Review by Booklist Review
Harper leaves the country noir of She Rides Shotgun (2017) for a contemporary take on Nathanael West's nightmare vision of L.A.--a promised land fueled by unfulfilled promises, a desert abutting an ocean where dreams come to die. Mae Pruett, a "black-bag publicist" who hides the dirty secrets of the rich and famous, decides to flip the script after her boss is murdered. This time she'll unearth the secrets rather than burying them. Working with ex-cop Chris Tamburro, Mae starts digging into her boss' death and soon finds herself drowning in a cesspool of depravity and corruption--arson at homeless camps, predators in the "tween" movie world--that is beyond even her thoroughly jaded imagination. Saving a pregnant teenager who has fallen into the net of a sitcom producer and his billionaire cronies, all with the power to indulge their Jeffrey Epstein cravings, becomes Mae and Chris' crusade, but the road to even a small slice of salvation in a city where "nobody talks but everybody whispers" is paved with blood. West's Day of the Locust ended with a surreal vision of L.A. aflame, and the fire next time is very much on the horizon here, too, in a city that "begs to burn." It's early days, but don't be surprised if this utterly compelling thriller, which builds on timeless themes and brings new shading to an iconic landscape, is the noir of the year.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Edgar winner Harper (She Rides Shotgun) brilliantly taps into the zeitgeist for this crime novel that perfectly reflects its time and place. As a series of bombings ravage the homeless encampments of Los Angeles, the city's wealthy elite are protected by "black-bag publicists" like Mae Pruett. A crisis manager for L.A.'s rich and famous, Mae helps to keep their dirty laundry and debauched escapades from reaching the public. This can, of course, be a complicated job, and requires a tag team effort from a multidisciplinary group of lawyers, journalists, and, when necessary, hired muscle. When Mae's boss, Dan Hennigan, is murdered, Mae and her ex, Chris Tamburro, a disgraced former cop who's now employed by a private security company, wind up working the same case. As they investigate, they follow Hennigan's side hustle down a dark road involving über-rich predators and some of Hollywood's most vulnerable. Combing the brutality of James Ellroy with the poetic sensibility of Raymond Chandler, Harper takes the reader on a searing journey into L.A.'s underworld where truth and righteousness have become irrelevant and only power has currency. This neo-noir is a must read. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Amidon's Locust Lane, a young woman is found dead in the more fashionable section of a New England suburb, and the three teenagers who were with her that night are now suspects in her murder (100,000-copy first printing). From Carlsson, youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, the internationally best-selling Blaze Me a Sun features a serial killer in a small Swedish town who commits his first murder the same night in 1986 when Prime Minister Olof Palme is assassinated. In a continuation of Cosimano's USA Today best-selling and Edgar--nominated series starring author and single mom Finlay Donovan, readers will find that Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun; unexpectedly owing Russian mobsters a favor, she must help them identify a contract killer before the cops do, especially crucial because the killer might actually be a cop. In The Motion Picture Teller, a stand-alone from CWA Dagger winner Cotterill set in 1996 Bangkok, postman Supot and his best friend, video store owner Ali, discover a mysterious film titled Bangkok 2010 that no one seems to know anything about--and that might be cursed. In Jane Harper's Exiles, Australian federal investigator Aaron Falk--whom readers know from the New York Times best-selling Dry--senses fault lines among the close group of attendees at a party in South Australian wine country, owing to the disappearance of a friend whose baby was found abandoned at a busy festival. From the Edgar Award--winning Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows features publicist Mae Pruett, who makes sure that everybody doesn't know about the shady dealings of the lawyers and private security firms for which she works, now trying to discover the secret her boss took to his death. In You Must Remember This, from Edgar-nominated YA author Rosenfield, Miriam Gardiner's fall through thin ice one Christmas Eve in the spot where decades ago she used to meet a lover might be an accident or suicide, but motives for murder emerge when daughter Delphine starts looking into the entire family. In the New York Times best-selling Tracy's The Devil You Know, LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan faces a tough case with the suspicious death of popular actor Evan Hobbes in a Malibu rockslide just 24 hours after a fake video smashes up his career; the subsequent murder of his agent's brother-in-law suggests evil intent.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Edgar winner Harper's deep dive into a netherworld of murder and sexual perversion among LA's elite power wielders evolves from noir fiction into a knotty morality tale. Mae Pruett whitewashes celebrity clients' ugliest imbroglios, from an inconvenient black eye to a drug overdose, for a crisis-management firm specializing in "black bag PR." Former cop Chris Tamburro works for a high-end security firm that stretches the definition of protection to include physical violence. They both accept that they are complicit in secrets and lies but they love the adrenaline rush of their work. Then Mae's co-worker Dan Hennigan is killed under circumstances she finds suspicious though her bosses don't, or won't. Coincidentally, Chris' boss offers him what initially seems a choice assignment, to use his old police connections to investigate Dan's killing. But why is the client's identity a secret? Soon the former lovers are secretly working together without their companies' knowledge, connecting a growing list of murders to Jeffrey Epstein--style sexual outrages, questionable land deals, and a host of other unsavory dealings by men of seemingly untouchable clout. As the bodies accumulate, a pregnant 14-year-old becomes the "bloody glove--the objective correlative, the one real thing you can point to that makes the lies feel solid." Harper's physical descriptions of LA and set pieces with minor characters are cinematic, evoking classic films like The Big Sleep and Chinatown. While Harper's take is more graphic and emotionally bleak, his writing is witty, elegant, even funny, as in Mae's hilarious solution for that inconvenient black eye. The heart of the story lies in Mae and Chris' relationship. As they fall back in love, they each lose the cynical edge they've always relied on. They begin to weigh what ethical boundaries they won't cross, or stomach others crossing, and what price each is willing to pay in the future. A mesmerizing whodunit, escapist yet thought-provoking. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
