L.A. Burning

December 1, 2021
Taylor leaps from the 1950s, when detective Michael Cassidy last worked the mean streets of New York in Night Watch (2019), to present-day Los Angeles for a tale of revenge served cold. Cody Bonner, released from prison after serving five years for bank robbery, has only one goal: finding the man who raped and killed her twin sister, Julie, two years ago. The considerable interest the case stirred up because the victim's mother, Karen Bonner, is an Oscar-winning movie star, was long since abated; the investigators in the LA Sheriff's Department see no reason why they should open their files to a jailbird; and Cody can't stop using her goody-goody sister's bona fides to put herself down. Even so, Cody, whom one homicide investigator calls "Dickless Tracy," methodically tracks down Julie's boyfriend, her legal colleagues at Mitchell, Collier, and Brown, and everyone else her path crossed in the time leading up to her death. Dozens of Hollywood types, from Beverly Hills car dealer Alex Ames to powerful talent agent Harry Groban, flicker suddenly to life before they're left in Cody's rearview mirror. Only Curtis Whyle, Julie's schoolmate and law-firm mentor before he left to become CEO of Black Light Films, sticks around long enough to become a fact of Cody's daily life--until she discovers that Julie's pro bono work for the Sex Workers Outreach Project had led her beyond the courtroom into some very dark places. Resolving to punish the man who's punished so many women, Cody finds herself retracing Julie's steps into danger even as a cop who was present at one of her bank robberies resolves to bring her down. A brutally efficient tale that's also a reeking portrait of La La Land.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from January 10, 2022
Cody Bonner, the vulnerable, tough-minded protagonist of this stunning thriller from Taylor (the Michael Cassidy series writing as David C. Taylor), rejected the decorative social role intended for her as a movie star’s daughter and instead slid into addiction and crime as a teen. After serving six years in prison for a bank robbery, she’s now intent on solving the murder of her identical twin, Julie, a lawyer whose body was found on a Malibu beach two years earlier. While she’s gathering information from her high school friends who are now showbiz execs, her attention is drawn to Harry Groban, her mother’s powerful agent, who has allegedly sexually abused young women. When she learns that Julie had been investigating Groban, she begins feverishly planning her revenge. But she hasn’t been paying enough attention to a determined LAPD lieutenant, who’s out to nail her for the bank robberies she got away with. As the action builds relentlessly to an apocalyptic conclusion in the heart of a Southern California wildfire, Taylor reveals how complex human motivation can be. He’s upped his game with this frightening, exciting eye-opener. Agent: Lisa Gallagher, DeFiore and Co.