Release: November 10, 2020
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Flame Tree Press
Source: Amazon
Find it at: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Flame Tree Press
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The year is 1924.
Sam Lacy is a tough homicide detective. He follows his own code of conduct within the racist and corrupt Los Angeles Police Department. Sam’s beautiful ex girlfriend has been murdered and a ruthless person is assaulting young Chinese women. Are the crimes connected and can Sam stop the killers before powerful forces stop him? Sometimes, a good detective can’t let the law get in his way.
Sam navigates L.A.’s corrupt criminal with help from an unlikely trio. Sam’s partner, Lonnie, is a handsome detective whose carefree attitude conceals a troubled past outside of the law. Sam’s friend, Edward Bixby, is a brilliant man whose crucial forensic work is performed off the books since the LAPD would never hire a Black man for a murder investigation. And Susan, Sam’s sister and moral compass is a war widow and mother who pursues leads of her own. The story takes place in the movie capital of the world, a city that attracts wide eyed innocents and cold hearted killers; a City of Angels.
FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.
About the Author:
Kenneth Bromberg grew up in the beach cities of Southern California with a passion for tennis, American history, and literature. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, after which he worked for several years as a bartender. He eventually returned to UCLA to pursue an MBA and become a certified public accountant.
After retiring from accounting, Kenneth fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. His first work, American Dreams, is based upon stories told by his grandmother who immigrated to New York from a small Jewish village near Kiev in the first years of the 20th century.
He lives in Santa Monica, California, with his wife of forty years.
City of Angels Review:
Firstly, I must say I admired the author’s writing style. The story takes place in 1924 in Los Angeles, and the details the author provides of the setting made me felt like I was reliving the era. The author maintains the momentum as Sam and the team investigate the Sokolski case and Dorothy Holcomb’s murder. Some of the scenes that stood out for me were the trial of Pennington or how they conducted the forensics and investigation.
The author also provides a grim picture where you see corruption from all the social ladders. Any historical books I read of L.A. during this time mainly revolved around the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. However, the author depicts L.A. as a place filled with crime, politics, corruption, and very little organization in the story, which was interesting.
Another exciting aspect of the story is the way the author narrates it. The story progresses through the perspectives of various characters, and, in the process, you get to know their history and dynamics as well. We see the story shift between Sam, Susan, Edward, and Liam. The author wrote Sam brilliantly, where you see him face his internal struggles to do the right thing. I enjoyed the family dynamics between them all. While I liked Sam and Susan’s family dynamics, I especially found Liam’s point of view to be the most intriguing. I also enjoyed the relationship between Sam and Edward.
However, I sometimes felt that too many characters on canvas appeared for just a brief moment, and it somewhat stagged from the plot. While I enjoyed how details the story was, the author could have trimmed some elements.
Apart from that, I enjoyed reading “City of Angels” and found it an exciting Historical crime fiction novel.
