What Makes Los Angeles The

Perfect Setting For Crime Noir?

I just finished binge-watching Bosch: Legacy and now have gone back to re-watch season one of Bosch. Not only is the main character—Harry Bosch—the quintessential lone cop seeking justice for all, but the city itself is such a perfect setting for a great crime story. I set my first novel—Pay For Play—in and around L.A., knowing the city would serve as a character itself, coming across at times as pretty yet ugly, virtuous yet decadent, genuine yet illusory. As Jeffrey Fleishman says in a recent Crime Reads article, “It is the light. The way it plays across the city, glimmering at the ocean’s edge, slivering its way into canyons, beating down on skid row and warming the hustlers in Hollywood. The light in Los Angeles is at once scouring, soft and cruel, a tease of refuge and absolution at the edge of the continent. It tempts you with its make-believe dusks and the way it succumbs to the shadows in the San Gabriels.” In his essay on the 1960 Democratic National Convention—"Superman Comes to the Supermarket”—Norman Mailer wrote, “One gets the impression that people come to Los Angeles in order to divorce themselves from the past, here to live or try to live in the rootless pleasure world of an adult child. . .One has the feeling it was built by television sets giving orders to men.” As Fleishman concludes, “It will confess the sin but refuse the penance. Yet the city and its strivers demand a starring role.”

14 Movies About Wrongful Convictions

That Will Make Your Blood Boil

Every week it seems we hear of the release of yet another person who’s been convicted for a crime he or she didn’t commit. The website for the Innocence Project is full of these stories but, to most of us, they are just names and sad-luck stories that cause a momentary reaction of anger before we move on to the next part of our day. Step back for a second and consider what life must be like for those who endure this sort of horror for a year, or a decade, or perhaps even the rest of a lifetime. Whether true crime of fiction, wrongful conviction movies are designed to leave the viewer with mixed feelings that cover the full spectrum from pity to sympathy to rage. Unfortunately, it's a shameful facet of the American justice system, one that changes the lives not only of the unwitting victim, but also his or her family and loved ones. No one is left untouched. If you're looking for stories that will make your blood boil, each of the movies on this list, compiled by Angelica Florio for Bustle, is worth a watch. These films explore what goes wrong with the criminal justice system, from racial biases to forced/false confessions, and will leave you furious—and maybe ready to take action.

DNA COLD CASE

DNA Helped Solve Murder Of Woman

Found Wrapped In Rug In Utah In 1998

Everyone knows the best way to move a body out of a building is to roll it up in a rug and stuff it in the back of a van. Horrifically, that appears to be what happened to 37-year-old Line Reyes Geddes, who was found murdered and wrapped in carpet along a highway near Maidenwater Spring, Utah on April 20, 1998. Her murder remained unsolved for almost a quarter century—until last month, when investigators used a specialized vacuum and were able to extract DNA from a rope that bound her body. They then were able to compare and match the killer’s identity with the DNA of two living family members, eventually leading to the positive ID of her husband, Edward Geddes. Authorities now say Geddes murdered his wife by shooting her in the head, after which he wrapped her in plastic bags and duct tape, bound her body with a rope tied in intricate knots, and then put her in a sleeping bag, which he rolled into a carpet. He also cut off the ends of her thumbs and fingers at a right angle in an attempt to remove her fingerprints and make it harder to identify her. Investigators believe he dumped his wife’s body in Utah, a state where neither of them had any connections, to make it harder to identify her. These attempts were initially successful, as she was only known as the “Maidenwater victim” for 20 years until she was finally identified in 2018. Geddes, who briefly was a suspect in his wife's unsolved case after declining to report her as a missing person, was found dead in 2001 by apparent suicide in Nevada. Police determined at the time that Geddes shot himself.

Today's Slasher Flicks Got Their Start

With European "Giallo" Films

I’ve never been a fan of slasher flicks. I won’t go into all the reasons, other than to note the gratuitous amounts of blood, the formulaic plots, and the inane dialogue. (“Who’s there?” “Let’s split up.”) However, a lot of people are huge fans of this genre of thriller/horror story, and Josh Bell recently chronicled the rise of the slasher flick in an article in Novel Suspects. “When people think of slasher films, the first thing that probably comes to mind is a list of iconic horror villains: Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Chucky,” he notes. “These characters are just as prominent in horror now as they were during the initial slasher boom of the 1980s, and they give the genre a sense of enduring timelessness. But slasher movies originated in a very specific way, with independent horror filmmakers drawing inspiration from European ‘giallo’ films and classic psychological thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. At its most basic, all a slasher movie needs is a killer with a knife and a series of hapless victims, and that’s easy to put together on a small budget. Stories structured around a mysterious killer knocking off victims one by one have an even longer history, of course, and at heart many slasher movies are just murder mysteries with more violence.”

For Espionage Lovers: 18 Of The

Best Spy Novels Ever Written

There’s something about the tension and buildup of a great spy novel that works particularly well on the page. That’s not to knock the many great spy movies out there, of course, but when it comes to pacing and creating paranoia, novels have the advantage. The staff at Murder-Mayhem recently took a look at how “espionage seamlessly transmits to each page as it holds inspiration from the rivalries and intrigues of major powers. The development of fascism and communism in the lead up to World War II, the development of the Cold War, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies are all factors in the creation and fascination of this literary genre.” With this in mind, if you’re in search of great novels about international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, or just some simple sabotage and espionage, these 18 books are thrilling examples of a finely calibrated espionage tale—and some of the best spy novels ever written.

Greenwich Mean Time:

Coming January 2023!

When photojournalist Monica Cross literally stumbles into the site of an old airplane crash at the edge of a Himalayan glacier, she is exposed to a dark and deadly secret. Unaware that her life is in grave danger, she attempts to get home to New York while a dark-web, murder for hire outfit pulls out all stops to make sure she never gets there. Spanning ten time zones, nine countries, and four continents, Greenwich Mean Time is a tightly spun thriller that plays out against a violent plot designed to change the course of history forever.

[Cover image approximate; final photo

will not include watermarks]