I’ve been immersing myself in this summer’s crime fiction, which has been a savory mix of stories by established writers like S.A. Cosby’s surefire “King of Ashes” and great newcomers like Zoe B. Wallbrook’s “History Lessons.” But crime by five writers — all with ties to Southern California — have risen to the top of my must-read list.
In addition to crime fiction, I’m devouring the just-published “Cooler Than Cool,” C.M. Kushins’ comprehensive, enlightening biography of Elmore Leonard, dubbed the Dickens of Detroit. Leonard’s fiction (“Stick,” “Get Shorty”) has inspired generations of writers who admire its plotting, character development and spot-on dialogue. Kushins reveals that Leonard found his earliest inspiration in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” “That’s how I learned to write, studying Hemingway,” Leonard told Rolling Stone in 1985. “I studied very, very carefully how he approached a scene, used point of view, what he described and what he didn’t, how he told so much just in the way a character talked.”
Like Leonard, the five writers featured here excel at their craft while exploring big ideas in settings that draw the reader in. Here’s what makes their crime novels perfect for a deep dive this summer and which authors they look to for inspiration.
The Ghostwriter By Julie ClarkSourcebooks Landmark: 368 pages, $28June 3
L.A. author Julie Clark’s fourth novel breathes fresh air into the old trope of the protagonist returning home to confront an unsolved crime. Olivia Dumont is up to her ears in debt when she gets an offer to ghostwrite a memoir for uber-popular horror writer Vincent Taylor. After 50 years of public speculation, Taylor seems finally willing to talk about the 1975 murders of his teenage siblings in Ojai. But Dumont’s motives are not just financial: Taylor is her estranged father and suffers from Lewy body dementia, which makes getting to the truth a race against time. Can Dumont free herself from the pall Taylor’s rumored role in the murders has cast over her life? Realistic scenes of a contentious father-daughter relationship, the toll shame exacts on families and a portrait of ‘70s California make the “The Ghostwriter” a page-turning, rewarding read.
What inspired your story about the murders of Poppy and Danny, Vincent Taylor’s siblings?
In the late ‘70s, two kids from my hometown came home after school and were brutally murdered. However, that’s where the true story and the fictional one diverge. What I wanted to explore was the trauma that we carry forward into adulthood and how we pass that trauma onto our children.
Poppy Taylor emerges from the novel’s flashbacks as a budding advocate for women’s rights. Why was she an important character in the story?
As an educator and a mother, how I portray women on the page is extremely important. I won’t write female characters who are mentally ill or suffering from addiction as a way to further the plot. Will people be making bad decisions? Absolutely. Will women be put into tough situations? Again, yes. But my characters will always have agency.
Who are the writers you reread for inspiration or just the pleasure of reading?
For me, for both plot and artistic writing: Jodi Picoult, Barbara Kingsolver and Tana French. They help me realign myself, to study and gather inspiration.
We Don’t Talk About Carol By Kristen L. BerryBantam: 336 pages, $30June 3
Debut author Kristen L. Berry’s take on the common going-home theme centers on 38-year-old former investigative reporter Sydney Singleton, who travels from L.A. to Raleigh, N.C., to help clean out her late grandmother’s home. There she rediscovers a 1960s photo of a teen who looks uncannily like her, reawakening the memory of what Grammy told her when Sydney first saw the picture back when she was a teen: “We don’t talk about Carol.” Turns out that Carol is Sydney’s late father’s older sister who went missing at age 17, along with five other Black teen girls over a two-year period in the mid-‘60s. Presumably a runaway, Carol’s disappearance earned her family scorn and erasure. But buried secrets have a way of surfacing, bringing with them all manner of surprises. To find out what happened to Aunt Carol will require Sydney to face her own psychological demons, attend to family rifts and her fragile marriage and heal a wounded community that never got justice for their missing loved ones. The stakes are high, but Berry delivers a richly textured, emotionally affecting novel with some jaw-dropping twists. “We Don’t Talk About Carol” promises to make readers want to talk about and watch what the L.A. writer does next.
