A beautiful nineteen-year-old named Gilda becomes the mistress of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. She dreams of becoming his wife. The narrator, in love with Gilda, follows clues about her death two years after the affair.
During an assassination attempt on the Shah, he gets shot on the steps of the Marble Palace. As he puts it, "I took a bullet for my king up the ass and got a jester's seat, the best seat, to watch the fall of the Persian Empire."
Killing Gilda is infused with intrigue, but at its heart, it's a love story that follows the best traditions of classics like The Beauty and the Beast. We enter the rarified atmosphere of the court, the young woman's life, and the reasons for her death. We follow the characters through the Paris of Madame Claude, the Shah's ski resort at St. Moritz, and Doctor Pitanguy's plastic surgery clinic in Baden Baden.
The story, with its scheming characters and rare glimpses into Shah's private life, eschews easy labels. The Shah's sexual adventurism didn't stop his liberal policies for women's rights.
Killing Gilda is the story of a woman trapped in a gilded cage. And it's a compelling portrait of a royal dynasty whose fall has profoundly impacted the modern world. The recent women's protests in Iran will heighten interest in the book.