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Fiction, Reviews

Dark Comedic Mystery “City of Angles”

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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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘City of Angles,’ by Jonathan Leaf

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During this time, he had prepared his own lengthy speech, a philippic the equal of Cato’s addresses against Carthage. Everything about her was fake and phony. She was a cheat and a liar and a bad woman. She was a threat to goodness, and, inasmuch as silicone was made from sand, she was a menace to the continued existence of the world’s beaches.

[Disclaimer: The book under consideration here, City of Angles, was referred to me by a friend, and I received a free review copy from the author.]

Billy Rosenberg is a struggling Hollywood writer. On the strength of one successful novel he moved to California to work in the movies. But his career is struggling. He’s painfully aware, in a town where presentation is everything, of the impression he makes with his cheap shoes and rattletrap car.

So he’s surprised when beautiful, surgically-enhanced actress Vincenza Morgan (originally Kelli Haines of Eagan, Minnesota) sits down at his table in a coffee shop and talks to him. Vincenza is, in fact, scared. Her career had seemed about to take off, thanks to an indie film she just helped produce. She’d gotten A-list star Tom Selva to star in it, thanks to their mutual membership in the International Church of Life (think Scientology), the most powerful force in town. Everything looked great, until she opened her car trunk and found Selva’s corpse stuffed inside.

She knew she ought to call the police, but she was on her way to an audition, and the First and Greatest Law of Hollywood is you never blow off an audition; being dead would only be a marginal excuse. And now she thinks she’s being tailed by agents of the Church in a van. She could really use a place to stay tonight…

City of Angles is a comedy of manners – but it’s dark comedy, and the manners are Hollywood manners. The chief thing one learns in this story is that nobody ever says what they mean. Candor is kryptonite. One honest word might undermine the whole town and slide it into the ocean. The plot works out happily, though – depending on what you mean by “happily.” Which leaves the reader with things to consider.

I’m a sucker for a Hollywood tale – I’ve felt the city’s attraction but am very far from having the nerve to challenge it face to face. So I enjoyed City of Angles, which was expertly written and packed with sharp innuendo. [One technical error I noted was that the author places Burnsville High School in Eagan, Minnesota rather than in Burnsville where it belongs both in logic and fact. I can only assume that locations have been changed to protect the innocent.]

Recommended, with cautions for grownup stuff.