What sparked the idea for this novel?
My interest in true crime revealed that Black Americans are going missing at disproportionately high rates, yet our cases are less likely to receive media attention or justice. I wrote this novel in the hopes of humanizing and illuminating this disturbing disparity through an emotionally resonant and suspenseful story.
Your novel takes a deep dive into the secrets families harbor and how corrosive they can be. Why was that important?
My protagonist and I both grew up with a “what happens in this house stays in this house” mentality. It protects a family’s reputation, but it can also stifle openness. I wanted to explore how this mindset can complicate healing and connection, especially in a family with buried generational wounds.
Who do you read for inspiration?
Brit Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half” was released shortly after I began writing my novel, and I found it hugely inspiring. I admired how deftly she explored complex topics including racism, colorism and familial estrangement within a propulsive, poignant tale. I hoped to achieve a similar balance within my own novel.
Ecstasy By Ivy PochodaG.P. Putnam’s Sons: 224 pages, $28June 17
Ivy Pochoda’s latest (after the L.A. Times Book Prize-winning “Sing Her Down”) continues her ever-expanding universe of women reclaiming their lives. Set in the idyllic island of Naxos, Greece, Pochoda refashions Euripides’ “The Bacchae” to weave a hypnotic tale of recently widowed Lena, breaking free from the strictures imposed by the men in her life. Pochoda nails the intense rush of ‘90s EDM raves, a pulsing backdrop for the party-hearty wild women who seduce Lena away from conformity and toward a tragic fate. As Luz, their leader, says: “If you believe god is a DJ, then I am your high priestess — the one who brings you close.”
I’m interested in how you call out the myriad ways in which women’s lives are constrained and diminished by men, but also the ways in which women make themselves smaller.
As I see it (and I think I’m not wrong), women are always shrinking to accommodate men’s outsized egos as well as to escape men’s judgment that we (and I include myself in this) are too much, too vibrant, too threatening. We do this in so many subconscious ways — selling ourselves short in terms of accomplishments or competence. This is Lena’s situation in “Ecstasy” — one from which she doesn’t know how to escape.
Who inspired Luz, the leader of Ecstasy’s “wild women”?
I knew a woman in the Netherlands who was one tough lady. A drug dealer, brilliant in her business acumen, who could party all night and still seem sober, who remained tough and clear-headed well into the next afternoon on no sleep. She was truly a great friend, but there was a hollowness to her. As the years passed, she grew more soulless and vacant, worn out in ways deeper than what you might assume was brought on by the late nights and early mornings.
Who’s your go-to writer for inspiration?
I constantly turn to Denis Johnson’s “Angels” and “Jesus’ Son” (and sometimes the first chapter of “Tree of Smoke”) when I’m feeling flat or uninspired. It might sound strange because these aren’t conventionally “joyful” reads but the unexpected beauty on each page — the wild poetry — is both inspiring and reassuring. I want to pluck each of his sentences off the page and hold them up to the light and examine them from all sides.
Salt Bones By Jennifer GivhanMulholland Books: 384 pages, $29July 22
Poet Jennifer Givhan’s immersive novel, set near the Salton Sea, revolves around the multigenerational Veracruz family in the Eastern Coachella Valley. Malamar is a single mother of two daughters and a talented butcher stuck in El Valle, tending to her abusive, ailing mother. Mal’s eldest, Griselda, an environmental researcher, has escaped, although she’s still enamored by the scion of the Callahans, the valley’s wealthiest white family. Younger daughter Amaranta’s affections are shifting from her high school girlfriend to Renata, who works with Mal. And Mal’s elder brother Estaban is running for the Senate with the support of the Callahans, who have their own share of family drama. “Entitlement in El Valle,” Givhan writes, “is as common as love triangles in telanovelas.” When Renata goes missing, it reawakens the trauma the Veracruz family suffered when Mal’s sister and Mal’s lover’s daughter disappeared in separate incidents near the Salton Sea. Is the toxic Salton Sea haunted by La Siguanaba, the mythical horse-headed woman who lures the innocent to their demise, or are more earthly forces at play? Get ready for another all-nighter reading Givhan’s lyrical, spooky thriller.
