Mystery

A Southern California resident, traveling in Vienna, reading a book about murder in Los Angeles. Go figure. I was out of more geographically appropriate books, so if anyone has any recommendations for thrillers based in this area, let me know, quickly please. I head back to So Cal in a couple more days.

Jonathan Kellerman always provides a dependable story, and his protagonist, Alex Delaware, is as real a psychologist as any that I see presented in literature. In this story, Alex and Robin are meeting at one of their favorite haunts, The Fauborg Hotel. It’s the last night for the hotel before it literally meets the wrecking ball. Kellerman captures the impermanence of LA, although perhaps too harshly: “I live in a company town where the product is illusion. In the alternative universe ruled by sociopaths who make movies, communication means snappy dialogue, the scalpel trumps genetics, and permanence is mortal sin because it slows down the shoot.” Alex and Robin notice a beautiful young woman who is alone, and there’s a muscleman, a goon type, waiting outside. Then, her body is discovered in Pacific Palisades, murdered only a short while after they last saw her in the hotel bar. The hunt for the killer takes us through old time Hollywood B movies and porn, multigenerational family dysfunction, and a good subplot about life, death, and redemption.

After a couple books that did not make my A list, it was good to get back to one of the guys in my power rotation.