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The Gossip Columnist's Daughter
The cold case of a young Hollywood starlet’s death sets a contemporary writer on an epic and comic quest to uncover the truth, and its connection to his own family—a new novel by “a major talent” (New York Times) and “one of the most distinctive voices of his generation” (Granta).
Jed Rosenthal hasn’t published a book in fourteen years, the mother of his child left him in a “trial separation” that has stretched on indefinitely, and he struggles to navigate the daily sorrows of their co-parenting arrangement. But the implosion of Jed’s family is simply a footnote in the larger history of the Rosenthal family’s decline.
Just days after the JFK assassination, Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet was found dead in her Hollywood apartment. The press reported that the 22-year-old was strangled, yet unanswered questions linger to this day. Cookie’s parents—Chicago royalty, Irv and Essee Kupcinet—had been close friends with Jed's grandparents, but in the aftermath of her death, their friendship abruptly and inexplicably ended. Decades later, Jed pores over family stories, newspaper archives, old photos, and crime scene notes, believing that if he can divine the truth of Cookie's death—whether it was suicide, murder, or part of a larger conspiracy—it might shed light on a mystery closer to home.
Spanning seventy plus years, and weaving together family drama and a true-life unsolved case, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter is a singular, wryly comic, and deeply human exploration into friendship and the bonds that sustain us.
Jed Rosenthal hasn’t published a book in fourteen years, the mother of his child left him in a “trial separation” that has stretched on indefinitely, and he struggles to navigate the daily sorrows of their co-parenting arrangement. But the implosion of Jed’s family is simply a footnote in the larger history of the Rosenthal family’s decline.
Just days after the JFK assassination, Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet was found dead in her Hollywood apartment. The press reported that the 22-year-old was strangled, yet unanswered questions linger to this day. Cookie’s parents—Chicago royalty, Irv and Essee Kupcinet—had been close friends with Jed's grandparents, but in the aftermath of her death, their friendship abruptly and inexplicably ended. Decades later, Jed pores over family stories, newspaper archives, old photos, and crime scene notes, believing that if he can divine the truth of Cookie's death—whether it was suicide, murder, or part of a larger conspiracy—it might shed light on a mystery closer to home.
Spanning seventy plus years, and weaving together family drama and a true-life unsolved case, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter is a singular, wryly comic, and deeply human exploration into friendship and the bonds that sustain us.
448 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 12, 2025
130 people are currently reading
6992 people want to read
About the author
Peter Orner
41 books295 followersPeter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of three novels: Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and his most recent, Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown, 2011) which was recently called epic by Daniel Handler, "...epic like Gilgamesh, epic like a guitar solo." (Orner has since bought Gilgamesh and is enjoying it.) Love and Shame and Love is illustrated throughout by his brother Eric Orner, a comic artist and illustrator whose long time independent/alt weekly strip The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green was made into a feature film in 2008. Eric Orner's work is featured this year in Best American Cartoons edited by Alison Bechdel.
A film version of one of Orner's stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner.
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller, won the Bard Fiction Prize. The novel is being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and German. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo is set in Namibia where Orner lived and worked in the early 1990's.
Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award.
Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (co-editor Annie Holmes, 2010), both published by McSweeney's/ Voice of Witness, an imprint devoted to using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Harper's Magazine wrote, "Hope Deferred might be the most important publication out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years."
Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations.
Orner has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (Visiting Professor, 2011), University of Montana (William Kittredge Visting Writer, 2009), the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (2009) Washington University (Visiting Hurst Professor, 2008), Bard College (Bard Fiction Prize Fellowship, 2007), Miami University (Visting Professor, 2002), Charles University in Prague (Visting Law Faculty, 2000). Orner is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State where he is an associate professor. He would like to divide his time between a lot of places, especially San Francisco and Chicago.
A film version of one of Orner's stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner.
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller, won the Bard Fiction Prize. The novel is being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and German. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo is set in Namibia where Orner lived and worked in the early 1990's.
Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award.
Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (co-editor Annie Holmes, 2010), both published by McSweeney's/ Voice of Witness, an imprint devoted to using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Harper's Magazine wrote, "Hope Deferred might be the most important publication out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years."
Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations.
Orner has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (Visiting Professor, 2011), University of Montana (William Kittredge Visting Writer, 2009), the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (2009) Washington University (Visiting Hurst Professor, 2008), Bard College (Bard Fiction Prize Fellowship, 2007), Miami University (Visting Professor, 2002), Charles University in Prague (Visting Law Faculty, 2000). Orner is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State where he is an associate professor. He would like to divide his time between a lot of places, especially San Francisco and Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
June 7, 2025
I received a free copy of, The Gossip Columnist's Daughter, by Peter Omer, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Jed Rosenthal wants to solve 22 year old Karyn Kupcinet, Cookies as she was known, murder. Cookie is the daughter of Irv Kupcinet, famous columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. I remember reading his column, growing up, but I do remember that his daughter was murdered. This was an interesting read, on a case I never heard of.
August 16, 2025
Having never lived in Chicago, I was unaware of the columns and tv program hosted by Irv Kupcinet. But as I read this shape shifter of a novel, I learned that he really existed, that he filled a role similar to that of the Bay Area's Herb Caen, that he knew everybody and everybody knew him, but that shortly after the assassination of JFK, he and his wife suffered their own tragedy, the (murder? suicide?) of Karyn Kupcinet, their daughter. This highly readable account, narrated by Jed Rosenthal, a university professor who does a deep dive into those events, works as an audio since the reader, Robert Fass, has the ability to make you feel you're sitting across from one another as he tells the story. Jed is drawn to the story since his grandparents and the Kupcinets were inseparable, but had a falling out shortly after Karyn's death, and he longs to discover the roots of that separation. Highly recommended.
August 12, 2025
This was a great read! The writing style was a bit different than what I’m used to reading, but I enjoyed very much. I went in blindly and was not disappointed! I wasn’t familiar with this case and I’m not sure what’s actual fact and what’s fiction. The author did an amazing job intertwining fact with fiction! I was hooked from start to finish! Overall, an interesting read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the author for gifting me this eARC!
Thank you to NetGalley and the author for gifting me this eARC!
October 1, 2025
This novel is nothing less than a trip down memory lane for those of us who have been privileged to live in Chicago. For a large city, it’s surprisingly insular and intimate. Certain names have become part of the city’s permanent vocabulary : the Daleys, of course, along with Big Bill Thompson, Studs, Oprah, Mike Royo, Walter Jacobson, Sid Korshak, Jane Byrne, Ed Vrdolyak – the list goes on and on.
One of the biggest and most memorable names was Irv Kupcinet, author of the Sun-Times Kup’s Column, a household name who appeared everywhere along with his flamboyant wife, Essee. I still recall how exhilarated I was to see my name in Kup’s Column when I was promoted to Vice President of one of Chicago’s ad agencies when I was only in my 30s. So when this novel was published, I knew I had to read it.
The book centers on a factual occurrence: Kup’s only daughter, Roberta Lynn (later renamed Karyn and then nicknamed “Cookie”), a young L.A. starlet, is found dead on her L.A. sofa the same week JFK was assassinated. The circumstances of her death were obscure. She had just broken up with a young actor and wasn’t taking the break-up well. She called him and claimed a baby was left on her doorstep. Was she suffering from mental illness? Did she decide to end her life? Or was it more nefarious and did the actor strangle her to death after a stalking incident?
In this provocative reimaging, a struggling novelist named Jed Rosenthal looks back at the powerful friendship between the Kupcinets and their fictional best friends – Babs and Lou Rosenthal, a probate lawyer. After Cookie’s death, the Kupcinets suddenly drop the Rosenthals like hot potatoes leading to the downfall of the Rosenthal family. With Jed’s career going nowhere, Jed decides to research and revisit that time.
Orner, though the person of Jed, muses: “This isn’t a detective story or a police procedural. It’s not a mystery. A mystery would leak through my hands like water. God knows I’d write one if I could. But the truth is, I’ve never been drawn to stories with answers. I’m lured to the ones where people, for whatever reason, don’t want an answer.”
