Mae Pruett gets a charge out of her work as a “black bag” operator for a shady Los Angeles PR firm. She’s seen and sanitized it all, concealing the messes and depraved excesses of Hollywood’s elites. But things get personal when she sees her boss get shot in an apparent carjacking in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Dan had approached her just days earlier with a plan to cash out and exit the rat race; Mae was on her way to meet him and discuss details when he was killed. Sensing something is fishy about his death and the subsequent killing by cops of the gunman, Mae seeks answers. She is joined by her ex, Chris Tamburro, a disgraced cop who works as muscle for another tentacled arm of what they both only half-jokingly refer to as the Beast. Soon their undercover, off-the-books investigation gets noticed by the wrong sort of people and they must run for their lives.
VERDICT Hard-bitten, up-to-the-minute dialogue, lovingly written neighborhood-by-neighborhood ride-alongs, and a perfect dose of paranoia and despair fill the pages of this latest from TV producer and writer (Hightown; Gotham) Harper. If readers like James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, T. Jefferson Parker, and really crackin’ neo-noirs, Harper’s latest novel (after The King of California) will delight and amaze them..
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