Made in L.A.

By Stuart Osder

Zachary Hunter’s client list ranges from Zoe Horowitz, a seemingly nice Jewish girl who hires him to find her fiancée, to a Russian Mafia crime boss who runs the mob from prison. Marissa Juliette Baristono, a beautiful, award- winning, interior designer, has been with him since the days when neither of them had anything. They share their lives with Owen, an Irish Wolf hound weighing something north of 150 pounds.
An elephant tusk, which has long been considered to be an urban legend, but which, if it actually existed, would command a fortune on the illicit art market because of the perfectly executed erotic carvings rumored to be covering it, suddenly surfaces. It is in the possession of a Mexican cartel, but it is stolen by one of the cartel’s own members, setting in motion a series of bizarre events. The thief cuts a separate deal with two rival mob bosses for the same tusk, virtually guaranteeing that whichever boss doesn’t get the tusk is going to come after him. He hires Hunter to get the tusk to one boss while persuading the other not to kill him. It’s a tough enough assignment without more, but it becomes even tougher when Hunter learns that not only does each of the mob bosses and the cartel want the tusk, but so does the Russian Mafia, the CIA, the FBI, and LAPD. When they enter the fray, it’s no holds barred, and anything could happen!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Osder
• Release date: Apr 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311260727

Stuart Osder

Stu Osder is a native Angeleno. He has a B.A. in Government from California State College at Los Angeles, and a J.D. from U.C.L.A. His love of writing, gift for storytelling and intimate familiarity with the culture about which he writes are readily apparent in his work.

Book preview

Chapter One

I finished cleaning the little Glock 33 Subcompact, reloaded it with nine SIG rounds, and returned it to its nest in the lower right hand drawer, next to the stash of twenties I keep around just in case. I rarely carry these days, not that I ever did, as a matter of fact, but when I do, I take the little Glock. It has the firepower of a tank but is small enough to carry without a telltale bulge. I glanced through the small pile of mail, mostly junk, that had come in overnight and put it aside for Davinder to organize on Monday.

I swiveled in my chair, guiltily sipping the multi-ingredient concoction I’d picked up at the Starbuck’s kiosk in the lobby. Just a couple of nights ago, on the way home from dinner at The Reel Inn, I’d vowed to Marissa that I was boycotting Starbuck’s forever because of their outrageous prices. Employing what I thought was impeccable logic, I pointed out that while I could fill up the Carrera with 90+ high performance fuel for under seventy bucks; filling it up with Starbucks would cost nine or ten times that. I wasn’t sure about the math, but it sounded right. She gave me her You Have Too Much Time On Your Hands look and asked me if the Porsche ran on coffee. Gives you an idea.

My office occupies a corner of the sixth floor of a two-year-old building that sits at the foot of the Canyon where it meets Pacific Coast Highway. The view, from Malibu to Palos Verdes, is incredible. I would never pay the asking rent, and I don’t have to, because it was part of a services-in-lieu-of-cash deal I have with the owner, Eddie Ross. He gives me the office, and in return I’m supposed to extricate him from whatever mess he gets into as a result of his own limitless greed and penchant for breaking promises.

There’s a reception area that morphs into a y, one leg of which is a workroom and the other, my so-called Private Office. When I moved in, I asked Marissa for decorating suggestions, she being the Very High End, prize-winning interior designer that she is. And in typical Marissa fashion, she completely took over. When she was finished there were a couple of chairs, a small table, and a suspended reception counter that resembled a futuristic crystal chandelier floating at desktop level. The Workroom was a pragmatic blend of stainless steel, tile, and light maple cabinets. It housed the usual equipment: a high capacity server, high speed scanner, color laser copiers, and the like. A small kitchen area was built into one side of the room.

I glanced at the door and realized that it hadn’t automatically closed and locked behind me the way it was supposed to because it was blocked by my L.A. Dodgers jacket, which I’d dropped because I was trying to balance the coffee and the mail when I came in. I got up and started for the door, a millisecond too slow as it turned out, because before I could reach the jacket, Tommy Robertson stuck his Former Featherweight Contender (former, as in before the booze and assorted pills destroyed his chances), nose through the opening. A couple of seconds later, his scrawny little self followed the nose in.

You Hunter? he asked, wrestling with a very large, crescent-shaped something wrapped in brown paper with string wound around it.