The reader won’t find answers here. Since 1963, there has never been a definitive answer to why Cookie died, and the murder or suicide remains unsolved. Kup himself comes across as a syphon, emotionally cold, glib, and non-self-aware. and Essee comes across as a social-climbing shrew and narcissist. No one is “likeable” (an over-rated quality for characters).
Throughout the book, I wondered how others, who had no connection to Chicago, would relate or react to this narrative. I’m not at all sure. But for Chicagoans, it’s must reading.
One of the biggest and most memorable names was Irv Kupcinet, author of the Sun-Times Kup’s Column, a household name who appeared everywhere along with his flamboyant wife, Essee. I still recall how exhilarated I was to see my name in Kup’s Column when I was promoted to Vice President of one of Chicago’s ad agencies when I was only in my 30s. So when this novel was published, I knew I had to read it.
The book centers on a factual occurrence: Kup’s only daughter, Roberta Lynn (later renamed Karyn and then nicknamed “Cookie”), a young L.A. starlet, is found dead on her L.A. sofa the same week JFK was assassinated. The circumstances of her death were obscure. She had just broken up with a young actor and wasn’t taking the break-up well. She called him and claimed a baby was left on her doorstep. Was she suffering from mental illness? Did she decide to end her life? Or was it more nefarious and did the actor strangle her to death after a stalking incident?
In this provocative reimaging, a struggling novelist named Jed Rosenthal looks back at the powerful friendship between the Kupcinets and their fictional best friends – Babs and Lou Rosenthal, a probate lawyer. After Cookie’s death, the Kupcinets suddenly drop the Rosenthals like hot potatoes leading to the downfall of the Rosenthal family. With Jed’s career going nowhere, Jed decides to research and revisit that time.
Orner, though the person of Jed, muses: “This isn’t a detective story or a police procedural. It’s not a mystery. A mystery would leak through my hands like water. God knows I’d write one if I could. But the truth is, I’ve never been drawn to stories with answers. I’m lured to the ones where people, for whatever reason, don’t want an answer.”
The reader won’t find answers here. Since 1963, there has never been a definitive answer to why Cookie died, and the murder or suicide remains unsolved. Kup himself comes across as a syphon, emotionally cold, glib, and non-self-aware. and Essee comes across as a social-climbing shrew and narcissist. No one is “likeable” (an over-rated quality for characters).
Throughout the book, I wondered how others, who had no connection to Chicago, would relate or react to this narrative. I’m not at all sure. But for Chicagoans, it’s must reading.
August 26, 2025
I guess if you’re from Chicago, male, and over the age of about 60, there’s a lot here for you. Otherwise, it’s a lot of inside baseball style content with a very narrow audience that pretty much sounds like nonsense to anyone outside of what was apparently a hyper-specific target group of readers.
The mystery itself is okay, and probably would have been better had it not been buried in a lot of bizarre local color that is neither common knowledge nor explained in the book.
I don’t mind the occasional in joke or obscure local culture reference, but I’m not going to go look up 75 of them, so not explaining this is stuff in the narrative is just…sigh.
The book is also overrun with a lot of very outdated references that just feel passé rather than nostalgic or historical. I still don’t really understand who Irv is, and perhaps more importantly, I don’t care.
I’ve been to Chicago many a time and thought it was lovely, and would have been interested in learning more about the city and its history through a mystery. But I learned nothing here except that I wasn’t invited to be in on the joke.
Perhaps a fun read for a specific subset of readers, but otherwise fairly devoid of appeal, even for someone like me who usually loves an unfamiliar locale and premise.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
The mystery itself is okay, and probably would have been better had it not been buried in a lot of bizarre local color that is neither common knowledge nor explained in the book.
I don’t mind the occasional in joke or obscure local culture reference, but I’m not going to go look up 75 of them, so not explaining this is stuff in the narrative is just…sigh.
The book is also overrun with a lot of very outdated references that just feel passé rather than nostalgic or historical. I still don’t really understand who Irv is, and perhaps more importantly, I don’t care.
I’ve been to Chicago many a time and thought it was lovely, and would have been interested in learning more about the city and its history through a mystery. But I learned nothing here except that I wasn’t invited to be in on the joke.
Perhaps a fun read for a specific subset of readers, but otherwise fairly devoid of appeal, even for someone like me who usually loves an unfamiliar locale and premise.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
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November 12, 2025It's a good read, but I'm not sure it's a good book.
Creatively written as a postmodern meta-novel about an author working on writing about the murder of a real-life daughter of Irv Kupcinet, a Chicago newspaper columnist and TV talk show host who was a fixture in the city for more than half a century.
He certainly takes the piss out of the grieving father for his lightweight writing. That's not something you would probably find a lot of disagreement about among Chicagoans alive during Kup's years of somewhat self-made popularity. But, it still felt a little mean spirited, given a murdered young woman is at the center of all of this.
Still, I found myself enjoying the reading experience itself as it jumps around from one era to the next, profiling the crime, the victim, her family and friends, and the author's contemporary struggles, even if it felt like it might just be too clever for its own good.
Creatively written as a postmodern meta-novel about an author working on writing about the murder of a real-life daughter of Irv Kupcinet, a Chicago newspaper columnist and TV talk show host who was a fixture in the city for more than half a century.
He certainly takes the piss out of the grieving father for his lightweight writing. That's not something you would probably find a lot of disagreement about among Chicagoans alive during Kup's years of somewhat self-made popularity. But, it still felt a little mean spirited, given a murdered young woman is at the center of all of this.
Still, I found myself enjoying the reading experience itself as it jumps around from one era to the next, profiling the crime, the victim, her family and friends, and the author's contemporary struggles, even if it felt like it might just be too clever for its own good.
February 22, 2026
I have read several of Peter Orner’s short story collections, drawn to the easy-to-miss moments of ordinary lives he captures, quiet yearnings, sometimes mysterious characters and other times, ones you think you know. His characters live in my head long after I read about them. He has the ability to draw me in with dialogue I can “hear,” with flawed characters whom I recognize distantly as people my parents might have known. This is my first Peter Orner novel; once again, his story construct, language, and creativity captured me.
On the surface, Jed Rosenthal, the narrator, a professor of creative writing at Loyola in Chicago, is reckoning with his own stalled writing career and a long-term relationship with Hanna (no h) in tatters, and the challenges of co-parenting their daughter, Snook.
His “real” life aside, he has been intrigued all his adult life by the story of 22-year-old Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet, found dead in her Hollywood apartment a few days after President Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963. Cookie was the daughter of his grandfather’s best friend, Irv, and his grandmother’s best friend, Esee. After the death by suicide of Cookie, Lou and Babs Rosenthal’s friendship with the Kupcinets abruptly and mysteriously dissolved.
What makes this novel even more intriguing is that Irv Kupcinet really did exist (as many others in the novel.) He was a successful, well known gossip columnist in Chicago whose daughter committed suicide in 1963, was married to Esse, and best friends with the Rosenthals. Honoring those facts while weaving the fictional story of Jed Rosenthal is only a part of Orner’s skill.
Divided into five sections, Orner takes the reader from December, 1963, to 2019, and back and forth to the present, seamless transitions, celebrating Chicago, a city he loves, turning details over and over again, introducing and fleshing out the many characters. The “voice” of Jed the author and Orner the author is embedded throughout the novel. “Minor characters don’t know they’re minor. Doesn’t that apply to us all?” The novel is filled with old hurts and sorrows. Jed believes somewhere in Cookie’s story is the answer to his family’s tragedies and losses…and his own. Somewhere in all the newspaper clippings he pores over is a connection, by a thread, Lou and Babs Rosenthal on the periphery.
A quick aside is the story of Solly, Jed’s uncle, who appears in a few of Orner’s short stories which I’d read, another mystery, another tragedy not necessarily acknowledged by the Rosenthals in their own world of losses. ‘“Most lives don’t need close to a thousand words. Obituary writers know this.”
