Los Angeles: A Novel [Hardcover]

As an albino in sunny Los Angeles, Angel Veronchek is a stranger in a strange land, and Smith's moody and atmospheric psychological thriller embraces the noir aesthetic that's so much a part of the city's history. Veronchek is rich—his father is a successful movie producer—and richly dysfunctional, ingesting a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals while working, obsessively, on a screenplay about his hometown while a DVD of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner plays continuously in his dark apartment. The hermit-like Angel begins to connect with the world when Angela, a mysterious beauty, moves in next door, but a few weeks later she disappears. Angel's quest to find Angela takes him out of his apartment and into the city, but the more important journey is the one he takes into his bizarre psychology and family history. Smith's prose can be strong, particularly in his rendering of the hellish dystopia of the City of Angels: "the smog is absolute... the exhaust fumes of a million engines rising... through an atmosphere that almost never breathes." But his plot is only mildly compelling; it can't support the weight of the narrator's musings on the nature of reality—nor is any character, including the pathetic Angel, attractive enough to command our attention. FYI: Smith's first novel, Raveling (2000), was nominated for an Edgar Award.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Jessica Teagarden has strange taste in men. How else to explain the stripper's erotic fascination with Angel Veronchek, an emotionally unstable albino recluse whose nocturnal existence is bathed in the dim flicker of Blade Runner on perpetual repeat and sustained by a bewildering array of pharmacopoeia? No sooner has she pried our wan hero from his shell than her abrupt disappearance leaves him blinking in the harsh desert glare, wondering if she may have fallen prey to someone stranger still. His quest for her leads him down odd avenues where lurk other misfits like himself. As in Smith's Edgar-nominated debut, Raveling (2000), this moody psychological thriller relies on the subtle sanity of an unreliable narrator, one who pales next to the compellingly cracked heroes of George Dawes Greene's The Caveman's Valentine or Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. Smith's cinematography is spellbinding, with vivid and menacing lightscapes that buzz, glow, and sear their way into the reader's consciousness, evoking William Gibson's dire, postmodern skies "the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Another atmospheric thriller with a difference from a compelling new voice. David Wright
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

A very stylish, well told mystery. - Daily Mirror. 'Peter Moore Smith knows how to thrill and chill' - Guardian. 'Moore Smith has created a believable and vulnerable personality, whose adventures in an unfamiliar and sinister world make an unusual and engrossing story' - Sunday Telegraph. 'Moore Smith scores big time with the wonderfully dark mood and atmosphere... well worth reading' - Observer" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

It is a hoarse whisper over a crackling cell phone - "Angel" - and then the connection is lost. Angel is convinced that the voice belongs to his beautiful and enigmatic neighbor, Angela - and that she is terrified for her life. He paces the floor, waiting for the phone to ring again, calls the police, searches her apartment, but there is no trace of her anywhere, not for days. So begins a haunted man's quest to uncover what happened to the woman he has fallen in love with. Only now does he realize that he knows nearly nothing about her. Angel has his secrets, too. He is the son of one of Hollywood's most successful movie producers, but he has turned away from that bright and power-ridden world. Instead, he leads a cloistered existence, nursing an unfinished screenplay as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner loops ceaselessly in his darkened apartment. But now, for the first time in years, because of Angela's sudden disappearance, Angel is propelled into action. Following the few clues he has gathered about her, he trails Angela through the hard glitter of Los Angeles days and nights. With every new piece of knowledge arrives another question and an even more chilling possibility: Did he merely imagine Angela? Is someone deliberately leading him? Is the phantom he is pursuing the very fear he has been running from? In the murky underworld beneath the bright surface of Los Angeles, everything he knew about her - and himself - begins to unravel. In this city of secrets that aren't meant to be told and people who aren't meant to be found, Angel may soon discover that the most dangerous lies of all are the ones you tell yourself.

Peter Moore Smith vit à New York. Il a publié des nouvelles très remarquées dans des magazines littéraires américains et est l''auteur des Écorchés, également Points Thriller. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.