A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime

USA TODAY BESTSELLER

"A wild ride beneath the glitz and glamour of 1950s Hollywood, proving once again that Casey Sherman is a master of the genre." --Ben Mezrich, New York Times bestselling author of Dumb Money, Bringing Down the House, and The Accidental Billionaires

The dark story behind the bright lights of Tinseltown

From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all--a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over. Eventually, the physical and emotional abuse became too much to bear, and Lana attempted to break it off with Johnny--with disastrous consequences. The details of what happened that fateful night remain foggy, but it ended in a series of frantic phone calls and Stompanato dead on Lana's bedroom floor, with Cheryl claiming to have plunged a knife into his abdomen in an attempt to protect her mother. The subsequent murder trial made for the biggest headlines of the year, its drama eclipsing every Hollywood movie.

New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman pulls back Tinseltown's velvet curtain to reveal the dark underbelly of celebrity, rife with toxic masculinity and casual violence against women, and tells the story of Lana Turner and her daughter, who finally stood up to the abuse that plagued their family for years. A Murder in Hollywood transports us back to the golden age of film and illuminates one of the 20th century's most notorious true crime tales.

Casey Sherman is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today & Boston Globe Bestselling Author of 17 books including "The Finest Hours" (now a major Walt Disney Studio motion picture starring Chris Pine & Casey Affleck), and "Patriots Day" (now an acclaimed motion picture from CBS Films starring Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Bacon). Sherman's 2023 true crime bestseller "Helltown," is now in development as a limited television series for Amazon Studio. Sherman will serve as Executive Producer on the project, which is slated to star Oscar Isaac ("Dune"), with director Edward Berger (Netflix - "All is Quiet on the Western Front"), and produced by Team Downey (Robert Downey, Jr. & Susan Downey - HBO's "Perry Mason"). Sherman's other books include James Patterson's "The Last Days of John Lennon," which spent more than 23 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, "12: The Inside Story of Tom Brady's Fight for Redemption," and "Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of The Capture & Killing of America's Most Wanted Crime Boss. Sherman has appeared on more than 100 television and radio programs and is a contributing writer for TIME Magazine, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Boston Magazine and the Boston Herald.