Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper

This 2023 copyright is quite topical, probably more so than the author realized while writing it. 

The title is part 3 of the underlying theme of this book: Nobody Talks. Everybody whispers. Everybody Knows. 

Mae Pruett works for a formidable PR firm in LA. She is sort of a specialist in that she is a ‘black bag’ publicist. When a client goes afoul of public opinion (or the law), she dives in deep to find a way to swing public opinion in another direction. She’s a critical piece of “The Beast” that feeds, sucks, manipulates, and coerces public opinion in favor of the client no matter the level of depravity.

Her boss wants to meet Mae off site. She thinks he may be making a play for her, but it’s really about mapping out a strategy for a particularly powerful, wealthy, and secretive client and the office walls have ears. When she arrives at the meeting, she finds her boss has been killed in what the cops are saying is a carjacking gone bad. The next day, cops corner the perp and put him down. Case closed.

But Mae, and her former boyfriend Chris (ex-LA County sheriff, and currently muscle for a global security company – think Blackwater) think otherwise. They begin with the killer, a newbie gangster and work their way up a ladder that gets progressively more degenerate (and wealthy) with each step in a ladder filed with drugs, human trafficking, prostitution, corrupt cops, racketeering, and money laundering. And with each rung, they run the risk of becoming another victim in a demented subculture that seems to permeate LA.

Gotta love what has become neo-noir. You may not like Mea and Chris, how they operate, what laws they bend, and the people they manipulate to get to those who feed The Beast.

We all read books that are ‘torn from the headlines’ and this is no exception. You’d have to be blind or in denial to not see Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein or P Diddy in this story. And I’m betting that the level of depravity presented in this book is just the tip of the Weinstein/Epstein/Diddy iceberg. If you think this might require readers to have a strong stomach, you might not be wrong. It’s not the violence. It’s the subject matter. 

The author is a former Edgar Award winner so you know this guy  knows how to write. I've already received his winning book, She Rides Shotgun. I'll be back with Harper's first in short order.  

East Coast Don