Hold Me Down

A new novel of suspense coming in September 2021

HOLD ME DOWN is a standalone novel of suspense, set in the basement clubs and dark back rooms behind the stage lights of rock and roll stardom. Like 2017's Massachusetts Book Awards "must read" World Enough, HOLD ME DOWN deals with love in all its forms, community, and rock and roll from a strong, if damaged female perspective. Both deeply personal and timely, HOLD ME DOWN also explores issues of sexual abuse and recovery, the subjectivity of memory, and women’s views on family and sexuality.

Coming from Polis Books in fall 2021

About the Book

Endorsements

“HOLD ME DOWN is powerfully written and compulsively readable. Part murder mystery and part wistful history of a one-time rock star and her deeply buried secrets.”

– Dave Zeltserman, award-winning author of over 20 crime, thriller, and horror novels, including Small Crimes, now a Netflix film

“A hard-rocking riff of a novel, HOLD ME DOWN explodes with a passion for music while also probing the intimate betrayals buried under a haze of alcohol and pills. Simon tells her story from the perspective of an aging female star trying to understand where it all went wrong, expertly exploring how music seeks to embody truth, even when musicians hid their own pain behind the melodies.”

– Joanna Schaffhausen, winner of the 2016 MWA/St. Martin's Minotaur first crime novel award for The Vanishing Season

“Clea Simon’s devastatingly powerful mystery hits you like a punch in the heart. About aging, regret, and women in rock and roll, it’s also about how no matter how hard you fight, some things are never behind you, be it deep love or a terrifyingly brutal assault, and that survival doesn’t always look like what you think it does. Gripping, truthful and provocative.”

– Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Is this Tomorrow

Other Book in "Psychological Suspense"