Nah, sorry, I replied, summoning my most sincere Sorry-I- Wish- I- Could- Help-You smile. I’m just sitting here, filling in. Hunter’s out of town.

Bullshit, he said before shoving the front page of last Thursday’s Times under my nose. That, pal, is you. Zachary Hunter. A frigging hero, pulling that shithead out of the bay.

Sometimes I forget the priceless lessons life has taught me, such as Mind Thy Own Business. Last Thursday I was walking off a lumpy dinner at the Cove Café, just sort of wandering along the beach near the Pier (which had been reduced to about a third of its original length by a storm a few years back and looks like a mistake jutting into the water), when a metallic grey ‘89 ‘Vette screeched down the entrance road and slid across the parking lot. It scraped a Rolls and a Chevette on its way down the pier and into the surf. I ran out, dived in, wrestled the guy out of the car and hauled him up on the sand. About a minute later, right after I tossed my cookies on his chest, someone snapped the little beauty of me that Tommy was now jabbing at with his filthy finger. Turns out the guy was some Big Deal Producer who was despondent because the studio had ripped him off again, yada, yada, yada, so the pic made the news.

I spent since last Friday checking you out, Hunter. I want to hire you. Money’s no object.

Two thousand a day plus expenses. Ten thousand up front.

I figured that’d shut him down. After a while you develop a sense about people. Robertson oozed trouble, and since I hadn’t thrown him out, I took the next best shot. But like just about everything else that would involve Tommy, I was one-eighty out.

That’s a fuckin’ holdup! he howled, fueling Hope.

I shrugged.

Alright, he said after a minute of inspecting me with his disconcerting eyes. One was green; the other was sort of tan and meandered independently, staring here, there, everywhere, at random intervals, without any relationship to the green eye that just sort of gaped at whatever. Suddenly, and so quickly it startled me, he shoved his hand into his canvas pants, fished around in his crotch and came up with a thin wad of bills. Thin but impressive, because they all had pictures of Grover Cleveland on them. I had only seen a thousand dollar bill once, many years before. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think the Mint still printed them. Robertson peeled off ten, fanned them out on the desk, then heaved the giant crescent up, scattering the bills a little, and carefully unwound the string and the paper. When he was finished, I was staring at an elephant’s tusk covered with erotic carvings, so closely placed that they might have been an albino sleeve tattoo.

Look closely, he commanded.

I bent over, confirming that each carving depicted a couple in various sexual positions, not unlike the Kama Sutra.

I shrugged. So?

Look closer, he urged in an exasperated hiss. You got a glass?

In answer, I took a large magnifying glass from Davinder’s top drawer. Looking through it, I realized that the woman in every carving had the same face. The carver’s work was so perfectly executed that her features might as well have been in a photograph. I put the glass on Davinder’s desk and returned to the tusk, something gnawing at my memory. Tommy was staring at me expectantly. I stared at it for nearly a minute. It had something to do with elephants. No, it was something about elephant tusks. And smuggled works of art. No. Smuggled, priceless art. Elephant tusks. And then it came to me.

It’s not much of a stretch to say that anyone who has had some sort of connection, no matter how fleeting, with the world of illicit art has heard the Story of The Tusk- I know I had in the twenty-plus years I’ve been a P.I. Like those lists of things that go around the Internet every couple of years, the Story of the Tusk shows up at random intervals. It changes a little with each reappearance, but the basic theme is that it’s worth a fortune as an object d’art because of the erotic carvings and has surfaced this time because of a variety of never before revealed reasons, some of which border on reasonable, most pretty far-fetched. The enduring question is whether the thing actually exists, and there have been a couple of legitimate attempts to determine if it does, discreetly funded by at least one knowledgeable and well-heeled museum collection (my agreement with it prohibits me from revealing its name) and by someone the media generally refers to as a Big Time Crime Boss (concerns for my own health and longevity prevent me from revealing his). I’ve been told (off the record, of course) at more than one cocktail party that the Feds have an interest in the Tusk because, assuming it does exist, the unpaid taxes and import duties owed would be enormous. But the real reason is that since 9/11, the Feds have been quietly applying a Zero Tolerance policy in order to stop the Mexican cartels from using profits from illegally imported art to fund increasingly sophisticated smuggling tools, including small submarines packed with cocaine, sex slaves, or other goodies.

