This is a book about fascination. The fascination of an enigma, the fascination held by a mysterious director and his murky, under normal cirumstances even unseeable, body of work. EXCEPT---- 
 The experience of reading this book is about fascination. The fascination of anticipation, of a plot unformed, of tantalizing suggestions just barely glimpsed. Of the thrill that took me over when I understood that this was a book about a secret filmography so insane as to leave anyone in contact with it changed by the experience. A film career that, one character says, creates a distorting aura around it. All this, plus the suggestion that this would follow-up the post-modern diabolism of House of Leaves (not that HoL is the end all or anything, just a very successful post-modern entertainment), had me gripped before I'd properly begun. Enough to ignore some of the obvious clumsy writing, clumsy plotting, and clumsily photoshopped documents. What did it matter, I had to see where this would take me. 
 And then nothing that followed bore out that fascination. I was, in fact, fascinated by an image that existed only in my head of a book that did not exist*. 
 I can list the reasons, but it barely matters now. The ordinariness of the noir mechanics feeding out the backstory, the attempts to reiterate everything over and over for inattentive readers, the clunky character archetypes. Much worse, killing really, at the heart of my disillusion: that secret filmography is entirely a sham. It seems that no one actually has any problem getting ahold of these supposedly buried films, and worse yet, when we finally hear their synopsis, they seem ordinary genre pieces, dark yes, but not so unusual. A slasher, even a particularly brutal one, is not in itself so shocking, certainly not so rare, really not so interesting. Perhaps there's something beyond the synopsis to explain their essential obsessive and penetrating nature, but if so, Pessl only vaguely suggests it. Perhaps she hasn't actually seen all that many of the sort of film she wanted to write about. 
 Oh, and those post-modern promises? Nope. Though it borrows liberally from many recognizable sources, this is nothing like House of Leaves, there's really only the one obvious layer, perhaps a little of another, but only barely. It's a noir with supernatural suggestions. There's one section, separated off from the rest of the text by solid black pages, that breaks the narrative flow a little, and works in ways that go a little beyond the straightforward telling of the rest. It's the best part in some ways, but it's not enough. 
 If I look be beyond my disillusion, it's an okay piece of genre fiction. It's not like Pessl's prose here is actually worse than various sci-fi paperbacks I occasionally read. And the plot has some thrills of its own, I never entirely stopped wanting to know where it was going, even when it was clear that my fascinations wouldn't ever coalesce. 
 But when you promise so much, this isn't really enough. 
 *Actually, being fascinated by something that isn't actually there, fascinated by fascination, is somewhat anticipated and incorporated into the design of the plot. So I like that it works this way. But I do not think it plays out as intended. 
 Earlier thoughts follow: 
 ... 
 A large chandelier showered golden light on the crowd as I surveyed the party in the bronze mirror over the mantel. I was startled to spot someone I barely recognized: myself. Blue button-down, sports jacket, third or fourth drink--I was losing count--leaning against the wall like I was holding it up. I looked like I wasn't at a cocktail party, but an airport, waiting for my life to take off. 
 The writing here seems to be so bad that I almost think Pessl's messing with me. I mean, that's the first paragraph. Perhaps we actually are reading the memoir of an investigative journalist without a really good grasp of prose style or any idea what it means to "jump the shark". On the other hand, there's a lot of annoying referential hand-waving going on which has to be coming in from outside the narrative, as well as glaring plot improbabilities like the aforementioned (supposedly seasoned) journalist spilling an entire story based one lead without checking it out at all (not incidental detail but major backstory, this totally unreasonable misstep costs him a career). 
 Her name was Jeannie, but no sane man would ever dream of her 
 All that said, this whole reclusive filmmaker with (possibly) horrible secrets plot hook is very well placed to hit my fascination center, and it has, making this totally gripping for the moment. Lets see how long this can go before it overplays its hand entirely into laughability. 
 ... 
 Marisha Pessl's debut, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, hit such a unique level of mass readership and press awareness for its sort of semi-gimmick-laden post-modern cleverness, that it seemed specially positioned to be forgotten. It was a fun, promising first appearance by a sharp new author and treated as such, but without follow-up to keep the popular press paying attention, already too well-known to be maintained in the cult awareness -- I long ago gave away my copy, turned my eyes in other directions, felt that I'd never think of Pessl again. And then this came out and actually sounded intriguing?!