An old-fashioned private eye in a near-future L.A. hunts a missing woman in Paul Neilan's The Hollywood Spiral.
Our throwback gumshoe crosses paths with organized crime, street gangs, a doomsday cult, and various factions serving the Grid, a hybrid of Big Brother and social media influencers about to be potentially disrupted by a program called Mirror, Mirror.
Written in a literary fashion--visits to a bizarre stand-up comedy bar, and to a dying mentor remembering surreal childhood traumas, both resonate--but the world-building isn't particularly ground-breaking. A kind of bleak, hazy ending doesn't add value.
This is Neilan's second novel, with about a decade in between. It's a solid dystopian read that doesn't hold a lot of surprises but kept me entertained.
I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.
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