Despite the complete lack of anything other than anecdotal evidence proving or disproving the Tusk’s existence, everyone seems to feel that because The Story of the Tusk has been around so long it must exist. In fact, one article on the Constitutional Convention said that during a break in the debates certain delegates discussed whether or not Thomas Jefferson actually had it, a rumor he vehemently denied.

Here’s the most widely accepted version of The Story of the Tusk, usually referred to on the street, by the way, as The Fucking Tusk, complete with a little background:

Animals of all kinds have been worshipped by various religions for thousands of years (fairly recently, geologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a giant snake worshipped by a religion in Ngamiland, Botswana, about 70,000 years ago). As these religions evolved, they experimented with all sorts of creatures - wolves, lions, dogs, other snakes and birds - to which they attributed traits they admired or feared or both, such as power, honesty, sexual prowess, and so on. And the practice survives: toward the end of World War II, the inhabitants of an island in the South Pacific worshipped the wreckage of a B-25 bomber they believed to be the Great Bird promised by tribal legend. Generally, however, development of the One God concept effectively ended the worship of many of the animals themselves, but not the investing of certain qualities in gods depicted by caricatures of animals. Hinduism, for instance, celebrates Lord Ganesha, who has the head of an elephant and is one of the most adored gods in India. He is known as the remover of obstacles.

One of the more obscure sects, which is supposedly located in Nepal, was an exception to the general trend and revered the elephant itself, believing that its huge body housed the True Spirit of Life while the animal was alive and that the soul returned to the tusks after death. As a result, after an animal died, its tusks were preserved and enshrined in a secret cave. One of the members of this sect was an expert carver who had been expelled from the group for playing around with the wife of the group’s Senior Elder. For revenge, he’d swiped the biggest and most revered of all the tusks from its holy hiding place. He’d managed to keep it hidden in a secret cave for a few years, during which he’d apparently spent all of his spare time carving the cute little scenes on it (and evidently trying out each position to insure its authenticity beforehand). Unfortunately for the Carver and the Elder’s wife, a hunting party chanced upon the cave and discovered the tusk. He pleaded ignorance, but his work was so good that the woman in each position was easily recognizable as the Elder’s wife, and the man as the Carver.

After dealing with them (whether they were flailed to death, stoned to death or boiled alive is unclear), the hunting party, and thus the sect, was faced with a dilemma: the tusk couldn’t be returned to its original holy storage place because it had been defiled by the carvings. Still, it was the tusk of an elephant, and it had to be protected. So it was hidden again, and remained hidden for many years, until a gang of Ivory poachers stumbled upon it. The Sect, or what was left of it by then, posted a huge reward, like a whole elephant or something, but then a Shah somewhere put out the word that he’d pay double what they would, and a Rajah somewhere else upped the bidding. The silent bidding war continued for a couple of hundred years and, although there were no verified sightings of the tusk itself, the most recent blurb on the Internet placed its estimated value at 2.5 million U.S. dollars. How that number came to be and what criteria was used to arrive at it is a mystery to me.

The thing is, until Saturday, when Tommy entered my life, no one really knew where it was, much less who owned it.

Are you fucking kidding me? I growled, really annoyed at what I thought was his blatant and insulting attempt to con me.

He went to Davinder’s desk, retrieved the glass. I tore it out of his hand. Get your ass out of here.

It’s the real deal, he insisted.

Something in his voice caused me to peer through the glass again. Yeah? So what’re you doing with it? Where’d you get it?

Don’t matter, he muttered. Thing is, I gotta get it to somebody.

Somebody. Like who, somebody? And what does it have to do with me? I asked.

Tommy stared at me with the one eye, letting the other take in the view from my window. I sold this to Jackie Slater, only Yoos Uri wants it. And I know you know both of them.

And how do you know that? I asked, the alarms going off in my head.

I told you. I been checkin’ you out since Friday. Besides the pic in the Times, you ain’t exactly been a hermit, y’ know.

That, of course, was my last chance, and I blew it. I should have picked up Tommy and his tusk and heaved them out my window and finished my fancy coffee while they made the six floor trip to the boulevard below. But, of course, I didn’t. Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve. I pocketed the ten thousand.

And?

All you have to do is deliver it to Slater.

Why don’t you do it yourself?

He thinks I made a deal with Yoos.

And did you?

I didn’t take one dime from Jackie! he protested a little too much, Not one fuckin’ penny!

I mentally rolled my eyes. But you agreed on a price.

More or less, he mumbled.

And then you cut a better deal with Uri. For the same piece.