Old hurts and sorrows…“But the truth is I’ve never been drawn to stories with answers. I’m lured to the ones where people, for whatever reason, don’t want an answer.” Maybe that’s why I find Orner’s writing so captivating.
On the surface, Jed Rosenthal, the narrator, a professor of creative writing at Loyola in Chicago, is reckoning with his own stalled writing career and a long-term relationship with Hanna (no h) in tatters, and the challenges of co-parenting their daughter, Snook.
His “real” life aside, he has been intrigued all his adult life by the story of 22-year-old Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet, found dead in her Hollywood apartment a few days after President Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963. Cookie was the daughter of his grandfather’s best friend, Irv, and his grandmother’s best friend, Esee. After the death by suicide of Cookie, Lou and Babs Rosenthal’s friendship with the Kupcinets abruptly and mysteriously dissolved.
What makes this novel even more intriguing is that Irv Kupcinet really did exist (as many others in the novel.) He was a successful, well known gossip columnist in Chicago whose daughter committed suicide in 1963, was married to Esse, and best friends with the Rosenthals. Honoring those facts while weaving the fictional story of Jed Rosenthal is only a part of Orner’s skill.
Divided into five sections, Orner takes the reader from December, 1963, to 2019, and back and forth to the present, seamless transitions, celebrating Chicago, a city he loves, turning details over and over again, introducing and fleshing out the many characters. The “voice” of Jed the author and Orner the author is embedded throughout the novel. “Minor characters don’t know they’re minor. Doesn’t that apply to us all?” The novel is filled with old hurts and sorrows. Jed believes somewhere in Cookie’s story is the answer to his family’s tragedies and losses…and his own. Somewhere in all the newspaper clippings he pores over is a connection, by a thread, Lou and Babs Rosenthal on the periphery.
A quick aside is the story of Solly, Jed’s uncle, who appears in a few of Orner’s short stories which I’d read, another mystery, another tragedy not necessarily acknowledged by the Rosenthals in their own world of losses. ‘“Most lives don’t need close to a thousand words. Obituary writers know this.”
Old hurts and sorrows…“But the truth is I’ve never been drawn to stories with answers. I’m lured to the ones where people, for whatever reason, don’t want an answer.” Maybe that’s why I find Orner’s writing so captivating.
October 27, 2025
A radically unique tale from a knowingly-unreliable narrator
I have been a Peter Orner fan ever since Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live reached me at just the right time, and I realized that no, I am not alone, nor are we.
My fun criticism of his work is that he needs to tone down the emotional punch here and there, ie when every tale in Maggie Brown & Others: Stories socks you in the midsection, it is time to write a cozy mystery to give your fans a breather.
And this is - different. It is not quite a mystery, but it is - and - it is unique.
Enter a fictional narrator investigating a non-fictional character who wrote about non-fictional characters playing fictional characters
Karyn Kupcinet was a real starlet who was really killed, and whose murder remains really unsolved.
Her father was Irv Kupcinet.
Irv Kupcinet, was a gossip columnist but as you can tell, think less of Mike Connolly
And more Mike Royko
There is little mention of gossip here, and more of Irv being a man about town or more accurately, as Peter Orner puts it
We are no longer in an age where being Royko at his annual softball tournament means much or at least not unless he does something viral and yet -
Irv is Irv or rather Kup is Kup, and what happened to Karyn? That is the mystery.
The knowingly unreliable narrator
The narrator of this tale investigates this tale and states
And then later he questions what he is finding until he - knowingly - becomes unreliable.
How to categorize this? Unique.
This is not the standard Peter Orner tale of coming of age as an overeducated middle-class - or arguably lower-middle-class - kid dealing with a drug dealer, or seeing a deer in a lake, or recounting an uncle blowing in with the wind and telling the kids to honk his schnoz - though there is a bit of that here and there.
This is autofiction? Auto historical fiction? Auto - biography? Auto - autobiography?
In any case - since it is unique, I would not recommend this as a Peter Orner starter book if you have not yet read him. To get into him I would recommend Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live or Maggie Brown & Others: Stories. Those will get you solid footing into his oeuvre.
But what the heck - you can start here as well. And for Orner fans of the #OrnerNation - this is a great tale, and well worth the wait. A bit less of his emotion, a lot more uniqueness, and I wholly recommend it!
I have been a Peter Orner fan ever since Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live reached me at just the right time, and I realized that no, I am not alone, nor are we.
My fun criticism of his work is that he needs to tone down the emotional punch here and there, ie when every tale in Maggie Brown & Others: Stories socks you in the midsection, it is time to write a cozy mystery to give your fans a breather.
And this is - different. It is not quite a mystery, but it is - and - it is unique.
Enter a fictional narrator investigating a non-fictional character who wrote about non-fictional characters playing fictional characters
Karyn Kupcinet was a real starlet who was really killed, and whose murder remains really unsolved.
Her father was Irv Kupcinet.
Irv Kupcinet, was a gossip columnist but as you can tell, think less of Mike Connolly
And more Mike Royko
There is little mention of gossip here, and more of Irv being a man about town or more accurately, as Peter Orner puts it
A DINOSAUR WHO never became extinct, he just kept at it. He remained a man about town long after that wasn’t a thing anymore. Year after year he showed up to his fifth-floor office at the Sun-Times.
We are no longer in an age where being Royko at his annual softball tournament means much or at least not unless he does something viral and yet -
Irv is Irv or rather Kup is Kup, and what happened to Karyn? That is the mystery.
The knowingly unreliable narrator
The narrator of this tale investigates this tale and states
This isn’t a detective story or a police procedural. It’s not a mystery. A mystery would leak through my hands like water. God knows I’d write one if I could. But the truth is I’ve never been drawn to stories with answers. I’m lured to the ones where people, for whatever reason, don’t want an answer. Cookie’s case remains open.
And then later he questions what he is finding until he - knowingly - becomes unreliable.
How to categorize this? Unique.
This is not the standard Peter Orner tale of coming of age as an overeducated middle-class - or arguably lower-middle-class - kid dealing with a drug dealer, or seeing a deer in a lake, or recounting an uncle blowing in with the wind and telling the kids to honk his schnoz - though there is a bit of that here and there.
This is autofiction? Auto historical fiction? Auto - biography? Auto - autobiography?
In any case - since it is unique, I would not recommend this as a Peter Orner starter book if you have not yet read him. To get into him I would recommend Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live or Maggie Brown & Others: Stories. Those will get you solid footing into his oeuvre.
But what the heck - you can start here as well. And for Orner fans of the #OrnerNation - this is a great tale, and well worth the wait. A bit less of his emotion, a lot more uniqueness, and I wholly recommend it!
November 18, 2025
Having recently read a different novel set in Chicago, it was intriguing to read another. This one blends fact and fiction. if you aren't into the history of the city, there might be a lot to figure out. Also the the timeline jumps around. I would say that the tone is a bit grim. it was hard for me to keep up with the action for these reasons, but it's worth the read if you like mid-20th century Americana.
September 28, 2025
A real genre bender that made me wish for the first time I’d been Jewish in Chicago in the middle of the 20th century. There’s real humor and nuance here, with break-in conversations from Rudy the cat that are wry enough to have made me laugh out loud (even though I prefer dogs).
March 20, 2026
This is unlike anything I’ve read before. The storytelling, the switching of timeline, and the fact that this is a fictional account of a real tragedy that happened days after the JFK assassination.
December 4, 2025
It gets a second star for Chicago
October 13, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of
The Gossip Columnist's Daughter.
I didn't realize this was based on a real life unsolved cold case.
I just saw the words 'cold case of a young Hollywood starlet’s death' in the blurb and I was hooked.
I never read the author before so I went into this with an open mind but it was clear from the start that he favors a writing style I'm not a fan of.
I despise stream of consciousness style of writing as the author writes down any random thought or anecdote that pops into his head.
The blurb is misleading because it's not about the unsolved cold case but how it ties to the author's family, their family drama and background.
If you're a Chicagoan you'll love the references and the famous names the gossip columnist and his daughter hangs out with.
