A Violent Masterpiece, by Jordan Harper (REVIEW) — L.A., Where Big Dreams Go Up in Smoke

You might think you “know” L.A.

Kale salads, twenty-dollar smoothies, and sushi. 

(Yeah... but it’s also donuts, coffee, and food trucks.)

Beautiful people everywhere, dressed like they’re headed for the Oscars.

(Most days it’s an endless sea of yoga tights, jeans, sneakers, and flip-flops–on everyone.)

The glamor of Hollywood, beachfront mansions, and compounds in the hills.

(Except only a small percentage of Angelenos have that kind of crazy money... meaning most live in ordinary places, while the unhoused try to survive along Skid Row, under every overpass, or in camps in vacant lots.)

It’s a sprawling city of extremes—from unimaginable excess to poverty, peaceful mountains to the unceasing noise of the freeways that intersect everywhere else—and always, always a powder keg, about to explode.

And in Jordan Harper’s A Violent Masterpiece, it does.

 

There’s only so much crime and awfulness even a city of some ten million souls can handle, and L.A. has reached its limit. 

A serial killer dubbed the “L.A. Ripper” by the press is leaving a trail of brutally murdered women across the vast city. 

Police arrest a popular Hollywood movie director after images surface of him sexually abusing children.

A young woman with a lucrative job has recently gone missing... and her apartment thoroughly cleaned out late one night by what looks very much like a team of professional hitmen.

And, another large encampment of unhoused people is about to be savagely dismantled... with protestors rallying to try and stop the massive police action.

It is through these seemingly-unrelated events that three Angelenos make their way into each other’s orbits... changing the courses of their lives, forever.

Former-child-actor-cum-nightcrawler Jake livestreams whatever carnage he finds each night to his lust-for-blood subscribers—most recently, all the gory details about the L.A. Ripper’s rampage.

Lawyer Doug advertises on bus-stop benches and billboards—“the guy who’ll FIGHT for YOU!”—and his regular clientele includes homeless and other disadvantaged folks... which is why he’s gobsmacked when the insanely-wealthy pedophile wants to hire him.

Kara works for a very elite, very hush-hush private concierge company—the sort hired to make the impossible possible, for the right amount of money—and it’s her friend (and mentor) who’s gone missing... while she is the only one who saw the hired “cleaners” clearing out her friend’s place.

All three have connections—for drugs, weapons, dangerous people, and, to a degree, information—but as each works to piece together the particulars of the crime he or she knows about, the tangled trails of clues lead them to one another.

None of them have any idea how deep the depravities and desolation go—though clearly, some of the most despicable atrocities are happening in the most lavish of places—but Jake, Kara, and Doug are absolutely dead-set on getting to the very bottom of everything.

Or die trying.

 

Every so often, I’m lucky enough to read something that stops me in my tracks, makes me pause to reread and let an idea sink in. 

A Violent Masterpiece gave me so many of those moments.

Harper’s prose is beautiful in its brutality—sometimes sleek and spare, at other times gloriously lush and descriptive—and always, always, chilling in its awareness.

His is an L.A. I recognize too well... even if I shudder to do so. 

He’s created a solid trio of protagonists, too—each, so believably flawed and fallible... but still, inherently good and honorable—that are easy to root for.

And a cool little touch—for Angelenos and anyone else who’s spent enough time in the city—is how each chapter not only lists the character whose POV it’ll show, but he also lists the area (or multiple areas) of the city/county where that chapter’s action will take place. Fun detail.

I know it’s a little early in the year to name “my favorite book of this year”, so I won’t do that... I’ll just say it’s definitely gonna land in my top two.

If a full-throttle, multi-layered, so-real-it-hurts crime thriller is your jam, put A Violent Masterpiece in your cart for pre-order [it’s coming out April 28], and thank me later. This one deserves every heap of praise it’s going to get.

[Thanks to Mulholland Books and Little, Brown and Company for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are, as always, entirely my own.]