With the belief that Stanislas Cordova was heavily involved in her death, disgraced investigative journalist Scott McGrath reluctantly teams up with exuberant aspiring actress Nora Halliday and the mysterious and aloof Hopper to determine what really happened.

With pages of faked-up old photos, invented Web sites and satellite maps, Night Film — Pessl's second novel, following Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006) — asserts itself as a multimedia presentation more than an old-fashioned book.

"[3] Hill notes that despite some of the clunky lines and oddly italicized sentences, the novel "has been precision-engineered to be read at high velocity, and its energy would be the envy of any summer blockbuster.

However, despite the plot's plainness, and the characters' lack of personalities, Wolitzer believes that "Marisha Pessl had an extremely cool and intricate idea for a novel, and ultimately it works.

"[5] Ron Charles, writing for the Washington Post, said of Pessl, "Her maniacally clever new novel is predicated upon a vast fictional oeuvre of terror that she’s sutured onto the body of American film.

Like some unholy trinity of Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino and Orson Welles, her Cordova is a monomaniacal genius who creeps into the darkest crevices of the human psyche.