I've never been to Chicago (not yet) but I recognized some of the names and landmarks.
I didn't like the writing but even worse, I didn't care about the author or his family or who they were hobnobbing with.
The disjointed writing style, random anecdotes and flashbacks and present day timeline were confusing and distracting.
What's the point of the book?
Nothing really happens, details are summarized and referred to and nothing is resolved.
It's sad the cold case remains unsolved (among so many others) but with so many true crime aficionados out there now maybe one day Cookie's case will finally be solved.
I didn't realize this was based on a real life unsolved cold case.
I just saw the words 'cold case of a young Hollywood starlet’s death' in the blurb and I was hooked.
I never read the author before so I went into this with an open mind but it was clear from the start that he favors a writing style I'm not a fan of.
I despise stream of consciousness style of writing as the author writes down any random thought or anecdote that pops into his head.
The blurb is misleading because it's not about the unsolved cold case but how it ties to the author's family, their family drama and background.
If you're a Chicagoan you'll love the references and the famous names the gossip columnist and his daughter hangs out with.
I've never been to Chicago (not yet) but I recognized some of the names and landmarks.
I didn't like the writing but even worse, I didn't care about the author or his family or who they were hobnobbing with.
The disjointed writing style, random anecdotes and flashbacks and present day timeline were confusing and distracting.
What's the point of the book?
Nothing really happens, details are summarized and referred to and nothing is resolved.
It's sad the cold case remains unsolved (among so many others) but with so many true crime aficionados out there now maybe one day Cookie's case will finally be solved.
September 7, 2025
Just so you know, reader, and I should know because I was the guy’s cat for more years than I’d care to admit, your narrator, one Jed Rosenthal, is a flake, a wack job, a weirdo – you pick your own moniker for someone who once drew my attention to a humongous spider on the wall with the idea of my doing I don’t know what with it (eat it? commune with it?), and, speaking of monikers, hung on me the name of the red-nosed reindeer, for Pete’s sake, and, more immediately to the point here, had apparently been scribbling away night and day even before the two of us ever met on whatever you’d call this crazy-ass concoction of his, with its mix of the real and the semi-real and the flat-out made-up.
Though to be fair, if you can get past all the personal stuff about his English Department gig at Loyola (enough already, all this breast-beating from writers), or the woes of his fictional family (though one of them ending up face down in the Chicago River has a certain pizazz to it) or his ruminations about anything and everything, including, time and again, how all roads lead to Chicago, if you can get past all that, there’s actually a pretty interesting real-life story at the book’s core about the death of the daughter of a real-life bigwig Chicago columnist from the early ’60s.
Irving Kupcinet his name was, though just Kup he was to his legions of fans who, like Sinatra, couldn’t sleep nights and would while away the night and early morning hours in those distant days before smartphones and podcasts and 300 channels by tuning into the show, which had no official ending time and would wander deep into the night, sometimes until dawn, with guests such as Carl Sandburg or Liberace or Dick Gregory or Dorothy Lamour or Dinah Shore all yakking away about things ranging from gardening to race relations to life on Mars.
Mr. Chicago, he was known as, with how he hobnobbed with anybody and everybody, including no less than the pope (had a personal audience with him he did) and Hollywood luminaries such as Jerry Lewis (“very, very chummy” the two were) and Bogart and Bacall (lunched with them the day after their wedding) and old Ski Nose, aka Bob Hope, as well as Old Blue Eyes. Even the model for the social-climbing gossip columnist in Bellow’s “Humboldt’s Gift” Kup supposedly was.
A real mover and shaker, in short, Kup, whose celebrity status may or may not have contributed to the edgy mental state of his from-the-start-headed-for trouble daughter.
Cookie she came to be known as, though she was born Roberta Lynn and called herself Bobbe in high school and later Karyn after getting serious about acting (she thought Karyn went better with Kupcinet). The real subject she is of Jed’s ramblings, or the circumstances of her death, anyway, which was never nailed down for sure as either a strangling or a suicide, though the fact that the hyoid in her neck was broken – the same bone as with Epstein, which lends a certain topicality to her story – certainly would seem to make the case for the former.
More than a couple of similarities her death shared with Marilyn Monroe’s, including how she was found nude (on the floor, not the bed) in her apartment in West Hollywood. And with how the discovery came just six days after Ruby plugged Oswald in the Dallas City Jail, it gave rise to speculation – heads up, conspiracy buffs – that her death might have been connected to the JFK assassination, which, to hear the conspiracy buffs tell it, might also have been connected to a series of other deaths, including, though it’s not cited in Jed’s book, a high-profile woman gossip columnist of the day, Dorothy Kilgallen, who was supposedly getting ready to blow the lid on the full story behind the assassination whose tentacles, in the minds of the buffs, extended to Kup’s daughter.
Something of a problem child she was apparently from the start, Cookie, with how she took pills and shoplifted and came up with wacko notes and ultimately made her way to Hollywood, where, amid some modicum of success, she hooked up romantically with a small-time actor of the day, Andrew Prine, whom if you’ve heard of at all is probably from his having starred in a modern-day cowboy show of the time, “Wide Country,” which also featured another bit actor of the day, Earl Holliman, and had the two of them riding the rodeo circuit in the way of Marty Milner and George Maharis hitting the road in “Route 66” (what is it with Hollywood and all this male buddy-buddy stuff?)
Decidedly out of his league, anyway, it would seem, our Andy, with the more obviously literate Cookie, who was given to hold forth on art and literature, and, in a notable instance of this, once remarked to Prine that for Bertrand Russell, it was “the human interest in the arcane, the esoteric, the abstruse that separates us from barnyard animals,” drawing a response from Andy of “Huh? Barnyard animals what?”
Not apparently the sharpest knife in the drawer, Andy, and also a suspect in Cookie’s death, something I’m more than happy to give legs to, with how he was also supposed to have strangled his ex-wife’s cat (well, case closed). Though again to be fair, another candidate was the guy downstairs from Candy, also a Hollywood type with connections to Hope Lange and Natalie Wood.
Anyway, to get back to Cookie, be it with Andy’s kid or someone else’s, in one of the truly cringy incidents in the book, she was delivered by the same couple who later found her body to an abortionist in Tijuana, whose circumstances were the cringier for their not being so squalid as you might imagine (the doctor a “squat man with a compassionate, almost jovial face” and the scene of the procedure a “clean little room reeking of bleach”).
James Ellroy country this is, folks, he of “Black Dahlia” fame, and in fact he played a not insignificant role in Cookie’s saga with how by hook or crook he was able to get a hold of her case file and with the piece he wrote for “GQ” did more than anyone else, Jed informs us, to keep her name out there, even if Jed wasn’t exactly enamored of him, coming up with one of the better lines in his book when he said of Ellroy that he never met a sentence he didn’t want to behead.
So maybe, as I reconsider, not so wacky a thing as I’ve given you to think, whatever you might call this thing of Jed’s, indeed, with its treatment of the Jewish experience in ’60s Chicago and the connections it makes to the larger political and criminal events of the day, including the heart-wrenching murder of poor little Bobby Franks (“our original sin,” Jed says of it), maybe even some kind of crime masterpiece in the way of “Black Dahlia” or “Chinatown.”
Just don't tell Jed I said so.
Though to be fair, if you can get past all the personal stuff about his English Department gig at Loyola (enough already, all this breast-beating from writers), or the woes of his fictional family (though one of them ending up face down in the Chicago River has a certain pizazz to it) or his ruminations about anything and everything, including, time and again, how all roads lead to Chicago, if you can get past all that, there’s actually a pretty interesting real-life story at the book’s core about the death of the daughter of a real-life bigwig Chicago columnist from the early ’60s.
Irving Kupcinet his name was, though just Kup he was to his legions of fans who, like Sinatra, couldn’t sleep nights and would while away the night and early morning hours in those distant days before smartphones and podcasts and 300 channels by tuning into the show, which had no official ending time and would wander deep into the night, sometimes until dawn, with guests such as Carl Sandburg or Liberace or Dick Gregory or Dorothy Lamour or Dinah Shore all yakking away about things ranging from gardening to race relations to life on Mars.
