PUBLISHERS WEEKLY --
Ghosts of the 1960s and '70s haunt
this bruising second entry in Brubaker and Phillips's bloody-knuckled L.A. noir
series. It's 1985 and ex-FBI agent and current paladin for hire Ethan Reckless
is grinding through private-eye cases, mourning his father, and losing himself
by watching old sitcoms at his shuttered movie theater office. Falling hard for
Linh Tran, a tough-as-nails library clerk, he agrees to help find her sister
Maggie, who vanished into the Hollywood fleshpots years before. After spotting
Maggie in the background of a crummy exploitation flick, Ethan begins pulling at
the tangled threads of a seedy operation and unravels a tale of the city's fall
from hippie optimism, with movie producers taking advantage of fresh-off-the-bus
ingenues, an Aleister Crowley meets Charles Manson cult, and Nazi skinheads
(“for some reason, there always had to be skinheads”). Ethan pursues
his leads doggedly but with a baked-in cynicism, knowing that after solving the
case he and Linh would just “wait for the truth to destroy us.” The
art is varied, richly colored, and grittily textured as old film stock. Despite
the series' dour lead, the sharp cultural references, bone-deep knowledge of the
Southland, and pulsing through line of righteous heroism will make readers eager
for Ethan's next reluctant adventure. <i>(May)</i><br /><br /><br />