{"id":8910,"date":"2021-03-15T08:12:48","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T12:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8910"},"modified":"2021-03-15T08:12:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T12:12:48","slug":"angelino-heights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8910","title":{"rendered":"Angelino Heights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Adam Bregman – Quirky thrillers that don\u2019t follow typical \u201chero\u2019s journey\u201d plotting have great appeal. You really don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming next. Adam Bregman\u2019s debut thriller is one of these books, with the quirkiness intensified by a passion for the Los Angeles of decades ago. The story is set in the late 90s, and the protagonists are on the hunt for classic neighborhoods, bars that have lived through innumerable trendiness cycles, and other vestiges of California when it was still a shared national dream, The Golden State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re first introduced to Nathan Lyme, a youngish man who begins the story with a long rant about the infelicitous changes wrought in his city. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I\u2019m opposed to change. It\u2019s just that I prefer they don\u2019t change anything, unless it\u2019s somehow for the better.\u201d Before long, you realize Nathan\u2019s fussiness doesn\u2019t apply to his own behavior, as he rifles the coats and handbags of guests at a house party he briefly attends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up is Dalton Everest, a high school teacher, short to Nathan\u2019s tall, who also prowls for vintage watering holes. Sitting next to each other at a bar one night, they strike up a conversation, then an unlikely friendship. Nathan is everything Dalton is not\u2014good looking, charming, a risk-taker, and street-smart. He\u2019s also very private about how he makes a living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Nathan, whose life story you eventually learn, is lonely. He wants a partner in his crimes. And he thinks Dalton is reliable and congenial enough to assist him in his long string of car thefts and home robberies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first Nathan uses the heavy-drinking, but beautiful French woman Melanee to lure Dalton in, but that approach goes badly awry, and he ends up making his pitch flat-out. To Dalton\u2019s own surprise, he goes along with Nathan\u2019s proposal to team up, getting in deeper and deeper, terrified every step of the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, you meet Orlando Talbert, a morose Black LAPD detective concerned about a career advancing at a snail\u2019s pace who would like to have one spectacular score to jump-start the professional recognition he believes is his due. He makes a success of cases he\u2019s assigned by pursuing them relentlessly, and you recognize him as Nathan and Dalton\u2019s potential nemesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a fast-paced read, nicely written, with strong dialog. Author Bregman has brought to the page his own enthusiasm for the remaining old, odd bits of the city and his encyclopedic knowledge about its eccentricities\u2014geographical, architectural, and sociological. Reading the book is like a tour with a most interesting and entertaining guide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Bregman – Quirky thrillers that don\u2019t follow typical \u201chero\u2019s journey\u201d plotting have great appeal. You really don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming next. Adam Bregman\u2019s debut thriller is one of these books, with the quirkiness intensified by a passion for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Angelino Heights - an entertaining tour of the odd, classic bits of the city with a seriously mismatched pair of thieves.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[440,52,266,1821,632,126],"tags":[1842,1843,307],"class_list":["post-8910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-crime","category-history","category-humor","category-police","category-reading-2","tag-adam-bregman","tag-angelino-heights","tag-los-angeles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2jI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8912,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8910\/revisions\/8912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}