Mr. Chicago, he was known as, with how he hobnobbed with anybody and everybody, including no less than the pope (had a personal audience with him he did) and Hollywood luminaries such as Jerry Lewis (“very, very chummy” the two were) and Bogart and Bacall (lunched with them the day after their wedding) and old Ski Nose, aka Bob Hope, as well as Old Blue Eyes. Even the model for the social-climbing gossip columnist in Bellow’s “Humboldt’s Gift” Kup supposedly was.
A real mover and shaker, in short, Kup, whose celebrity status may or may not have contributed to the edgy mental state of his from-the-start-headed-for trouble daughter.
Cookie she came to be known as, though she was born Roberta Lynn and called herself Bobbe in high school and later Karyn after getting serious about acting (she thought Karyn went better with Kupcinet). The real subject she is of Jed’s ramblings, or the circumstances of her death, anyway, which was never nailed down for sure as either a strangling or a suicide, though the fact that the hyoid in her neck was broken – the same bone as with Epstein, which lends a certain topicality to her story – certainly would seem to make the case for the former.
More than a couple of similarities her death shared with Marilyn Monroe’s, including how she was found nude (on the floor, not the bed) in her apartment in West Hollywood. And with how the discovery came just six days after Ruby plugged Oswald in the Dallas City Jail, it gave rise to speculation – heads up, conspiracy buffs – that her death might have been connected to the JFK assassination, which, to hear the conspiracy buffs tell it, might also have been connected to a series of other deaths, including, though it’s not cited in Jed’s book, a high-profile woman gossip columnist of the day, Dorothy Kilgallen, who was supposedly getting ready to blow the lid on the full story behind the assassination whose tentacles, in the minds of the buffs, extended to Kup’s daughter.
Something of a problem child she was apparently from the start, Cookie, with how she took pills and shoplifted and came up with wacko notes and ultimately made her way to Hollywood, where, amid some modicum of success, she hooked up romantically with a small-time actor of the day, Andrew Prine, whom if you’ve heard of at all is probably from his having starred in a modern-day cowboy show of the time, “Wide Country,” which also featured another bit actor of the day, Earl Holliman, and had the two of them riding the rodeo circuit in the way of Marty Milner and George Maharis hitting the road in “Route 66” (what is it with Hollywood and all this male buddy-buddy stuff?)
Decidedly out of his league, anyway, it would seem, our Andy, with the more obviously literate Cookie, who was given to hold forth on art and literature, and, in a notable instance of this, once remarked to Prine that for Bertrand Russell, it was “the human interest in the arcane, the esoteric, the abstruse that separates us from barnyard animals,” drawing a response from Andy of “Huh? Barnyard animals what?”
Not apparently the sharpest knife in the drawer, Andy, and also a suspect in Cookie’s death, something I’m more than happy to give legs to, with how he was also supposed to have strangled his ex-wife’s cat (well, case closed). Though again to be fair, another candidate was the guy downstairs from Candy, also a Hollywood type with connections to Hope Lange and Natalie Wood.
Anyway, to get back to Cookie, be it with Andy’s kid or someone else’s, in one of the truly cringy incidents in the book, she was delivered by the same couple who later found her body to an abortionist in Tijuana, whose circumstances were the cringier for their not being so squalid as you might imagine (the doctor a “squat man with a compassionate, almost jovial face” and the scene of the procedure a “clean little room reeking of bleach”).
James Ellroy country this is, folks, he of “Black Dahlia” fame, and in fact he played a not insignificant role in Cookie’s saga with how by hook or crook he was able to get a hold of her case file and with the piece he wrote for “GQ” did more than anyone else, Jed informs us, to keep her name out there, even if Jed wasn’t exactly enamored of him, coming up with one of the better lines in his book when he said of Ellroy that he never met a sentence he didn’t want to behead.
So maybe, as I reconsider, not so wacky a thing as I’ve given you to think, whatever you might call this thing of Jed’s, indeed, with its treatment of the Jewish experience in ’60s Chicago and the connections it makes to the larger political and criminal events of the day, including the heart-wrenching murder of poor little Bobby Franks (“our original sin,” Jed says of it), maybe even some kind of crime masterpiece in the way of “Black Dahlia” or “Chinatown.”
Just don't tell Jed I said so.
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July 20, 2025
Jed Rosenthal is struggling in life. His relationship is ailing, his career stagnant, and he feels aimless. Struggling to come to grips with his life, he dives into the history of his family, and the family of his closest friends, the Kupcinet's. At only 22 years old their daughter Karyn "Cookie" Kupcinet was found dead in her apartment in Los Angeles. On a successful track to Hollywood stardom the question of how she died continues to rage on; was she strangled or did she overdose on pills? And, did Cookie's death have anything to do with the assassination of JFK? Don't be confused though, author Peter Orner doesn't attempt to actually answer any of those questions; instead The Gossip Columnist's Daughter delves into the lives of the Rosenthal's and the Kupcinet's in a non-linear way.
If you're from Chicago, or have frequented Chicago a lot, there are references galore that will bring you delight. If you're like me, who has never been, this may be a bit frustrating. Written in snapshots of time The Gossip Columnist's Daughter is a peculiar read; I didn't fall head over heels for it, but I also didn't dislike it either. It felt like the quest of a man to find the answers to what's happening in the present by looking back and studying the past. I found sections to be more engaging than others, but I liked the varied lengths on each page because it gave the book naturally breaks.
A hard book to rate and likely need a niche type of audience to adore, I'm giving it 3 out of 5 stars.
Thank you Little Brown Co for the gifted ARC.
If you're from Chicago, or have frequented Chicago a lot, there are references galore that will bring you delight. If you're like me, who has never been, this may be a bit frustrating. Written in snapshots of time The Gossip Columnist's Daughter is a peculiar read; I didn't fall head over heels for it, but I also didn't dislike it either. It felt like the quest of a man to find the answers to what's happening in the present by looking back and studying the past. I found sections to be more engaging than others, but I liked the varied lengths on each page because it gave the book naturally breaks.
A hard book to rate and likely need a niche type of audience to adore, I'm giving it 3 out of 5 stars.
Thank you Little Brown Co for the gifted ARC.
August 12, 2025
Orner strikes again with a riveting, rule-breaking, genre-bending, and multi-textured new novel of generational ache. My full review: https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/boo...
August 31, 2025
A few details of reaction first! I'm of an age (past 75) and of Chicago proper for the first 20 years and then for all the rest in Chicagoland burbs- so this was MUCH more entertaining for me than it will be for the reader not of an age and not of this place.
It's written in a jarring, short, blunt and sometimes very confusing style. It is QUITE Chicago crux by that aspect itself. It is also very, very Jewish in cadence and context culture of prose, speech, and habits. Even down to the migration places of "moving" homes and when. I have to tell a grandson who is 25 and single to read this one as it is almost entirely in all his old stomping grounds. Northwestern and then just North of that, and now living in Kenosha, WI. Wise man! Also had a granddaughter who went to his Loyola U. (in this tale he gets grant for background search etc. and is Loyola affilated). Now she is in Colorado. Hey I just realized those are my only two not married. HMM! A coincidence? All the rest went AWAY from Chicago for schools.
Regardless, it is an inside out and flipping time/era told tale. And it has immense context of celeb and entertainment and Chicago in its most vibrant and ABSOLUTELY its most enterprising (Candy business alone, not to speak of other industry or stockyards or 100 other directional "we make" exploding success experiences). I know and DO I REMEMBER. Nothing like seeing the bus line entries after the day shift got out at the Nabisco stop or at Rheem just a bit later on Kedzie. 3 buses in a row to get them all on. Or roaming around on bikes all day getting into Tootsie Roll, Cracker Jack or Mars tours with a break for a White Castle in between. Or taking 3 buses down Western to Riverview on Belmont and trying to hit some pizza place you heard about on the way home.
