A mysterious death and breaking of friendships are the origins of ‘Gossip Columnist’s Daughter’

Paweł Kruk Peter Orner reads from “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter” on Monday in Cambridge.

In his third novel, “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter,” Peter Orner tells the tale of the true, unsolved murder of actor Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet in the tumultuous, buzzing era of 1963, a time gossip columnists held a unique social and cultural power, and the moment generations later that a man decided to pore over family stories, newspaper archives, old photos and crime scene notes to find the truth of her death. There are, of course, ramifications – and these are all the more portentous considering Orner’s own family history inspired the book. We spoke with Orner ahead of his Monday reading in Cambridge about that, the lost art of a common conversation and his goal in writing fiction. This int