Why L.A. is the perpetual dark heart of crime writing
Los Angeles is a madman's prayer wrapped inside a murderous dream.
It's homeless on sidewalks and hustlers in the hills. It's laborers and housekeepers, and billboards of lust, dystopia, apes, robots, Chewbaccas, Kim and Kanye, and Lady Gaga's newest thing. It's clear skies, no mosquitoes and laser-sculpted people with money, hedgerows and sins. A crime writer can make of it what he or she wants, like "Westworld" or a lover who gives you a kiss and a key, and one day changes the locks.
The city is the seething, sexy capital of noir. It is an illicit urge - a trick of possibility - slinking like a con-man's ruse into a novelist's imagination. Transgressions pile up and the skyline is newly pricked, rising above vintage bungalows that sell for a million plus and are gutted and remade for the conceits and dark angels of a new century.
Raymond Chandler knew Los Angeles was both lie and delusion. A bitter candy land, where paradise betrays and
