Double Solitaire by Craig Nova

Craig Nova is a great American writer (winner of a Guggenheim fellowship and the O. Henry Prize), he consistently delivers fine writing, yet his name is not widely known as Denis Johnson or Richard Ford. Through fourteen previous novels, he has moved from the East coast to the West, now venturing into Michael Connelly/James Ellroy territory with Double Solitaire, a California novel of movie stars and con games, the perfect setting for a crime mystery.

Quinn Farrell is a modern day fixer in L.A., cleaning up rich peoples messes, jaded but without judgement. His good client Braumberg is a top film producer with a lot of money riding on the product, tasking him to clean up after his hot new star Terry Peregrine, who has no sense and a taste for young girls.

The first girl refuses to leave the house without $20,000 hush money. Braumberg is not fazed, but before Farrell can return with the cash, Terry claims she came to her senses and took a bus home to Alaska. Maybe she'll send a postcard. Farrell knows Terry took the easy way to make the problem disappear, and begins searching the hills around his Mulholland home for the body.

Farrell is buying a business to explain his flow of money - Coin-A-Matic vending machines - which quickly attract low-life KGB thugs looking for shakedown money.

Soon there are two more girls refusing to leave Terry's house without a pay off, this time demanding small parts in the new film - with lines. The third, an English girl that also partied with them, has disappeared. Maybe she took the bus home too, to England.

Farrell finds these girls have a long history of extorion, but no one wants to involve the cops.

They all have the California disease, the belief money can buy your way out of fraud or into fame. There isn't much you can't get with cash. Braumberg is a con man himself, keeping the film clean until the opening weekend. Terry is a manufactured item, promoted and protected since working his way up from being a fluffer. Farrell is a lover of books and reading, has a romance with his neighbour, and is down to earth - unswayed by the twinkling lights down in the valley.

There is a solid Raymond Chandler vibe about it, a modern take on the private detective novel. Slightly too much time is spent driving in the desert, and with Rose Marie the neighbour, but all the threads come together in the end.

Quinn Farrell is good at his work, and I was excited to hear this was the start of a new series.

2021 / Hardcover / 242 pages