The City Beneath Her

Hahn (The Singing Bone) perfectly captures the dreamlike-turned-nightmarish atmosphere of noir fiction, artfully conjuring the rotten core that lies beneath the glossy surface of post–World War II Los Angeles. For the last several years, a serial killer known as the Raptor has targeted women in LA. The murderer earned this moniker for their ability to seemingly vanish into thin air from the scene of the crime, and every woman in the city appears to take the Raptor’s threat seriously. This includes lost soul May, aspiring actress Lily, possibly delusional heiress Dora, and Agnes, who writes photo captions at The Daily newspaper but hopes to make the jump to full-fledged crime reporter. Hahn populates her mesmerizing crime novel with fascinating secondary characters like a sinister real estate magnate, a shady nightclub owner, and a revivalist preacher and his flock. But it is the core cadre of women, especially the intrepid Agnes, that make this story sing.