But his particular view was circa the life and death of Irv Kupcinet's daughter Cookie and their small circle of intimates more than ANY part of my Chicago. There was a few quotes in here that were worthy of Royko or Studs Terkel. One of them in paraphrase about "my Chicago world was entirely separate from their world" and by choice too on ALL sides. Truth!
In real time I disliked these columnists of celeb sightings etc. I knew them absolutely for the phonies that they were. Still are. Hence the splits that go along with their getalongs- that too. Never really told here, IMHO, but you KNOW that Essee dropped them because they REALLY knew how she (Cookie) must have died. For most of them in that circuit it was pretend and weep instead.
It is entirely also- quite a sad tale for a myriad of reasons. Because there is so much status posturing in their exact world (still IS too- a mere pittance example: Pritzker dining in three different states /coastlines within companies of dozens while declaring all churches, schools and restaurants closed for over a year or two at the same time in IL). Cookie actually was not an unusual product of it, the pretentious and superior "voice" atmosphere surrounding her.
The city itself was messier then than now. Also much, much more crowded and yet immensely more fun. It isn't only my age either but also in surround context. People were good intent and at least 75% happier on meeting and/or much more positive (NOT ANGRY) in the spirit of ACTUAL inspiration and aspirations. Nearly all (REAL DIVERSITY) were and not just here on the lake/ North side either. In all neighborhoods (42 to 50 of them in reality) until LBJ erased family units to make things "better".
It didn't at all surprise me that everyone in this book was gone to other places by 1980 and most of them by 1963 just winging it where they were.
The style of this book becomes ragged to raggity. The first half for me was nearly a 5 star and the last 1/3rd was barely a 3. So I settled on 4. He did have something to say, but it was extremely egocentric at base. And it got harder to read the more esoteric he got. Bombastically esoteric.
It's written in a jarring, short, blunt and sometimes very confusing style. It is QUITE Chicago crux by that aspect itself. It is also very, very Jewish in cadence and context culture of prose, speech, and habits. Even down to the migration places of "moving" homes and when. I have to tell a grandson who is 25 and single to read this one as it is almost entirely in all his old stomping grounds. Northwestern and then just North of that, and now living in Kenosha, WI. Wise man! Also had a granddaughter who went to his Loyola U. (in this tale he gets grant for background search etc. and is Loyola affilated). Now she is in Colorado. Hey I just realized those are my only two not married. HMM! A coincidence? All the rest went AWAY from Chicago for schools.
Regardless, it is an inside out and flipping time/era told tale. And it has immense context of celeb and entertainment and Chicago in its most vibrant and ABSOLUTELY its most enterprising (Candy business alone, not to speak of other industry or stockyards or 100 other directional "we make" exploding success experiences). I know and DO I REMEMBER. Nothing like seeing the bus line entries after the day shift got out at the Nabisco stop or at Rheem just a bit later on Kedzie. 3 buses in a row to get them all on. Or roaming around on bikes all day getting into Tootsie Roll, Cracker Jack or Mars tours with a break for a White Castle in between. Or taking 3 buses down Western to Riverview on Belmont and trying to hit some pizza place you heard about on the way home.
But his particular view was circa the life and death of Irv Kupcinet's daughter Cookie and their small circle of intimates more than ANY part of my Chicago. There was a few quotes in here that were worthy of Royko or Studs Terkel. One of them in paraphrase about "my Chicago world was entirely separate from their world" and by choice too on ALL sides. Truth!
In real time I disliked these columnists of celeb sightings etc. I knew them absolutely for the phonies that they were. Still are. Hence the splits that go along with their getalongs- that too. Never really told here, IMHO, but you KNOW that Essee dropped them because they REALLY knew how she (Cookie) must have died. For most of them in that circuit it was pretend and weep instead.
It is entirely also- quite a sad tale for a myriad of reasons. Because there is so much status posturing in their exact world (still IS too- a mere pittance example: Pritzker dining in three different states /coastlines within companies of dozens while declaring all churches, schools and restaurants closed for over a year or two at the same time in IL). Cookie actually was not an unusual product of it, the pretentious and superior "voice" atmosphere surrounding her.
The city itself was messier then than now. Also much, much more crowded and yet immensely more fun. It isn't only my age either but also in surround context. People were good intent and at least 75% happier on meeting and/or much more positive (NOT ANGRY) in the spirit of ACTUAL inspiration and aspirations. Nearly all (REAL DIVERSITY) were and not just here on the lake/ North side either. In all neighborhoods (42 to 50 of them in reality) until LBJ erased family units to make things "better".
It didn't at all surprise me that everyone in this book was gone to other places by 1980 and most of them by 1963 just winging it where they were.
The style of this book becomes ragged to raggity. The first half for me was nearly a 5 star and the last 1/3rd was barely a 3. So I settled on 4. He did have something to say, but it was extremely egocentric at base. And it got harder to read the more esoteric he got. Bombastically esoteric.
August 14, 2025
I read a free advance digital review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.
Some of the most enjoyable years of my life were the 14 years I spent as a young adult in Chicago in the 70s and 80s. I couldn’t resist a novel set in 1963 Chicago and in the near present.
Just a few days after JFK’s assassination, a struggling actress named Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment. Recognize that last name? If so, chances are you are or were a Chicagoan. Irv Kupcinet, nicknamed Kup, had a daily gossip column in the Sun-Times, and a late-night talk show. Kup was a shameless name dropper, but he knew everybody in the city and a lot of world-famous stars, too.
In the near-current day, Jed Rosenthal is living with the family cat in a depressing garden apartment, having recently separated from his longtime partner. He is putting in the time as an English professor at Loyola and co-parenting his young daughter. In the long, lonely hours, he develops an obsession about the long-ago death of Cookie, which remains unsolved. (Kup is real, Cookie’s death is real, but Jed is fictional.) As he researches, that mystery becomes entangled with one closer to home. Why did his grandparents, who had been best friends with Kup and his wife, suddenly become completely estranged from them after Cookie’s funeral?
There follows a vivid time travel trip through Chicago—especially Jewish Chicago—in the decades from the 60s to the present. So many names, places and stories. Orner repeats that all Jewish Chicagoans knew each other, or at least of each other, and he definitely makes it sound that way. But doesn’t that mean that Kup and Jed’s grandfather knew a lot of mobsters? Well, yes, it does. And Jed has some theories about what role that might have played in the past.
While Chicago lovers will be the best audience for this novel, it should have broad appeal, with its mix of true crime and family drama, with plenty of doses of smart-alecky humor.
Some of the most enjoyable years of my life were the 14 years I spent as a young adult in Chicago in the 70s and 80s. I couldn’t resist a novel set in 1963 Chicago and in the near present.
Just a few days after JFK’s assassination, a struggling actress named Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment. Recognize that last name? If so, chances are you are or were a Chicagoan. Irv Kupcinet, nicknamed Kup, had a daily gossip column in the Sun-Times, and a late-night talk show. Kup was a shameless name dropper, but he knew everybody in the city and a lot of world-famous stars, too.
In the near-current day, Jed Rosenthal is living with the family cat in a depressing garden apartment, having recently separated from his longtime partner. He is putting in the time as an English professor at Loyola and co-parenting his young daughter. In the long, lonely hours, he develops an obsession about the long-ago death of Cookie, which remains unsolved. (Kup is real, Cookie’s death is real, but Jed is fictional.) As he researches, that mystery becomes entangled with one closer to home. Why did his grandparents, who had been best friends with Kup and his wife, suddenly become completely estranged from them after Cookie’s funeral?
There follows a vivid time travel trip through Chicago—especially Jewish Chicago—in the decades from the 60s to the present. So many names, places and stories. Orner repeats that all Jewish Chicagoans knew each other, or at least of each other, and he definitely makes it sound that way. But doesn’t that mean that Kup and Jed’s grandfather knew a lot of mobsters? Well, yes, it does. And Jed has some theories about what role that might have played in the past.
While Chicago lovers will be the best audience for this novel, it should have broad appeal, with its mix of true crime and family drama, with plenty of doses of smart-alecky humor.
