An excellent detective story. Everything is important and nothing can be ignored. Red herrings abound. By the end it feels like a ride on a rollercoaster but it’s worth every moment. As soon as I had finished this book I wanted to check out everything else this author has written. I know I’m in for a reading treat.

The Hollywood hills in the long hot summer of 1962. Marilyn Monroe has been found dead from an overdose. Two Soviet astronauts circle the earth & Americans are wary of what will come next.
Jimmy Keegan is an almost down-at-heel private investigator, who is solvent only because his mother has just died & left him her home & her dog, Nora.
And then, Eve, his beautiful neighbour enters his life & before he knows it there is a dead man on the floor with a bullet from his gun in his neck. Is Eve the deadly enchantress the police think she is or an innocent victim caught up in a much darker crime?
For lovers of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels & James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice - here is a novel that won't disappoint.

Great 60s noir. You can feel the heatwave and wonder how Keegan got suckered into everything. One murder isn't the whole story and made for good reading

I would like to thank Netgalley and Legend Press for an advance copy of City of Fallen Angels, the first novel to feature Los Angeles P.I. John Keegan.

Summer 1962 in Los Angeles. Keegan is offered a well paying job to find a woman but something doesn’t seem right so he refuses. The next day that very woman, Eve Ormsby, asks him for help as she thinks she’s being followed. Soon he is the prime suspect in a murder he didn’t commit and way out of his depth.

I found City of Fallen Angels to be a mixed bag. I loved the writing but I really struggled with the plot as stupidity is never an interesting subject. The plot is predicated on a single poor decision that Keegan makes and the widening ramifications of this decision. This is where the plot and I parted company as I have absolutely no understanding how a supposedly intelligent man could act as he could. Am I supposed to think that because the novel is set in a supposedly more innocent time it could be seen as misplaced chivalry? I still don’t see it. The solution is ingenuous, coming out of left field as it does, but it doesn’t excuse an unbelievable plot premise.

It took me days rather than hours to read this novel as I had such a hard time with the plot, but the quality of the writing kept me going. You can feel the heat of Los Angeles and feel yourself in the sixties. It is extremely atmospheric and very well done. The novel is told in the third person from Keegan’s point of view exclusively so the reader gets up close and personal with his thought processes and motivations. I’m not sure he understands himself why he took the decision and he’s not as smart as he thinks he is as he tries to outrun the consequences. It is actually very well done as he moves from nonchalance to suspicion and a touch of panic.

There is much to recommend in City of Fallen Angels and one poor plot does not spoil the potential of the series so I am looking forward to the sequel.

Keegan used to be a young hotshot reporter. Things change. Now he's a middle-aged P.I.

Our story takes place during ten days in August of 1962 during a sweltering heat wave. Marilyn Monroe died about a week ago, Keegan's mother had died about a week before that leaving him a nice little piece of land with a small cottage situated on it and a small dog named Nora. Keegan has not yet come to terms with any of it.

The oppressive heat leaves him unable to sleep to any great extent which leaves him too much time to think. He once caught a brief glimpse of Marilyn Monroe (maybe it was her) and for some reason the image keeps coming back to him. Had he neglected his mother? He wasn't the son he could have been or should have been. What about the dog, Nora? His apartment building doesn't allow pets.

Enter a damsel in distress half his age. Keegan is inexplicably drawn to her - possibly as an outlet for all the things he's not quite feeling about Marilyn, the late Mrs. Keegan, and Nora. Possibly because, under strange circumstances, he recently saw a photo of said damsel (maybe it was her.... probably.... it was her).

Wham! Bang! Boom!

What just happened? Either Keegan is being played for a patsy by a treacherous femme fatale or...

City of Fallen Angels is noir in the classic style. Reminiscent of James M. Cain. The sexual aspect is muted, it's nowhere near as dark and gritty but still every bit as suspenseful, fatalistic, and morally ambivalent. All the plot twists in all the right places that still leaves you chasing your own tail. That's some pretty fine writing!

I think this would appeal to readers of classic noir as well as those who prefer lighter mysteries but want something with a bit more bite to it. There's a smattering of four-letter-words but it's not too prevalent. The violence isn't graphic. Suitable for most readers.

