It begins, as many good stories do, in New York. When she turned to a life of crime, Israel was living in a squalid one-bedroom apartment with only her cat, Jersey, her books, and her withering ambition for company. Earlier in her career, Israel had achieved some success as a celebrity biographer. Her first book, Miss Tallulah Bankhead, about the eponymous actress — was published in 1972. The second, Kilgallen, about journalist and game show panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, spent a week on the best-seller list in 1980. But Israel's career swerved downward with the 1985 book Estée Lauder: Beyond the Magic. Israel rushed the research process to ensure her Lauder biography came out before Lauder's memoir, set to be released in the same year. Her Lauder biography was critically panned and a commercial failure. In her memoir, Israel admitted she regretted not taking Lauder's buyout to not release the unauthorised biography.