Maeve Fly

Maeve Fly (2023) is a psychological horror novel by C. J. Leede. It follows the life of Maeve, a serial killer in Los Angeles, as she grapples with her dying grandmother, her internalized rage, and her new attraction to Gideon. Through its setting, the novel explores hidden identities and the realities hidden beneath the glamour of Hollywood stardom. After years of committing violent and gruesome murders under the tutelage of her grandmother, Maeve begins to question whether she needs to hide who she is, whether she is truly destined to be alone forever, and how to navigate her new feelings. Maeve Fly explores themes of The Power of Personal Connection, The Distinction Between the Private Self and the Public Persona, and Good and Evil in Storytelling.

This guide uses the Nightfire Trade first paperback edition of the novel published in 2024.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of sexual content, rape, graphic violence, death, illness, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Maeve Fly lives on Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip with her grandmother, Tallulah because her parents have disowned her. Tallulah is a former actress who is in a permanent coma with cirrhosis. Maeve dreads losing her grandmother, the only person with whom she has ever had a true connection.

Maeve works with her best friend Kate at an amusement park, where she dresses as an ice princess. She detests her supervisor, Liz, but truly loves her job, feeling deeply connected to her character’s story and enjoying dressing up for the children in the park. She regularly goes out with Kate to various bars around the city, where they drink and use drugs.

One day after work, Maeve admires the bougainvillea near her home and finds a strange object hidden among the vines: a doll’s head sewn onto a toy alligator and painted with blood. She is deeply shaken by the doll, although she does not understand why.

She then goes out to a party with Kate, where she is introduced to Kate’s brother, Gideon, who has just moved to Los Angeles. Gideon, a professional hockey player, immediately annoys Maeve by insisting that he knows what type of person she is. She also dislikes his judgmental attitude toward Kate, who has sex with famous directors to get into their movies. When an earthquake occurs at the party, Gideon recovers Maeve’s book and sees her notes in it, further annoying her. However, after her phone is ruined, she is forced to accept a ride home from him.

Maeve goes to the Tata Tiki Lounge twice a week at the same time. No one is ever there except The Bartender (always capitalized) and a patron she calls “Johnny,” to whom she has never spoken. She sits and reads “subversive” books, typically about sexual deviance and crime. She becomes enraged at the notes that Gideon saw, as they give him insight into her inner thoughts.

Once a month, Maeve does sexual favors for a famous director. She visits him at the Chateau Marmont and spends the night, fantasizing about the different ways she can kill him. On one visit, she finds Gideon by the pool with an actress. When they are alone, he tells Maeve that he understands her and that they are similar. He references her notes in the book, offering her advice that annoys her and piques her curiosity. He then offers to have sex with her, but she declines, leaving him by the pool.

When Maeve goes home, her grandmother’s nurse, Hilda, is still there. Hilda tells her that they need to stop treating her mother’s condition and allow her to die peacefully. Enraged, Maeve thinks of how she is being robbed of both her grandmother and Kate—who will become famous soon. She asks Hilda to come to the basement, where she kills her. Maeve reveals that Hilda is not the first person she has killed, as she dismantles her body and uses her bones as Halloween decorations.

As Maeve struggles to care for her grandmother on her own, she decides to reach out to Gideon, desperate for distraction. He agrees to see her, and Maeve goes with Kate to watch Gideon’s hockey scrimmage. Kate tells her the story of her high school boyfriend, Jared, who was also Gideon’s best friend. He died falling off a bridge, which Maeve realizes is the cause of Gideon’s moments of darkness. After the scrimmage, Kate gets a phone call from a director she has been seeing, offering a part in an upcoming movie. Ecstatic, she leaves Gideon and Kate at the hockey rink.

Gideon takes Maeve out onto the ice rink where he has set up a carpet for her to stand on. He teaches her to channel her rage into the puck, and she feels joy as she hits it. The two then have violent sex on the ice, culminating in Maeve pulling out one of Gideon’s loose teeth from his scrimmage.

Maeve and Gideon begin a sexual relationship, often bringing home other people to participate with them. After one encounter, Gideon shows Maeve a “Halloween room” he has built for her in his basement, with fake fog, bones, a coffin bed, and more. She is awed by his kindness and how well he understands her.

After one of their nights together in the Halloween room, Maeve oversleeps and misses work and her grandmother’s morning medication. She texts Liz and then rushes home to find that her grandmother is close to death. Maeve dedicates her day to caring for her, then blames herself for getting distracted by Gideon. She texts him and tells him to leave her alone and never contact her again, convinced that she needs to focus on her grandmother and her job.

When Maeve goes to work the next day, she tries to apologize to Liz, but Liz shows her a video she recorded of Maeve and Gideon having sex in the park. She delights in firing Maeve. When Kate realizes what is happening, she immediately quits. She and Maeve leave the park together, with Maeve realizing it is likely one of the last times they will be together.

After losing her job, Maeve embraces her violent nature. She goes back to the amusement park for the annual Halloween Party and stalks Liz and her boyfriend, Andre. She drugs them, takes them back to her home, and brutally kills them both. She then begins to wander around the Sunset Strip, finding and destroying another doll, then waiting for the person who placed it there. She finds a girl looking for the doll, then chases her but fails to catch her.

Maeve goes to a music venue where the band is using an old photo of her grandmother as a background visual. After watching them perform, she assaults them in their tour bus, violently killing all three band members. She then goes into the bar and leaves pieces of their brains in various guests’ drinks, before going back out onto the street. She ends up at a brothel, where she learns that Gideon and Kate have been getting more public attention as their careers take off. She learns that they are going to a Halloween party for celebrities.

Maeve returns home and finds her mother dead. However, Tallulah has become a part of her and now speaks to her from inside her mind. She goes with the imaginary Tallulah to the party, where she finds Derek trying to drug Kate. She invites him into the bathroom, then assaults him, gouging out one of his eyes but leaving him alive so she won’t jeopardize Kate’s career. She then runs into Kate, who accuses her of kissing Derek. She tells Maeve to stay out of her life, leaving Maeve despondent. Maeve dances alone to Halloween music on the dance floor for the rest of the night, until Gideon finds her.

Maeve and Gideon go back to her home. They have sex many times, staying up through the rest of the night and into the next day. However, they are interrupted by two police officers knocking on the door. They tell Maeve that they are still searching for Hilda and believe something has happened to her. They are wary of Maeve, reminding her to call them if she remembers anything, but they eventually leave.

Back inside, Maeve discovers that Gideon has found the keys to the cellar. She goes into the basement and finds him there, looking at her collection of bodies, including the bones of Maeve’s grandfather, killed by Tallulah. Gideon tries to tell Maeve that it is okay, but she attacks and kills him, sobbing as she does so.

When Maeve goes back upstairs, she finds Gideon’s clothes. Inside, there is an envelope with several photographs of dead bodies and a newspaper clipping about Jared’s death. Maeve realizes that Gideon has also killed many people and that he tried to tell her this in the basement before she killed him.

Devastated, Maeve goes to Gideon’s house. She finds a locked room with a dead body inside as well as a table with tools. On the table are items that Gideon has been using to make the dolls and plant for her to find. She finds his last doll with a note that says, “I See You” (271), as she sobs and realizes that she will be alone forever.