Los Angeles has a long tradition of providing a multi-layered setting in which authors and directors have gleefully portrayed every kind of depravity and indulgence. In You Season 2, our favorite stalker, serial killer, and social commentator, Joe Goldberg, flees his tumultuous New York past and takes refuge in the least likely place anyone might look for a book snob: the glitzy, came-from-industry-money East Side, where he gets a job at a grocery store that reminds everyone of Erowhon. Kepnes, the author of the YOU series, has gleefully created a cast of characters with names like Love and Forty, and having grown up poor in this horrible-wonderful city, I eye-rolled right along with Joe, remembering my own decades in food service spent getting yelled at by celebrities and their spawn.
We love that about LA crime fiction, don’t we—the opportunity to laugh at the absurdity of a city built on an empire that ages people out almost as soon as they hit adulthood. Look a little deeper, and our crimes aren’t so different from the rest of the country’s. Celebrity deaths can reduced again and again to the same “killed by a stalker” “murdered by an abuser” “drug overdose” carousel of despair that torments the rest of the country. Maybe it’s that very universality that draws us to celebrity murder bus tours; ultimately, wealth and celebrity can’t protect us from the most common causes of untimely death—our loved ones, our own habits, our bad luck.
2020 brings with it a dazzling array of women-authored LA crime fiction. From the West Side to the South Side, from the valley to East Hollywood, these upcoming releases can serve readers as a virtual LA crime bus tour. (In order of release.)
Pretty as a Picture by Elizabeth Little
February 25, 2020
When a film editor, Marissa Dahl, takes a job on location on a small island to work with a legendary and notorious director, she rolls her eyes at the logline of the movie: “Some girl dies.” A page-turning whodunit about the film industry and our obsession with dead girls, Pretty as a Picture is smart, funny, and full of twists and turns.
I asked Liz about her books, and she said, “I always want to take my readers on a romp.” I was like, “YOU DO.” Her new release is sharp and funny, and the commentary on true crime culture and our fascination with stories that start with a dead girl is spot on.
The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson
April 7, 2020
A school shooting rocks a Los Angeles high school, and The Lucky Ones follows the survivors, the ones lucky enough to be spared. May, the protagonist, can’t come to terms with why she wasn’t killed alongside her twin brother. Zach’s mother is defending the shooter, which has made him an outcast at school. They’re survivors on different sides of the glass, and their fates are tied together even more than they realize.
I love stories that deal with the aftermath of crime. In this emotional young adult contemporary debut, Lawson draws us deep inside the heart-wrenching reality of survivor’s guilt. The characterization of our two narrators is so strong, the voices so compelling, I think this will be considered an important addition to the canon around school shootings and teenage grief. Have your tissues handy when you start this one, and be ready to fall in love with a leading lady so prickly and unlikeable, she might just be your favorite.
These Women by Ivy Pochoda
May 19, 2020
In this off-Western, set in South Los Angeles, five women are connected by a killer who knows he can get away with murder if he chooses the right kind of victim. These Women follows victims, their family members, and the women investigating their murders.
Ivy Pochoda’s magic is in her empathy. Wherever Pochoda takes you, you’re there; you feel and smell and taste everything there is in that room, and your heart beats with the emotions of the character she’s put you inside. This intimate look at a low-income community of women on the fringe asks as many questions as it answers, about the lens through which “these women” are usually viewed, about who killers can target with almost no risk. The current generation of women crime fiction authors, true crime podcast hosts, and journalists challenging our views on victims is giving me life, and Pochoda grabs this by the reins and takes us on a ride in this gut-wrenching masterpiece.
The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton
July 14, 2020
Jo makes her living taking down horrible men in Los Angeles, especially in Hollywood. She works for a woman known only to her as The Lady Upstairs, and she owes the lady money. When a chance to pay off her debts lands in her lap, she opts to run a massive, dangerous con and gets herself in deeper than she’d planned.
This is one of two debuts on here, and it’s a blazing one. The main character, Jo, is in the business of blackmailing bad men, and she’s in it for the money. An unapologetically sexy book that doesn’t fade to black in moments of female savagery, The Lady Upstairs walks up to old-fashioned misogynistic male noir authors and snatches it right out of their hands. Watch out for Sutton; she’s got more to say and a long career ahead of her.
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The Ninja’s Blade by Tori Eldridge
September 1, 2020
Lily Wong is back, this time going undercover in the world of sex trafficking, tracking down a teenager, a sex worker, and a man with a dangerous reputation. It’s a race against time to find these three before they end up victims to the street gang hunting them.
This is the sequel to The Ninja Daughter, Eldridge’s 2019 debut about a young female ninja who uses her skills to protect other women against predators. Lily Wong is our new favorite vigilante, and this roaring sophomore novel takes her to a new level, pitting her against new and dangerous men. Eldridge’s expertise in the martial arts is evident, and the stories are written with a mastery of the content as well as the emotions and motivations of the badass protagonist.
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And Now She’s Gone by Rachel Howzell Hall
September 22, 2020
Grayson has been tasked with finding Isabel…but is Isabel missing on purpose, or has there been foul play? Gray’s deepening search reveals secrets and deception, pitting two complicated women against each other in a game of cat and mouse.
Rachel Howzell Hall is a queen of the complex female protagonist. She gives pure magic to her characterizations of morally gray women. In this twisty thriller, she uses her usual mastery of her genre to pull us into a mystery that’s as dark as it is fraught with secrets.
