Finally, the “Gossip Girls” are going from mere backstabbing to actual stabbing.
In the latest — and final — installment of Carroll Gardens author Cecily von Ziegesar’s TV-adapted novels, the Manhattan jet-setters who bitch, moan, complain and copulate finally start maiming each other for real.
“It’s my big finale — it’s an exaggeration of the way the books already are … now these characters are killing people,” said von Ziegesar, who’ll read from “Gossip Girl — Psycho Killer” at BookCourt on Oct. 22. “Then they’re like, let’s go have dinner.”
In the new thriller, von Ziegesar re-purposes the plot, the characters, even the dialogue, of her first “Gossip Girl” novel, trading designer handbags for butcher knives and other antique weaponry pilfered from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And there’s even a perfect crime: a murder with a particularly sharp stiletto heel.
Each murder is gorier and more absurd than the next — expect squirrel poison, exploding eyeballs, asphyxiation, and mean girls being thrown down garbage chutes.
At one point, Blair Waldorf, a beautiful, wealthy, straight-and-narrow Yale-bound senior, uses a pizza slicer to cut the throat of a girl who had the temerity to flirt with her boyfriend — and nobody bats a surgically altered eyelash.
But don’t worry if you’re a “Gossip Girl” diehard — the vixens may have blood on their hands, but the manicures remain flawless.
“People think ‘Gossip Girl’ is about shopping and mean girls, but what people don’t get is the humor: It’s a satire,” said von Ziegesar.
Cecily von Ziegesar will read from “Gossip Girl — Psycho Killer” at BookCourt [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], Oct. 22, 7 pm, free. For info visit www.bookcourt.org.