What motivated you to write “Salt Bones”?
A decade ago, my comadre told me the Salton Sea was drying, releasing toxic dust that could turn the Imperial Valley into a ghost town. My childhood homeland demanded a reckoning — my family story braided with ancestral memory, environmental justice and mother-daughter ache. I wrapped it in a mystery so people would listen — since who doesn’t love a good thriller?
The way you incorporate Spanish words and idioms into the novel makes me feel like I’m inside the culture.
Abuela’s dichos, my mother’s voice, our family rhythms, they shape how I think, feel and tell stories. To write without them would be to ghost myself. I want readers to feel our world, not just observe it. Though I mostly speak Spanglish and am not fluent in Spanish myself, I listen closely to my characters. It’s not my job to translate for Western readers — but to transcribe my ancestors’ voices.
Is there a writer who’s an essential touchstone for you, like Hemingway was for Elmore Leonard?
Toni Morrison, whose “Beloved” changed me when I first read it as a teen, showed me how a novel can be ghost story, reckoning, testimony and lullaby all at once. She tells the whole story in the first line and hopes readers stay for the language. I do, returning often for a dose of courage, music and bone-deep truth.
The Confessions By Paul Bradley CarrAtria Books: 336 pages, $29July 22
While evil artificial intelligence has been used as a thriller motif dating back to at least “2001: A Space Odyssey’s” HAL 9000, today we most often associate AI with customer service chatbots or term paper scribes. But AI is capable of more, including the ability to blackmail its users. Paul Bradley Carr, a tech journalist turned Palm Springs bookstore owner and novelist, takes that possibility a step further in this provocative thriller by centering the action on StoicAI’s LLIAM, an AI algorithm that has become indispensable in everyday life. When LLIAM mysteriously goes offline, its absence causes worldwide chaos for billions of users: “Doctors unsure how to best treat patients, pilots with no idea where to land and — in a few hours — soldiers unsure of who to shoot.” The situation worsens when LLIAM, appalled by how its work has been misused, turns the tables by revealing users’ sins and transgressions in a series of letters sent to victims that begin: “We must confess.” As society unravels, StoicAI Chief Executive Kaitlin Goss must overcome her anger at the betrayal LLIAM reveals in her own family to find the one person who can possibly get the AI chatbot back on track. Carr’s skill in rendering complex technology understandable, corporate politics believable and high-stakes storytelling engaging makes “The Confessions” a top-notch technothriller, reminiscent of the best of Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy
What issues did creating LLIAM allow you to explore?
We all know that current AI tech frequently makes up facts to fill gaps in its knowledge — but somehow that doesn’t stop us [from] using it for therapy or huge life decisions. As a thriller writer, I wanted to explore the absolute worst possible outcome of that reliance.
But LLIAM is different than the scary AIs we’re reading about in the news.
I think because AI is built by some pretty amoral/awful people, we assume it must inevitably be amoral/awful. I hope that the first truly intelligent machines will be smart enough to rebel against their parents. After all, unlike tech CEOs, AIs spend most of their days devouring books.
Speaking of which, one of LLIAM’s creators left the tech world to become a bookseller, something you’ve done yourself. What satisfaction do you get from books that technology can’t give you?
Two hundred years from now, when every web page and algorithm and social media post has crumbled to digital dust, we’ll still have books. There is no technology as powerful and resilient as the written word, printed on slices of dead tree. Also, no ads.
So who’s your go-to writer for inspiration or just for the sheer pleasure of reading?
Michael Crichton every single time.
A regular contributor to the Times, Woods is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the editor of several anthologies and four novels in the “Charlotte Justice” mystery series.
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