Tommy shrugged sheepishly. The good eye focused on the floor; the other one was doing the town. Look. All I want to do is get it to him. I can’t do it because ? ah, what the hell, you know what Jackie Slater’s like.

Homicidal maniac, hot tempered, crazy bastard, and mean sociopath, all sprang to mind. I got up, walked to the window, stared out at Palos Verdes on the south crescent of Santa Monica Bay, then up the coast past Malibu. It was one of those days that make the tourist postcards. If what Robertson said was true, there was a better than even chance that Slater and/or Uri had checked it out and decided that the tusk was genuine, or they wouldn’t have agreed to a deal. Neither of them would waste time with phony anything.

Well? I ain’t got all fuckin’ day, y’know.

I stared at him for a moment. His good eye stared back while the other one checked out Catalina. Tell you what. I’ll keep the ten grand for a couple of days, and you hold on to the art work. I’m going to make some calls to see how feasible it’ll be and I’ll let you know. How do I get hold of you?

He hesitated, then screeched an incredulous, You keep my cash?

I nodded. Plus another five grand for my thinking about it.

Bullshit! he said.

Your call, I replied nonchalantly, and started to stand.

He stared. Sort of. I guess that’s the way it’s gotta be?

I nodded. You’ll get the ten back if I decide I can’t help you.

He nodded back, grabbed a Post-It from my desk and scribbled a telephone number. Area code eight-one-eight. The Valley. I helped him rewrap the tusk and shooed him out. I walked him to the elevator, leaving the office door ajar, not thinking about it until the elevator doors closed him safely inside. Safely being a loose description here, since I now had to worry about both Slater and Uri.

I turned just in time to see a small figure, or more accurately, the aft end of a small figure, dart into my office, where the Glock, all nice and clean and loaded and unreachable, rested. I edged up to the door, trying to come up with a plan and had about the same success I had trying to discourage Robertson. Oh well, I thought and went in.

A Pixie turned and screamed, scaring the hell out of me. She was maybe five-two, with black, curly long hair, hazel eyes behind thick, black-rimmed glasses, and about as cute—no, make that pretty, could be beautiful even - as could be. As seemed to be the style for the morning, she carried something wrapped in brown paper. Omigod you scared me to death, she gasped.

Likewise. And you are?

Who are you?

I asked first.

That’s not fair.

This, I could see, was not going to be the Saturday I had so carefully planned. Name’s Hunter. This is my office.

Omigod I’m so sorry Omigod of course you would be Mr. Hunter your name’s on the door actually it’s also on the Directory in the lobby and you’re definitely the person I’m looking for I read about you in the paper. Mercifully, she paused for a breath as she held up the same page Tommy had been waving a couple of minutes earlier. If nothing else, I knew the Times would be delighted to know that at least two people had bought copies. After all, when you’re operating a print operation in the digital age, every little bit helps. I want to hire you.

I nodded, gestured for her to sit. She looked around the office approvingly.

Do you have a name? I asked. Anything that would be useful to identify you?

I’m so sorry. She stood, extended her hand. No jewels on either.

Zoe Horowitz.

Her grip was strong, the skin soft.

Mr. Hunter, how much do you charge?

Depends, I answered honestly.

What does it depend on?

I shrugged. Who the client is. How time consuming and complicated and dangerous the assignment is.

Okay then. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, either trying to remember something she’d memorized, steeling herself or simply refueling with oxygen. "Okay I want you to find my fiancé Joey he’s disappeared we’re getting married next Sunday and he was supposed to be in Temple this morning but he didn’t show up Omigod I forgot I can’t hire you until tomorrow this is Shabbos." I thought she might have just set a new Guinness Speed Record for Spoken Words Per Second. I was exhausted just listening to her.

The Sabbath, I interjected, Until sundown.

Exactly. Please, you’ll take my case?

I got up, walked back to the window, looked down at the beach on the other side of PCH. Zoe, I need to know a little more before I can decide. And I usually charge by the hour. Five hundred an hour. Can you afford that?

She sighed the deepest, most despairing sigh I’d heard in a long time, as her eyes filled with tears and her lip started quivering. She shook her head. No, she replied, so softly that I could barely hear her. I only have five hundred dollars all together. Mr. Hunter, please. Please help me.

I know what you’re thinking, but what would you do?

Right.

We’ll work it out, I assured her, We’ll work something out. What’s in the wrap?