August 5, 2025
The Gossip Columnist's Daughter is a telling/dramatized accounting of sorts about the murdered daughter to a local celebrity writer in Chicago, Illinois. Spanning decades, the reader travels back and forth through past and present. I am unsure how much of this story is based on fact, or if it’s just an embellishment of information gathered. I’m sure people who know about this case will find it a compelling read. As for those of us who’ve never heard of it and know nothing about the city of Chicago (other than the giant bean and what I’ve seen on television and movies), this was an experience.
*Thanks to little brown and Company and NetGalley for sharing this read with me.
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*Thanks to little brown and Company and NetGalley for sharing this read with me.
Follow me on
✿KTBookReviews✿Instagram✿Twitter✿Facebook✿TikTok
June 4, 2025
In *The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter*, Peter Orner delivers a funny and touching novel that dives into memory, failure, and mystery. The story revolves around Jed Rosenthal, a struggling writer dealing with the fallout of a long "trial separation." He starts looking into the cold case of Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet, a Hollywood starlet who was found dead in 1963. This journey is not just about solving a mystery; it’s also about uncovering personal and family grief.
Orner expertly weaves different times and tones into the narrative, covering over seventy years without making it feel clunky. His writing is clear and bright, easily moving between the past and present while mixing real events with fiction. Jed’s quest into Cookie’s death reveals deep family issues and unspoken hurts that resonate through time.
While Cookie’s tragic death—rumored to be tied to the Kennedy assassination—adds an intriguing true-crime element, Orner uses it to ask bigger questions: What do we owe the past? What stories do we carry with us, and what do they cost us?
Although the book touches on heavy themes like grief and estrangement, it's also packed with humor typical of Orner's style. Jed’s witty reflections make the narrative feel like a chat with a friend—funny, sad, and very real.
Ultimately, *The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter* is more than just a mystery or a family saga; it’s a thought-provoking look at how stories shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
Orner expertly weaves different times and tones into the narrative, covering over seventy years without making it feel clunky. His writing is clear and bright, easily moving between the past and present while mixing real events with fiction. Jed’s quest into Cookie’s death reveals deep family issues and unspoken hurts that resonate through time.
While Cookie’s tragic death—rumored to be tied to the Kennedy assassination—adds an intriguing true-crime element, Orner uses it to ask bigger questions: What do we owe the past? What stories do we carry with us, and what do they cost us?
Although the book touches on heavy themes like grief and estrangement, it's also packed with humor typical of Orner's style. Jed’s witty reflections make the narrative feel like a chat with a friend—funny, sad, and very real.
Ultimately, *The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter* is more than just a mystery or a family saga; it’s a thought-provoking look at how stories shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
November 6, 2025
The gossip columnist’s daughter by Peter Orner
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/bo...
As described above…there is much Jewish/Chicago history in this book, that picks up on Saul Bellow and beyond…..
Really well constructed (in its own seemingly loose fashion); back and forth in time, COVID time, and then Kennedy assassination time, and then further back in time to explain how Lou over extended himself to buy the big house in Highland Park …apparently by doing some embezzling from a client for whom he was supposed to be fiduciary)… and how Sidney Korshak helped make the recriminations go away…
In between some biography of Jed and his various relationships with Hanna and their daughter whom they co-parent… and their cat!
Solly and his sad fate… as a reflection of Jed’s depression… or maybe of Lou’s misdeeds….
and the question of why Essee just dropped Babs after a lifetime friendship when her daughter is discovered dead of a suicide that Sidney helps get labelled as a murder…..is answered at best by jealousy that Babs had two daughters and a granddaughter and Essee was left with neither…..so Essee wants to deny Babs her friendship as a punishment….
Is the book about Jed and Hanna and Sam the cat and Snook/Leah or is it about Babs and Essie or about Lou and Irv or better about the intersection of all of these….and the shadow of Sidney Korshak and Solly, his sometime driver.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/bo...
As described above…there is much Jewish/Chicago history in this book, that picks up on Saul Bellow and beyond…..
Really well constructed (in its own seemingly loose fashion); back and forth in time, COVID time, and then Kennedy assassination time, and then further back in time to explain how Lou over extended himself to buy the big house in Highland Park …apparently by doing some embezzling from a client for whom he was supposed to be fiduciary)… and how Sidney Korshak helped make the recriminations go away…
In between some biography of Jed and his various relationships with Hanna and their daughter whom they co-parent… and their cat!
Solly and his sad fate… as a reflection of Jed’s depression… or maybe of Lou’s misdeeds….
and the question of why Essee just dropped Babs after a lifetime friendship when her daughter is discovered dead of a suicide that Sidney helps get labelled as a murder…..is answered at best by jealousy that Babs had two daughters and a granddaughter and Essee was left with neither…..so Essee wants to deny Babs her friendship as a punishment….
Is the book about Jed and Hanna and Sam the cat and Snook/Leah or is it about Babs and Essie or about Lou and Irv or better about the intersection of all of these….and the shadow of Sidney Korshak and Solly, his sometime driver.
July 14, 2025
I received an ARC of this upcoming novel through NetGalley.
The gossip columnist is Irv Kupcinet, a true life Chicago legend. A man about town, he knew everyone in Chicago and loads of big name TV and movie stars. His life was jarred in 1963 by the mysterious death of his daughter, Karyn, found strangled in a hotel room in Hollywood. She was just 22 and had yet to make it big. No one has ever found the murderer.
This is an unusual book. It is full of true facts about Irv Kupcinet. But the narrator of this book is a fictional character named Jed Rosenthal, a struggling author, and the grandson of a couple who were close friends with Irv and Essie Kupcinet. His grandparents mourned the death of Karyn with the Kupcinets, but their friendship ended suddenly and without explanation soon after Karyn’s death.
The book is not organized chronologically but a series of anecdotes cover what has happened to the Rosenthal family for the past 70 years. This book doesn’t really attempt to solve Karyn Kupcinet’s cold case. It does contain an abundance of Chicago references that appeal to a lifelong Chicagoan like me.
This book is largely the family history of three generations of Rosenthals. Their story is interesting and I found the whole book fast-moving and entertaining. Highly recommend to Chicagoans.
The gossip columnist is Irv Kupcinet, a true life Chicago legend. A man about town, he knew everyone in Chicago and loads of big name TV and movie stars. His life was jarred in 1963 by the mysterious death of his daughter, Karyn, found strangled in a hotel room in Hollywood. She was just 22 and had yet to make it big. No one has ever found the murderer.
This is an unusual book. It is full of true facts about Irv Kupcinet. But the narrator of this book is a fictional character named Jed Rosenthal, a struggling author, and the grandson of a couple who were close friends with Irv and Essie Kupcinet. His grandparents mourned the death of Karyn with the Kupcinets, but their friendship ended suddenly and without explanation soon after Karyn’s death.
The book is not organized chronologically but a series of anecdotes cover what has happened to the Rosenthal family for the past 70 years. This book doesn’t really attempt to solve Karyn Kupcinet’s cold case. It does contain an abundance of Chicago references that appeal to a lifelong Chicagoan like me.
This book is largely the family history of three generations of Rosenthals. Their story is interesting and I found the whole book fast-moving and entertaining. Highly recommend to Chicagoans.
November 16, 2025
A dizzying mix of fact, fiction, and Chicago history — in 2024, a failing novelist and Loyola creative writing professor named Jed digs into the death of a starlet named Cookie Kupicnet, who died under mysterious circumstances (suicide, murder, somehow related to the JFK assassination?) in Los Angeles in late November 1963.
Jed’s grandparents had been close friends with Cookie’s parents, Irv and Essee Kupcinet, who are rich Chicago socialites. This is true: Irv was a famous columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, who is tight with everyone from movie stars to moguls to mobsters. But after Cookie’s death, Irv and Essee cease all contact with Jed’s grandparents Babs and Lou. Why? What happened there? A second mystery!
As Jed tries to unravel these conundrums, he’s also trying to keep his personal life from totally unraveling. His partner has moved out and he’s begun talking to his cat (descending into madness?) as he gets more and more obsessed with Cookie’s death.
