City of Angles (Hardcover)

Description

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A smart and sexy modern noir set in the steamy underbelly of 21st century Hollywood.

Billy Rosenberg is a workmanlike screenwriter who finds his fate intertwined with would-be starlet Vincenza Morgan in this fiendish and sharp tale of a city where Image always trumps Reality.

Filled with plot twists, wicked humor, and vivid commentary on celebrity culture, author Jonathan Leaf has skillfully crafted a compelling romp which manages to weave murder, drugs, sex cults, modern relationships, and naked ambition together into a tale that lays bare the real Los Angeles—a city where even the angels have an angle.

About the Author

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Jonathan Leaf is a playwright and journalist. His drama Pushkin was selected as one of the four best plays of 2018 by the Wall Street Journal. He has been nominated in the Innovative Theater (IT) Awards for Best Play of the Year for The Caterers and has received rave reviews for his work in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, the New Criterion, BroadwayWorld, Show Business Weekly, National Review, and many other publications. Since March 2017, he has premiered five new plays in New York, San Francisco, and Paris. 

As a journalist and critic, his writing has been featured in National Review, the Daily Beast, Spectator (USA), Tablet, Mosaic, the New York Post, New York Press, City Journal, Humanities, the Weekly Standard, Modern Age, First Things, The American, The American Conservative, the New York Sun, and many other publications.

Praise For…

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“Lacerating wit…as chilling as it is morbidly funny…delightfully humorous, and the murder mystery is engrossing…This is lighthearted literary entertainment at its best—easily companionable, intelligent, and brimming with artful humor.”
— Kirkus Review

“From the hip clubs of Koreatown to the privileged compounds of Malibu, nobody captures ‘this town’ like Jon Leaf. A modern-day Hollywood noir that starts with a body in a trunk and never lets its foot off the gas. Addictive, fast and funny.”
— Dan Staley, Executive Producer of Cheers and Good Luck, Charlie

“Leaf deftly chauffeurs us through the streets and personalities of Los Angeles with clever authenticity and noir glamour. A wild, only in LA page-turner!”
— Laura Bickford, Academy Award-nominated Producer of Traffic and Beasts of No Nation

“Arriving for an audition, an aspiring young actress finds a dead body in the trunk of her car. Should she cancel the audition and call the police? Not a chance; when your career’s on the line, the L.A.P.D can wait. Anyway, that stiff’s not going anywhere. An incisive satirical whodunit, City of Angles hooks you fast and never lets you go. Dreaming of fame and fortune in Tinseltown? You might want to read this first.”
— Joe Queenan, Wall Street Journal humor columnist and author of If You're Talking To Me, Your Career Must Be In Trouble

“In applying his gimlet eye to all the mischief in Hollywood, acclaimed playwright Jonathan Leaf has created in his novel City of Angles an absolutely brilliant mixture of noir and social satire reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One.”
— Edward Jay Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of The Hollywood Economist and The Big Picture

“I had given up on Hollywood as well as books about it until I read Jonathan Leaf’s riveting and amusing City of Angles. Get it!”
— Roger Simon, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Enemies, A Love Story

“Jonathan Leaf’s entertaining murder mystery-insider's guide-roman à clef gives you a marvelous tour of the so-called City of Angles—because everyone’s got one—as his protagonists strive to scale the slippery and treacherous walls of Fortress Hollywood. If Carl Hiaasen is Florida Man, then Jonathan Leaf certainly has Los Angeles covered.”
— Alexander Rose, Author of Washington’s Spies and producer of Turn: Washington’s Spies

“Jonathan Leaf’s scintillating debut, City of Angles, is even sharper than its whip-smart title. Part noir, part exposé of Hollywood’s dirty little secrets, and all fun and games, the tale teases and satisfies in equal parts. Flashing a shrewd sense of humor that feels like a knowing wink at a Tinseltown bar, Leaf’s prose treads nimbly between the crisp and the lyrical.”
— Christopher Yates, author of Black Chalk and Grist Mill Road