***Thanks to NetGalley, Legend Press, and author Paul Buchanan for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

The first title in a promising new series, City of Fallen Angels follows crime writer turned PI Jim Keegan as a new neighbour leads him into murky territory.
Richly described and well-plotted; a worthwhile read and one to keep an eye out for.

Paul Buchanan's historical noir set in a sweltering 1960s Los Angeles has echoes of a number of classic noirs. It is 1962, Marilyn Monroe has just committed suicide, Ex-crime reporter, 53 year old Private Investigator John Keegan has little work, so when a potential client, the strange Simon Catling, gets in touch, offering the kind of money that will solve his financial difficulties, it seems that the gods are with him. However, the job seems sinister, he is shown photographs of a young beautiful woman, and asked to identify and find her, he is so uncomfortable that he turns down the work. Keegan's mother has recently died, leaving him to sort out her home and look after her dog, Nora, but grief has stalled this process for him, he and his mother have been close all their lives.

A close neighbour shows an interest in wanting to buy his mothers home, a B-movie and TV actor, Nigel Ormsby, a man his mother had passed gossip on, despite being married, he engages in numerous affairs with young women. To Keegan's surprise, he encounters the woman from the photographs shown to him by Catling, the lovely Eve Ormsby-Cutler, the niece of Nigel, staying at her uncle's home. He and Eve get on remarkably well, particularly given the number of years between them, although he mentions nothing of the job he had been offered. Eve is a frightened and unsettled woman, she feels she is being watched and followed, and asks for Keegan's help. Feeling highly protective of the vulnerable Eve, he supplies her with his gun, giving her shooting lessons to raise her confidence in looking after herself.

However, after a tragic event that occurs one night, can Keegan trust Eve to be who she appears to be? Certainly his long time friend, Lieutenant Louis Moore, believes him to be sadly deluded when it comes to trusting Eve, a femme fatale, believing he is being taken for a deadly ride that could see him being arrested for a murder he did not commit. Keegan's instinct is to continue to look out for Eve, in a LA where the criminal justice system has barely any acquaintance with the concept of justice, you could guarantee that it would fail to pick out fairness out of any line up. As doubts begin to creep in, Keegan has to get to the truth before the worst happens to him. This is a claustrophic, dark and tense crime noir that has slighly uneven pacing but which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Many thanks to Legend Press for an ARC.

The scene is Los Angeles, August 1962 and a heatwave that's making life uncomfortable for everyone. Private eye John "Jimmy" Keegan doesn't have any work and he's partly occupied with deciding what to do about his late mother's cottage. A neighbour called Ormsby, who's a B-movie actor and minor TV star, tells him he's interested in buying the property.
Earlier that day, Keegan had been shown photographs of a beautiful young woman and offered a large of sum of money to find her. Despite his lack of work, he turned the offer down.
And then he sees the same woman in Ormsby's garden and discovers she's his niece and her name is Eve.
The next day, Eve shows up at his cottage and tells him she thinks she's being watched. Keegan decides to assuage her fears by letting her practise shooting with his gun, which he then loans her for protection.
And then things get really complicated and Keegan finds himself in serious trouble.
This story reads like the script for a 1940's/1950's film noir, based on the hard-boiled crime novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. And it has more than a hint of "Double Indemnity" - a film based on the James M. Cain's 1943 novella of the same name - in which a hapless Fred MacMurray is lured into committing murder by glamorous housewife, Barbara Stanwyck.
The action unfolds very slowly - a little too slowly at times and is full of descriptions of people and places in early 1960's Los Angeles. The author, Paul Buchanan, really captures the atmosphere of that time, with references to various events such as the recent death of Marilyn Monroe and the launch of the first Soviet satellite. Private eye Keegan is a former crime reporter, but his cynicism seems to vanish when he's with the mysterious Eve who may not be what she seems. This is the first in a series featuring Keegan and I look forward to reading more about him. Recommended for fans of all things noir.
My thanks to the publisher, Legend Press and to NetGalley for a copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.