The question readers need to ask themselves while reading Do Tell is can narrator Edie, professional actress, spreader of gossip and half truths, be trusted? Edie O'Dare is a made-up person of the Hollywood variety. Edie won a trip to Hollywood, traded in her last name of O'Shaughnessy and became an exciting new starlet. That short trip turned into years of a second tier acting career, and a top-notch turn as source for a popular gossip columnist. In character costumes and gowns borrowed from wardrobe, Edie blends in, ears out for a salacious story. When a 16 year-old actress accuses the studio's resident swashbuckling hero of sexual assault, Edie finds a way to stay in Hollywood, and a whole new career. Instead of passing on gossip she'll write her own column - Do Tell and become a gossip maven herself. Along the way Edie will lose friends, damage reputations, and help to exonerate a guilty man at the expense of a friend.
At a studio party celebrating the sham engagement of actor Charles Landrieu, whom Edie considers a friend, 16-year-old actress Sophie Melrose reports that the studio's resident action hero, Freddie Clarke, sexually assaulted her. Edie's life as a gossip spreading fly on the wall is an open secret, so Sophie trusts Edie to spread the story. And Edie does, for the right reason, at first. Edie's contract is expiring and with no major award nominations or clamoring fan base, her life of luxurious gowns, parties and nightclubs - not to mention sources of gossip - will disappear. Edie's friend, head of the studio Augustan, offers a unique opportunity - report gossip about the studio's most troublesome stars as leverage for them to be fired. After Charles Landrieu makes a crack about Freddy at a studio press event, Edie is pressured into denigrating him in her column. Edie has betrayed both a 16-year-old assault victim, and the only person with the backbone to come out against a rapist.
Author Lindsay Lynch based the novel on the story of two young women, who, separate of each other, accused actor Errol Flynn of rape. Flynn was tried on both accounts in the same trial and was acquitted (which created the sickening idiom "In like Flynn.") Sophie Melrose wants her day in court and is met with derision. The audacity she possesses (according to Hollywood and the movie going public) is disturbing - what right has she to take down a Silver Screen hero? Every right, because she dared to report her assault. If every woman in Hollywood were so brave, that Silver Screen would be so tarnished, it would be black.
But why did the author choose to make Edie the protagonist? The story from Sophie's POV though important, would be too distressing (not much has changed in the realm of sex crimes against women in the 80 odd years since the "golden" age of Hollywood.) Edie, possibly untrustworthy as narrator, offers a side of Hollywood not much considered - quiet observer keeper of some secrets, reporter of others. Hollywood, land of make believe, is its own best production. Lynch makes readers question, not so much what is the truth, but does truth matter when there are so many different versions. And truth itself, well, that's a vague notion wrought by some writer to spill from the lips of stars as the music swells and the credits roll.
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