Cinnamon Girl
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Evocative, nostalgic, haunting, twisty, and true, Weizmann’s fast paced and smartly written CINNAMON GIRL is everything there is to love about a classic PI novel and more … much more." — Reed Farrel Coleman, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of SLEEPLESS CITY
From the author of the acclaimed The Last Songbird, Lyft driver-turned-sleuth Adam Zantz returns in a neo-noir dive into the dark side of LA’s rock scene . . .
Adam Zantz is still driving for Lyft, struggling to make ends meet, when his beloved former piano teacher makes a deathbed request: He wants Zantz to prove his son’s innocence in a decades-earlier murder case.
There doesn’t seem to be much hope of solving such a cold case—until Zantz stumbles onto a test pressing of a never-released vinyl LP. The recording is of a high school garage band lost to the tides of the Paisley Underground, the acid-fueled early ’80s music scene that spawned the Bangles and the Three O'Clock.
Down the psychedelic rabbit hole Adam falls, tracing the band's journey from the middle class garage to the precipice of fame—a twisted tale marked by crooked DJs, elder-scammers, wellness hucksters, a teen cult, and the woman who held the key to the band’s triumph and ruin.
One part Raymond Chandler, one part Ziggy Stardust, Cinnamon Girl is both an indelible, moving portrait of Los .Angeles, and a suspenseful tale of greed, lust, betrayal, and the hidden price of teenage yearning.
EXTRA! A QR code will be added for the liner notes of the album by The Daily Telegraph. These feature importantly in the novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lyft driver and PI Adam Zantz plumbs the depths of L.A.'s mid-1980s music scene in Weizmann's enjoyable if erratic sequel to The Last Songbird. Adam's childhood piano teacher, who is dying, enlists the part-time sleuth to track down a man he claims can clear the name of his son, Emil, who was killed in prison while locked up for the murder of drug dealer Reynaldo Druazo a decade earlier. To start, Adam turns to the family of Emil's former girlfriend, Cinnamon Persky, who died of an apparent overdose shortly after Emil was killed. While visiting Cinnamon's mother, Adam stumbles on the test pressing of an unreleased 1980 LP from a garage band called the Daily Telegraph, whose members included Emil and Reynaldo. Following that lead, he discusses the band with a burnt-out L.A. music historian, who sheds light on their competitive, druggy, and crime-riddled milieu. Could Emil, Cinnamon, and Reynaldo all have fallen victim to a musical rivalry gone wrong? Fans of the previous novel will enjoy spending more time with Weizmann's shaggy detective-in-training, even as the plotting stumbles in the home stretch. This breezy neo-noir whizzes by like a familiar old song.
