Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim is a powerful and exquisitely woven debut novel that explores identity, family, secrets, and what it truly means to belong. When 26-year-old Margot Lee’s best friend,…
New York Times bestseller P. J. Tracy returns with Deep into the Dark (Minotaur Books, January 12, 2021), the first in a new series set in LA and featuring up-and-coming LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan and murder suspect Sam Easton. Take a first look at the striking book cover right here, and read on for a…
The story of a modern-day ninja warrior following the code of the #MeToo movement, The Ninja Daughter by Tori Eldridge is as impactful as a throwing star. The Ninja Daughter by Tori Eldridge is a debut novel that is perfectly positioned as the first in a series following a lovable, yet deadly, young female ninja…
This Storm by James Ellroy is a massive novel of World War II Los Angeles—when torrential rainstorms hit the city, a body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops rate it a routine dead-man job. They’re grievously wrong. I’ve been reading the Demon Dog of American Literature since I stumbled across The Black Dahlia in…
When I moved to Los Angeles two and a half years ago, it was with the (possibly naive) intention of capturing the city’s dusky underbelly for my next novel. In Sins As Scarlet, I wanted my Japanese-American detective, Inspector Iwata, to drift through the unvarnished tranches of L.A.—the industrial, the suburban, the impoverished—neighborhood kingdoms so…
Sins as Scarlet by Nicolás Obregón brings Kosuke Iwata to Los Angeles where he now works as a private detective. Crime stories are often about metaphorical underworlds populated by hapless underdogs and vicious, powerful elites. Our tour guides on these stories are usually detectives whose quests for truth, justice, and/or vengeance force them to navigate…
Sins as Scarlet by Nicolas Obregon is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Blue Light Yokohama, where Inspector Iwata investigates a murder case in his new home of Los Angeles—take a visual tour with GIFnotes! After a brutal investigation ripped apart his life, Kosuke Iwata quit both his job as a detective with the Tokyo Police Department……
Always Running Luis J. Rodriguez This book is L.A. canon as far as I’m concerned. A thrilling, moving, poetic, and ultimately human memoir of redemption from a young gang member growing up in East L.A. In fact, this was actually one of the books recommended to me by a former gang member I met in…
Southland Nina Revoyr I’m a big fan of stories driven by unexpected detectives: characters drafted in from other walks of life who happen to have a particular emotional or familial stake in figuring out who is to blame for a crime. Jackie Ishida, law student, is one such character. Very few writers explore the varied…
City of Angels by Kristi Belcamino is an edgy, gritty, mature YA mystery about a young woman's struggle to not only belong—but survive. One reason why I'm drawn to crime fiction is that it shows so-called “bad” people at their best and “good” people at their worst. That nuanced look at humanity and the forces out…
