City of Angles

by Jonathan Leaf

Overview

A smart and sexy modern noir set in the steamy underbelly of 21st century Hollywood.

Billy Rosenberg is a workmanlike screenwriter who finds his fate intertwined with would-be starlet Vincenza Morgan in this fiendish and sharp tale of a city where Image always trumps Reality.

Filled with plot twists, wicked humor, and vivid commentary on celebrity culture, author Jonathan Leaf has skillfully crafted a compelling romp which manages to weave murder, drugs, sex cults, modern relationships, and naked ambition together into a tale that lays bare the real Los Angeles—a city where even the angels have an angle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637587881
Publisher:	Bombardier Books
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,224,205
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Leaf is a playwright and novelist. He has written for the Daily Beast, Commentary, National Review, The New Criterion, Modern Age, Tablet, the New York Post, New York Daily News, Spectator (USA), Law & Liberty, City Journal, The Weekly Standard, and many other publications.

In 2018, The Wall Street Journal called his play Pushkin a “triumph,” naming it one of the year’s four best. Kirkus Reviews has called his novel City of Angles “literary entertainment at its best.” Now Leaf turns his attention to the subject that his parents devoted their lives to and with which he has had a lifelong fascination: what neuroscience is revealing about human nature.

Editorial Reviews

Devilishly funny...City of Angles most closely resembles the two funniest, and most bitter, Hollywood novels, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays and Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One... It’s a wild ride that ultimately leads to a satisfying conclusion.

Steve Weinstein

Brilliant...a delightful mix of comic novel and mystery...a deeper imaginative level than almost any mystery writer—much less comic mystery writer—I’ve ever encountered. City of Angles delivers a wallop with its ending...ought to be made immediately into a movie. Nothing like this has come along to my knowledge since Robert Altman’s The Player.

Harold Fickett

Has you at hello...he captures the place of Hollywood...And he knows the movie industry’s rhythms, detailing with precision the elaborate dance of pitch meetings and audition callbacks...mastery of plot...Keep writing books. We will be richer for them.

Robert Dean Lurie

Hard to put down!

Daniel Kennelly

A rollicking takedown of the City of Angels...a fast-paced comic thriller...the novel’s cast of characters is large but deftly drawn.

Jane Scharl

A fascinating cast of characters...The author has accomplished something that the literature and mystery world has been missing for a long time. Our society, so overwhelmed with ideology and wokeness, has forgotten how to have fun, experience joy and humor....

Emina Melonic

A page-turner...This short book is a big achievement.

John Zmirak

Akin to Tom Wolfe...Like Wolfe, he manages to do it with a light, humorous touch...What an entertaining book!

Todd Seavey

From the hip clubs of Koreatown to the privileged compounds of Malibu, nobody captures ‘this town’ like Jon Leaf. A modern-day Hollywood noir that starts with a body in a trunk and never lets its foot off the gas. Addictive, fast and funny.

Dan Staley

Jonathan Leaf’s entertaining murder mystery-insider's guide-roman à clef gives you a marvelous tour of the so-called City of Angles—because everyone’s got one—as his protagonists strive to scale the slippery and treacherous walls of Fortress Hollywood. If Carl Hiaasen is Florida Man, then Jonathan Leaf certainly has Los Angeles covered.

Alexander Rose

I had given up on Hollywood as well as books about it until I read Jonathan Leaf’s riveting and amusing City of Angles. Get it!

Roger Simon

Leaf deftly chauffeurs us through the streets and personalities of Los Angeles with clever authenticity and noir glamour. A wild, only in LA page-turner!

Laura Bickford

Arriving for an audition, an aspiring young actress finds a dead body in the trunk of her car. Should she cancel the audition and call the police? Not a chance; when your career’s on the line, the L.A.P.D can wait. Anyway, that stiff’s not going anywhere. An incisive satirical whodunit, City of Angles hooks you fast and never lets you go. Dreaming of fame and fortune in Tinseltown? You might want to read this first.

Joe Queenan

Jonathan Leaf’s scintillating debut, City of Angles, is even sharper than its whip-smart title. Part noir, part exposé of Hollywood’s dirty little secrets, and all fun and games, the tale teases and satisfies in equal parts. Flashing a shrewd sense of humor that feels like a knowing wink at a Tinseltown bar, Leaf’s prose treads nimbly between the crisp and the lyrical.

Christopher Yates

In applying his gimlet eye to all the mischief in Hollywood, acclaimed playwright Jonathan Leaf has created in his novel City of Angles an absolutely brilliant mixture of noir and social satire reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One.

Edward Jay Epstein

2023-04-17
In Leaf’s comedic murder mystery, a struggling actress finds a dreadful surprise in the trunk of her car.

Vincenza Morgan moves from a small town in Minnesota, hoping to start a grander life in Los Angeles, a “city of searchers” portrayed with lacerating wit by the author. The aspiring actress struggles, barely making ends meet working the cash register at a marijuana dispensary. She lands a big audition for a movie starring famous actress Reese Witherspoon, but just before she gets her chance to show what she can do, she discovers a corpse in the trunk of her car. The man has clearly been killed, and the murder weapon, a revolver, lies beside him. She recognizes the victim: Tom Selva, a fellow actor and a man with whom she was sometimes romantically involved. After her audition—it’s just too important to miss, even to report a murder—she wrestles with her predicament, as the evidence clearly implicates her in the crime. Vincenza comes to believes that she’s being followed by members of her cultlike church, the Church of Life, which promises its members access to “esoteric truths” and the establishment of a “new Eden.” She begins to suspect the church’s head, James Armstrong (who calls himself the “Supreme Pilot”), might have had something to do with Selva’s death, and she fears her own life is in danger—a state of affairs as chilling as it is morbidly funny, the signature style of the author. Leaf’s portrayal of show business in Los Angeles isn’t original at all—this is all well-covered ground—but the story is delightfully humorous, and the murder mystery is engrossing. The book is filled with hilarious insights, as in a description of incarceration: “In some ways jail was alike to a cruise ship. You tried to make friends. You were sickened by the food. You couldn’t jump out the windows.” This is lighthearted literary entertainment at its best—easily companionable, intelligent, and brimming with artful humor.

A genuinely funny sendup of a much-lampooned industry.

Kirkus Reviews