You’ve been devoted to the Church. As you know, we like to say that we don’t have followers. We have lenders. You give us your love and passion devotion, and we’re obligated to pay back the debt.”

Lars reviewed Jonathan Leaf’s debut novel, City of Angles, earlier, and with it being a mystery novel, that’s about as much of the plot as you’ll want to know before reading. What you don’t get from reviews is the style of humor Leaf employs.

[Disclaimer: I picked up the novel in response to the author’s request, having seen a friend’s referral days before.]

City of Angles isn’t a dark story. It’s standard fare for a character-driven murder mystery, and from almost every character you read something like the quotation above: “We don’t have followers. We have lenders.” Also from this same church context, we get this: “Selva had attained the status of FUP. This mean a fully unrepressed person. Those who opposed the Church were EMEs, or enemies of man’s emergence.” An FUP. That’ll catch on.

This actually rings true with my experience, in that some folks like to make acronyms and others like to use terms, and the Church of Life in this story resembles Scientology, which is probably just as debauched and oppressive as the Church is depicted. But in a way, everyone in this novel is debauched. Everyone is friendly, while it serves their purpose, and they drink sexual allure from the tap. Everything they can control they will try to control. And when a character finds himself at a dead end with all of his plans disassembled, he tells himself all PR is good PR and begins to wonder if he can sell his story. Even the cops are thinking this next thing could be their big break.

I enjoyed reading this book and look forward to Leaf’s success with it.