklist<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s so unusual to find a murder mystery novel that grapples so thoughtfully with these questions of fate, identity, and the paths not taken. . . . A gripping tale of LA noir . . . [and] a surprisingly wistful examination of the way that certain decisions can cause our life paths to diverge.\u201d
\u2014<\/em>Doreen Sheridan,\u00a0Criminal Element<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook format wherever books are sold. \u201cA wild ride of a novel. . . . Richter, an industry veteran and pop culture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1696","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1736,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1696\/revisions\/1736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}