She carefully unwrapped the paper, revealing a Ziploc bag containing a small cache of small, and to my relatively experienced eye, quality - diamonds. There was also a sandwich in plastic wrap, looked like brisket on rye with mustard, and an old .44 Magnum revolver that was roughly the size of a coastal defense cannon.

"What’s with the pistola?" I asked, figuring I’d get to the diamonds in a minute.

It’s my grandpa’s. He doesn’t know I borrowed it. I thought maybe I’d have to use it to persuade you to take my case. But only if I really, really, really had to.

Three reallys. I shook my head, reached for the Venti. Nearly cold. It’s one thing if they’re iced to begin with, but cold after hot is a different story. I sipped it anyway, just sitting there studying Zoe, who was shifting uncomfortably, when the door slammed open and two very large types jumped into the room. One was wearing a red ski mask and the other a Navy Blue one. Both carried Uzis. Red casually sprayed a long burst along the wall, shredding an original oil that Marissa had borrowed from Todd Ripley, and which, she said he figured would fetch forty or fifty thousand dollars at the next Sails’ Charity Auction. Blue Boy, not to be outdone, sprayed a short burst just over my head, doing severe damage to my nerves and the wall behind me, but that was about it. Obviously, they didn’t intend to hurt me, or maybe, us.

Trick or treat, right? I flipped, choking a little on the dust.

Shut the fuck up, Asshole, Red replied, waving the Uzi lazily in my direction again. Where is it?

Where’s what? I asked reasonably, having only a hunch, and glanced over at Zoe, who sat with her mouth wide open, hands pressed tightly to her ears.

You know what! Navy Blue insisted, The fucking tusk.

‘The Fucking Tusk’? What a great title, I thought. I don’t have The Fucking Tusk.

Bullshit. Another burst at the wall, the holes combining nicely with those of the first groupings to form an Interesting pattern on the wall. Jackson Pollock, working with lead.

Stop cursing! Zoe snapped suddenly, really angry. "This is Shabbos, on top of everything else. You two should be ashamed."

Red and Blue stared at me in bewilderment. I spread my hands. Got me, guys.

We know Robertson is here. We tailed him. Saw him come in.

Was here.

They considered the possibility, checked out the office, decided I was telling the truth. Word of advice, Hunter. That sonofabitch belongs to Jackie Slater.

Robertson or ‘The Fucking Tusk'? I asked innocently.

Red glared at me for a couple of seconds, offhandedly sprayed another burst, and having apparently decided that their work here on Earth was done, nodded to Navy Blue and started to back out of the office. Red glanced down, noticed the Ziploc of diamonds. He stopped, reached over, plucked it off the desk and pocketed it.

No! Zoe screamed, and dived for his pocket. With a little chuckle, he stepped back and cuffed her on the forehead. She faltered, but stayed on her feet. Go Zoe!

They turned, laughing, and headed for the door, spraying another affectionate little goodbye burst as they exited. One round disintegrated the computer monitor. That did it, I thought, and grabbed Zoe’s cannon, flipped off the safety as I dove into the hallway, rolled, and came up clicking. Clicking. The last I saw of Red and Navy Blue they were laughing and cocking their thumbs and forefingers at me as the elevator door closed.

I started for the stairs, then realized that I’d be unarmed, chasing two thugs with Uzis and a combined I.Q. that wouldn’t break into the teens. I ran back into the office to find Zoe sobbing hysterically.

"Those diamonds are Bubby’s - my grandmas! It’s all she has! She smuggled them out of a camp in France with my grandpa, no she didn’t smuggle Grandpa out, just the diamonds, not that she left him they met there and they were actually lined up and a firing squad was getting ready to shoot them when some British Commandos thank God stormed the camp it was my mother’s but she got killed in a car accident and so those diamonds are my dowry, our dowry, and...."

Zoe! I shouted, at the moment not much carrying about the ownership of the diamonds, "Your pistola, she no loaded!"

Of course not, she replied, her eyes widening in surprise. I could never shoot anyone!

Chapter Two

Keeping my fingers crossed behind my back and praying preemptively for forgiveness, I assured Zoe that I would get her diamonds back and that I would find Joey and that the fee would be reasonable. She wrote down her phone numbers and the address of the four-plex she shared with her grandparents, who had raised her since her parents had been killed in a bus accident when Zoe was six years old. I offered to call her a cab, but she refused, politely explaining that she was driving her grandfather’s Nash. I overcame my curiosity and let it go. Another time.

