Desire turns deadly in the small, dusty town of Bakersfield, CA circa 1959, with the arrival of a legendary director scouting locations for a film about madness and murder at a roadside motel. Though the story unfolds in much the same way that Hitchcock made Psycho – frame by frame, in camera pans, zooms, and close-ups – What You See In the Dark takes readers into places no cameras can ever go, venturing into characters’ petty jealousies, private thoughts, and unrealized dreams.

Following the intimate perspectives of four women – Teresa Garza, the young aspiring singer who works at a shoe store; Candy, the envious co-worker who covets Teresa's boyfriend, Dan; Arlene Watson, Dan's mother, head waitress at the local diner and owner of the roadside motel; and the Actress (read: Janet Leigh), preparing the role that will come to define her – Muñoz perceptively explores the shadowy dynamics of small town America and the dark side of the American dream.

This finely wrought novel is a masterpiece of tone and an unflinching examination of our fascination with violence, on-screen and off.