A Los Angeles hotel with a haunting histor y. A missing young woman. A disturbing video followed by a shocking discov ery. A cold-case mystery that has become an internet phenomenon--and for o ne determined journalist\, a life-changing quest toward uncomfortable trut hs. Twenty-one-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam was last heard from on January 31\, 2013\, after she checked into downtown L.A.'s Cecil Hotel--a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day\, Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More tha n a week later\, complaints by guests of foul-smelling tap water led to a grim discovery: Elisa's nude body floating in a rooftop water tank\, in an area extremely difficult to access without setting off alarms. The only a pparent clue was a disturbing surveillance video of Elisa\, uploaded to Yo uTube in hopes of public assistance. As the eerie elevator video went vira l\, so did the questions of its tens of millions of viewers. Was Elisa's d eath caused by murder\, suicide\, or paranormal activity? Was it connected to the Cecil's sinister reputation? And in that video\, what accounted fo r Elisa's strange behavior? With the help of web sleuths and investigators from around the world\, journalist Jake Anderson set out to uncover the f acts behind a death that had become a macabre internet meme\, as well as a magnet for conspiracy theorists. In poring through Elisa's revealing onli ne journals and social-media posts\, Anderson realized he shared more in c ommon with the young woman than he imagined. His search for justice and tr uth became a personal journey\, a dangerous descent into one of America's quiet epidemics. Along the way\, he exposed a botched investigation and pr eviously unreported disclosures from inside sources who suggest there may have been a corporate conspiracy and a police cover-up. In "Gone \;at& nbsp\;Midnight\," Anderson chronicles eye-opening discoveries about who El isa Lam really was and what--or whom--she was running from\, and presents shocking new evidence that may re-open one of the most chilling and obsess ively followed true crime cases of the century
\n&mdash\;From the Ca talog.
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