That Girl by Paul W Fairman

Paperback. Condition: Good. 1971. Popular Library. 1st Printing.

That Girl goes Gothic. Based loosely on the TV series staring Marlo Thomas. 

That Girl was a sitcom about an aspiring actress and her boyfriend making their way in New York City. Ann Marie works a series of temp jobs while also working to get booked as an actress, and has lots of misadventures along the way. These misadventures are always comical in nature, which is what makes the tie in novel such an oddity. The novel is a mystery/thriller. It is entirely different in tone than the show, and the character of Ann Marie has little relation to her t.v. counterpart apart from her name, being an actress, and having a boyfriend named Donald.

In the book Ann Marie takes a part in what she believes is a summer stock production of Wuthering Heights. What she discovers when she arrives is that the setting of the novel has been reproduced with the actors living the lives of their characters 24/7. There are mysterious figures, abductions, a murder, and the revelation that the actors are all under the influence of drugs and hypnotism to keep them in character and from running away.