Told with the pace of a true-crime podcast and in short snippets of text that give the effect of Jed sort of just trying to organize his thoughts as he writes, I really wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. I enjoyed it while I was reading it and I enjoyed the Chicago history, but it read like the outline for a novel rather than a fully imagined novel itself. Fine, but not fully memorable.
Jed’s grandparents had been close friends with Cookie’s parents, Irv and Essee Kupcinet, who are rich Chicago socialites. This is true: Irv was a famous columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, who is tight with everyone from movie stars to moguls to mobsters. But after Cookie’s death, Irv and Essee cease all contact with Jed’s grandparents Babs and Lou. Why? What happened there? A second mystery!
As Jed tries to unravel these conundrums, he’s also trying to keep his personal life from totally unraveling. His partner has moved out and he’s begun talking to his cat (descending into madness?) as he gets more and more obsessed with Cookie’s death.
Told with the pace of a true-crime podcast and in short snippets of text that give the effect of Jed sort of just trying to organize his thoughts as he writes, I really wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. I enjoyed it while I was reading it and I enjoyed the Chicago history, but it read like the outline for a novel rather than a fully imagined novel itself. Fine, but not fully memorable.
March 15, 2026
An interesting amalgamation of true crime and embellished tale, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter is one of those books that is both unique in its approach and yet ordinary in its appeal. It’s told in a strangely staccato tone of short chapters and even shorter lines, which only lends itself to the haphazard internal struggle of the narrator. Jed is an exhausted author and struggling father. He distracts himself with an old story of a friendship break up between his grandparents and Irv and Esse Kupcinet. Part real-life cold case (the death of the Kupcinet’s daughter), part provocative novel (the tawdry story of the friendship), this blended drama captivates with names of the rich and famous from Hollywood to Chicago City Hall. Although the death of Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet is thoroughly investigated by Jed, the design is in the story-telling and not in mystery-solving. Jed spirals head first into the contradictions and half truths, seeking validation where he can, with relatives, his daughter, even his cat. Because of the author’s unconventional prose and slow start, it did take me awhile to get into the story. Well-worth the read, even if only for the nostalgia of Chicago people, places, and things.
February 25, 2026
I didn’t get into the rhythm of this book until about midway. Frankly, I liked the short episodes, and I felt a sense of accomplishment at the end of each one. As a Chicago/Evanston/North Shore resident, the references to local streets and settings were endearing. However, the Irv Kupcinet heyday was before my time. I also wasn’t aware of his actress daughter’s death in Hollywood. I may have enjoyed this novel more, since Irv’s life was fascinating and her case was an intriguing case that instigated theories related to the JFK assassination. That the story is told along with the narrator’s meandering and somewhat kooky life made for a good read - with a film noir feel (mafia types and celebrities involved) and dry humor courtesy of Jewish and Polish Chicago culture. And certainly a mystery - unearthing the lives of the narrator’s grand parents, their friendships, his parents, their perspective of their parents, his sister, the mother of his child, his career and his cat. Snapshots of conversations and situations over the years providing clues and impressions, and a sense of a bygone Chicago.
September 23, 2025
For fans of classic Hollywood dramas, this novel explores the unresolved the death of Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet blending true crime with imaginative storytelling. The daughter of a real-life prominent Chicago gossip columnist, and a rising star in her own right, Cookie was found strangled in her apartment under mysterious circumstances.
The narrative unfolds through the eyes of fictional Jed Rosenthal, whose life is unraveling as he seeks answers to his grandparents once close relationship to the Kupcinets until it was abruptly severed by some mystery event. Jed’s narration jumps haphazardly between present and past, fact and conjecture, weaving a meandering tale often leaving me guessing at its ultimate direction.
Orner vividly captures the atmosphere of Chicago, from tight knit Jewish neighborhoods of the Kupcinets and Rosenthals in the 1960s to present, portraying Hollywood’s elite, the criminal underground and the conspiracies that abound.
And while it wasn’t the ending I expected, it evoked a strong reaction in me.
The narrative unfolds through the eyes of fictional Jed Rosenthal, whose life is unraveling as he seeks answers to his grandparents once close relationship to the Kupcinets until it was abruptly severed by some mystery event. Jed’s narration jumps haphazardly between present and past, fact and conjecture, weaving a meandering tale often leaving me guessing at its ultimate direction.
Orner vividly captures the atmosphere of Chicago, from tight knit Jewish neighborhoods of the Kupcinets and Rosenthals in the 1960s to present, portraying Hollywood’s elite, the criminal underground and the conspiracies that abound.
And while it wasn’t the ending I expected, it evoked a strong reaction in me.
September 24, 2025
Jed is a stalled writer with a failing marriage, just living in limbo. Then he chances on a 60-year-old unsolved crime—the death of a Hollywood starlet—with connections to his own family and thinks there might be a book in it for him, so he launches an investigation. This is actually a real-life cold case—the death of Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet—and she was actually the daughter of gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet, who, with his glam wife Essee, was part of the Chicago elite. The real and the fictional blend sinuously, as Jed thinks that if he can get to the bottom of Cookie’s death—was it murder, suicide, part of a wider conspiracy linked to JFK’s assassination—he might be able to solve a mystery in his own family. You see, his grandparents were the very best of friends with the starry Kupcinets, until, shortly after their daughter’s death, they very abruptly weren’t. The old Hollywood stuff was quite interesting to me and kept me going.
November 12, 2025
If I had a nickel for every book I read about a middle aged struggling writer trying to write a magnum opus about Chicago history with a heavy reliance on historical newspapers and dealing with a rough relationship with his wife, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but.....
(you get the gist)
The two books are this and the Lazarus Project, and both are fantastic. This is a book for people who like researching and it's not about very much nor does he ever figure very much out, but that of course is the perfect kind of book. And there's still lots of drama. I love how much direct quoting there is from historical newspapers etc, though I'm curious if he made up so many of the facts like with the Lazarus project.
It also, of course, begs the question of where Peter Orner fits into all this--he's writing auto fiction about a guy writing auto-fiction about a real life event, so I wonder if he has a connection to Irv Kupcinet? Much to consider
(you get the gist)
The two books are this and the Lazarus Project, and both are fantastic. This is a book for people who like researching and it's not about very much nor does he ever figure very much out, but that of course is the perfect kind of book. And there's still lots of drama. I love how much direct quoting there is from historical newspapers etc, though I'm curious if he made up so many of the facts like with the Lazarus project.
It also, of course, begs the question of where Peter Orner fits into all this--he's writing auto fiction about a guy writing auto-fiction about a real life event, so I wonder if he has a connection to Irv Kupcinet? Much to consider
February 16, 2026
Started out very strong. The writing is engaging, the story is intriguing, the mix of short and long chapters keeps it moving. But then, as Jed becomes more and more obsessed with the case of Cookie, things get confusing. Hey, I talk to my cat, too! But this just gets muddy.
If you're not familiar with Chicago, you'll miss a lot of references. It also makes me uncomfortable that these real people, who lost their real daughter at age 22, are re-created in Orner's imagination as horrible, fake, name-dropping creatures. Kup was a social columnist, so yes, he's going to trade on his relationships and acquaintance with celebrities great and small. In real life, after Karen's death, Essee threw herself into philanthropy of all kinds. So knowing all of that makes this characterization distasteful.
All in all, a decent book, but I wish it was a pure fiction, instead of being not only based on real people, but using their names and tragedy.
If you're not familiar with Chicago, you'll miss a lot of references. It also makes me uncomfortable that these real people, who lost their real daughter at age 22, are re-created in Orner's imagination as horrible, fake, name-dropping creatures. Kup was a social columnist, so yes, he's going to trade on his relationships and acquaintance with celebrities great and small. In real life, after Karen's death, Essee threw herself into philanthropy of all kinds. So knowing all of that makes this characterization distasteful.
All in all, a decent book, but I wish it was a pure fiction, instead of being not only based on real people, but using their names and tragedy.
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