Dead West

March 30, 2020
In bestseller Goldman’s excellent third mystery featuring Minneapolis PI Nils Shapiro (after 2019’s The Shallows), Beverly Mayer, a grumpy matriarch, hires Nils to check on her grown grandson, Ebben, who she believes is wasting his time in the movie business. Ebben, whose fiancée has just died, is trying to launch a creator-focused studio, but Nils suspects that Ebben’s fiancée was murdered and that Ebben himself might have been the target. Along with his good friend Jameson White—a nurse and former athlete fighting inner demons after being on shift during a school shooting—Nils dives into the L.A. scene, meeting mysterious East European mobsters, attractive screenwriters, powerful agents, and plenty of others who might have wanted to kill Ebben. Goldman wisely keeps the Hollywood satire to a minimum, focusing instead on the actual detective work, the very real dangers Nils faces, and emotionally grueling issues Jameson is attempting to process. Goldman takes a classic trope—a working-class private detective set loose in Hollywood—and squeezes enough originality out of it to make for a dazzling tale. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary.

When Minneapolis private investigator Nils Shapiro accepts an assignment in L.A., he expects to find a quick answer to the question of what 30-year-old Ebben Mayer is spending his inheritance on in the movie business. Narrator Bronson Pinchot enlivens Shapiro's breezy witticisms with the tone of a guy who doesn't take himself too seriously but insists that his own sense of justice be met. Shapiro's sidekick and bodyguard, a gentle giant, is voiced with such whispery sensitivity that his dialogue is difficult to hear. As Shapiro explores the dubious world of film production, most Mayer's associates turn out to be colorful women, and Pinchot performs their voices in a richer timbre. Shapiro suspects that a murder is connected to Mayer's newest project, and his investigation puts his own life in danger. N.M.C. � AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine