Shadow Dance

Martin Ott's Shadow Dance is the perfect L.A. Noir novel for our times, with a little of everything—romance, drugs, filmmaking, PTSD, twisted families, repressed memories, and mysterious disappearances—all set in a sketchy strip club in Little Persia on L.A.'s West Side. Ott's Buddy Rivet is a deeply flawed character, a hard-luck Army vet, who readers will root for, a soulful guy who wants to save the world but isn't sure he can save himself. This book is L.A. Confidential meets The Family Fang, with all the deception and double-cross of a terrific crime story, told in breathless, blunt-force-trauma prose.