I've read a few Los Angeles novels this month. A brief
account -
BE COOL Leonard's sequel to GET SHORTY. Instead of movies
it's about popular. About halfway through it seems to lose
its way. I think Leonard easily could have cut a third of it
especially the parts including Aerosmith.
DEMOLITION ANGEL
It's a stand alone and as much a thriller
as hard boiled. It seems like cross of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
and one of Michael Connelly's Bosch novels. I liked it, but
it almost seems seems to have been written so it could easily
be translated into a movie.
BLACK ICE Michael Connely's second Bosch novel..Again Bosch
has to fight his superiors to solve the mystery. There is one
passage that almost summarizes Los Angeles in many hard
boiled books:
"You could be riding in in the back of a studio's limo or
just as easily the back of a coroner's blue van. The sound of
applause wa the same as the buzz of a bullet spinning past
your ear in te dark. That randomness. That was L.A"
It continues to touch on the concerns of the more recent
books:
"There was a flsh flood, earthquake, mudslide. There was the
drive by shooter and the crack stoked burglar. The drunk
driver and the always curving road ahead."
There's more, but I think this gives enough to give the
flavor of the whole passage.Connelly is not always
conventionally grammatical, but very powerful. I'm late in
discovering him, but I will be catching up..
.
ALICE IN LA-LA LAND I mentioned I was reading this. It's the
second of Robert Campbell's explorations of the underside of
Los Angeles. I don't think it holds together as well as the
first, IN LA-LAND WE TRUST. It could be that Campbell's
series declined as he went on because he felt it necessary to
always have the following books include characters and
situations he established originally and became tired of
them. I guess the business pays off to write series, but I
think Campbell might have written better books if they were
stand alones. Mark
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