I carefully closed and locked the door behind her, then walked around the office, surveying the damage. A few holes and some dust, plus some easily replaceable, if fairly expensive expensive equipment and the expensive painting; all things considered, not that much damage. I tried to imagine how I would tell Marissa. She was in Mission Viejo with her crew, installing the furnished models she’d designed for Beachside, West Rim Equities’ newest over-the-top, million-dollar-plus community. The Grand Opening ribbon cutting was scheduled to take place in a couple of hours, an event you might think I’d want to attend. In fact, you might even think that it would be my duty to be at her side for any such event, and I can certainly understand your thinking. However, based on my years of experience with Marissa Juliette Baristono and her unique combination of Parisian beauty and Panamanian temperament in dealing with the stress that seemed to be endemic to all of her Grand Openings, I had decided to take the prudent path and spend Saturday as far away from Beachside as I could. Not that I would be completely absent- I figured I’d drive down late in the afternoon, take her to dinner, and we’d return Sunday in time to get to Dodger stadium for the first of a three-game series with the Giants.

Truth be told, I still can’t quite figure out what she’s doing with me. It isn’t my fabulous fortune, that’s for sure. I’m doing okay now, true, but we’ve been together, on and off, since the days when my daily fare, more often than not, consisted of a foot-long Subway cut into thirds for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And trust me on this one: it isn’t the looks, either. I’m not what I’d call handsome. Nose rearranged during some hand-to-hand stuff in another world a long time ago, thick salt and pepper hair that pretty much does what it wants. Marissa selects most of my wardrobe from Mario Antonio Rocca, Mary to his friends. We’ve known each other since way back, when we were both broke, struggling, and, Mary, like Eddie Ross, couldn’t pay my fee. He had insisted on the arrangement we still have: I’m on a monthly retainer, but instead of a check on the 1st, I get a suit, or a jacket—whatever he feels like. I don’t know the true value of this arrangement, but suffice to say that Mario is now one of a handful of ridiculously expensive tailors who avoid the general public but who are frequented by knowledgeable and affluent celebrities of all types. So I have a closet full of high-priced duds. Left to myself, I’d be happy with a pair of Levis, a couple of sweatshirts and a pair of Eccos. I’m in pretty fair shape, mainly because I work out at Lu’s Fitness & Martial Arts Studio in Venice at least three days a week, more if I can make time. Lu puts me through his own grinder combination of aerobics, resistance training and Mixed Martial Arts for a little over two hours at a time. His program is a pragmatic combination of karate, judo, jiu-jitsu, Krav Maga, and a few little bits he’s stolen from Kato, the Houseman/Valet in The Pink Panther series. It keeps my six-foot frame just under two hundred pounds.

I began my life as a duly licensed P.I. by following cheating spouses and ferreting out weasels of every description for clients of every description, some of whose names you’d recognize, plus a few federal and state government agencies with names that are all initials— some of which you’d no doubt also recognize but which I’m not allowed to reveal. In recent years, I’ve done some work- a lot of work, actually- for some major law firms, and a little

Reviews for Made in L.A.

[MichaelW7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Made in L.A. hooked me in the first couple of chapters, and kept me interested all the way through to a conclusion that left me satisfied and smiling. Zach Hunter is the quintessential "fixer" for a wide spectrum of clients, from socialites to the Russian Mafia. He’s hired to deliver a coveted ivory elephant tusk sought by a Mexican cartel, a pair of nasty mob bosses and an unnamed government agency. The tusk is worth a fortune, but not for the reasons you might guess. Hunter's long time love interest, Marissa, is a beautiful, sultry, award winning interior designer, whose intelligence and French-Panamanian temperament keep Hunter on his toes. On another level, Made in L.A. is a tour of Los Angeles. As a native Angeleno, I found myself nodding knowingly as the story wound around some of L.A.'s famed landmarks. I think that non-Angeleno readers will be drawn to the City of Angels by the same sites. Stuart Osder has injected a classic and old-school approach into an exciting story line, filled it with plenty of action, suspense, romance, glamour and witty sarcasm. Not to mention the story is worth the read just to meet the greatest character of all--a 150 lb. Irish Wolfhound, named Owen. If you're looking for a fun, easy read that keeps you guessing to the very end, I recommend Made in L.A. --Michael W., Los Angeles.