Fade to Black

Media freelancer Root Wilson, the 30-year-old narrator of British author Mullins’s unfortunate first novel, has a popular radio show, a blog, and a movie in development. At a trendy London art gallery, he encounters Philip Hegley, a believed-deceased film director whose obituary he penned two years back. Rather than grab the opportunity to scoop his competitors and turn this stroke of luck into cash, Wilson announces that he’s going to write the man’s biography. Of course, after that onetime showing, Hegley remains frustratingly elusive. Meanwhile, Wilson looks for clues to Hegley’s disappearance by dissecting one of the filmmaker’s masterpieces in tedious detail. Just about everywhere he runs into someone who hated Hegley. With its minimal tension and cast of lackluster secondary characters, this mash-up of L.A.-style noir and London hipster talk (Wilson refers to the BBC as the “Beeb”) may have limited appeal to an American audience. (Nov.)