Friend of the Devil (A Reckless Book)

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY --Ghosts of the 1960s and '70s hauntthis bruising second entry in Brubaker and Phillips's bloody-knuckled L.A. noirseries. It's 1985 and ex-FBI agent and current paladin for hire Ethan Recklessis grinding through private-eye cases, mourning his father, and losing himselfby watching old sitcoms at his shuttered movie theater office. Falling hard forLinh Tran, a tough-as-nails library clerk, he agrees to help find her sisterMaggie, who vanished into the Hollywood fleshpots years before. After spottingMaggie in the background of a crummy exploitation flick, Ethan begins pulling atthe tangled threads of a seedy operation and unravels a tale of the city's fallfrom hippie optimism, with movie producers taking advantage of fresh-off-the-busingenues, an Aleister Crowley meets Charles Manson cult, and Nazi skinheads(“for some reason, there always had to be skinheads”). Ethan pursueshis leads doggedly but with a baked-in cynicism, knowing that after solving thecase he and Linh would just “wait for the truth to destroy us.” Theart is varied, richly colored, and grittily textured as old film stock. Despitethe series' dour lead, the sharp cultural references, bone-deep knowledge of theSouthland, and pulsing through line of righteous heroism will make readers eagerfor Ethan's next reluctant adventure. (May)