A Violent Masterpiece

Set in contemporary Los Angeles, the novel follows three protagonists whose lives converge around a serial killer, a network of wealthy predators, and the secrets that protect them.

Jake Deal is a 33-year-old nightcrawler who drives through LA after dark, livestreaming crime scenes on a channel called the Creepy Crawl. A former Hollywood nightlife writer for the gossip site Truth or Dare, Jake left that world after a period marked by cocaine use and moral compromise. Now he photographs corpses and sells footage to his old boss, Michelle Weiss. He profiles the LA Ripper, a serial killer targeting women with dark hair and green eyes whose escalating brutality the police refuse to acknowledge.

Doug Gibson, a 47-year-old criminal defense attorney, has built his career representing disadvantaged clients. Shaped by abuse at the hands of his mother's partner, a police captain named O'Brien whose badge made him untouchable, Gibson fights for those crushed by the system. When TV producer Eric Algar is arrested on child pornography charges, Algar bypasses his high-powered attorney, Frederick Kim, and requests Gibson instead, saying he needs someone not "in with them." Gibson agrees to handle the bail hearing, though Algar's secrecy troubles him. An anonymous source, BOB, warns Gibson that Algar's life is in danger. Gibson loses the bail hearing, and Algar, desperate, finally confesses: He belongs to a group of wealthy men called the Kids in the Candy Store who exploited young girls. He has been filling a private vault in Beverly Hills with evidence of their crimes. He mentions a murdered woman named Phoebe and offers to trade everything for a deal.

Kara Delgado, 30, works for Sub Rosa, a private concierge service that provides drugs, sex workers, and other illegal luxuries to ultra-wealthy clients. Her best friend and former coworker, Phoebe Butterfield, recruited her into the job three years ago and disappeared four months before the novel begins. In a flashback, Kara found Phoebe's apartment dark and reeking of rotting bananas. Men in black rubber gloves arrived and began removing all electronics and documents in what their leader, a man with a silver buzz cut and a musical voice, called a "deep clean." Kara escaped through a bathroom window and has been living in terrified silence since, managing her distress with a combination of substances. When she sees news coverage of the Ripper's latest victim, she notices that all the dead women share Phoebe's physical features and begins researching the killings, trying to determine whether Phoebe was the Ripper's unrecognized first victim.

The storylines intertwine. While Gibson fights for Algar in court, Algar is found dead in his cell in an apparent suicide by hanging. Gibson refuses to believe it. At the morgue, he chases off a representative from Euridyce, a corpse-processing company founded by Dr. Samuel Otis, who arrives to harvest organs before any independent examination. An independent examiner finds evidence of strangulation. BOB sends Gibson unredacted files revealing that the inmate who found Algar's body was Roger Kasabian, a jailed deputy whose gang tattoo connects him to BlackGuard Security, a private firm owned by Leonard DePaulo.

Gibson holds a press conference accusing unnamed powerful people of involvement in Algar's death. In retaliation, BlackGuard kidnaps him, takes him to a black site, and tortures him with a power drill, leaving him with permanent tinnitus and lasting trauma. Gibson breaks, publicly recants his accusations, and enters a period of moral collapse. He takes on wealthy clients whose cases float through the system without consequence and begins a secret affair with Carol Goodman, the casting agent who helped Algar fill the vault.

Meanwhile, Michelle recruits Jake for a freelance job gathering compromising material on a list of wealthy men for an anonymous employer. The targets include Dr. Otis, movie star Colson Hart, Hart's producing partner Ronnie Tutt, and several others connected through business and social ties. Jake infiltrates their world and witnesses Colson violently biting and beating a woman during sex, ignoring her safe word.

Jake and Kara's paths collide at the Hellfyre party, a lavish sex party hosted by billionaires Peter Hart and Lawrence Kyser. During preparations, Kara recognizes the security coordinator, Matt Matilla of BlackGuard, as the man who led the deep clean at Phoebe's apartment. In the VIP room, she witnesses powerful men toast "to the Kids in the Candy Store." When a woman named Mona overdoses and BlackGuard moves to handle the situation, Kara refuses to hand her over, and Jake helps carry Mona to the hospital.

Their first date is a night of nightcrawling that ends at the scene of the Ripper's latest murder. Kara enters the apartment and sees the mutilated body of Michelina Moro. Outside, she tells Jake: "Phoebe was my best friend, and she was the LA Ripper's first victim, and nobody knows about it but me." They cross-reference their information and theorize that Colson is the Ripper, noting that all the victims resemble his ex-girlfriend, Angela Augustine. BOB contacts Kara online and connects them with Gibson.

When the three meet, their knowledge interlocks. Gibson recognizes Phoebe's name from Algar's confession, and Jake learns he has been unknowingly working for Algar's blackmail operation. Gibson knows Carol holds the vault codes and the casting list from Heart to Hart, an unproduced dating show Colson and Tutt used to select women resembling Angela. They believe this list is the Ripper's target list.

Their theory partially collapses when Angela reveals she already suspected Colson and hired investigators: He has verified alibis for the nights of three murders. The true killer is Ronnie Tutt. Dr. Otis, confronted by Kara and Jake, confirms everything. Tutt killed Phoebe at his Malibu house with Colson present. Colson's cannibal fantasy was briefly enacted when Tutt cooked a piece of Phoebe's flesh, but Colson took two bites, found the reality repulsive, and stopped. Tutt continued killing women from the casting list, protected by the Hart family's power. Otis disposed of Phoebe's remains through Euridyce, where her body was processed into medical materials and distributed across the city. Kara realizes with horror that Phoebe may literally be inside people all over Los Angeles. She warns the surviving women on the casting list to flee.

Violence converges rapidly. DJ Wayne Skerritt, the blackmail middleman, is found tortured and dead. A BlackGuard gunman fires at Gibson outside a hotel, missing him but killing a bystander. BlackGuard raids the private vault, stealing its contents. Gibson makes a final choice: Instead of fleeing to Mexico, he drives to Tutt's Malibu house. There he finds Dr. Otis in a drug-fueled breakdown, having partially vivisected the drugged Colson. Tutt arrives and stabs Gibson. Gibson shoots Tutt. Otis slashes Tutt's face and stabs him in the neck. Both Tutt and Otis die. BlackGuard arrives, smothers Colson on orders from Kyser, and turns on the gas. Gibson, barely alive, fires into the gas-filled room, igniting an explosion that kills the BlackGuard team and blasts him through the glass wall into the ocean.

Jake and Kara witness the explosion from the highway and recover the stolen vault contents from the abandoned BlackGuard SUV: duffel bags filled with decades of evidence documenting the crimes of the powerful. At dawn, standing in the surf, they hold each other and watch waves crash against rocks, sending droplets of mist shining briefly into the air before falling back into the sea.