Publication Date January 16, 2024
I have been incredibly eager to read Lee Goldberg’s Dream Town (#5 in the Eve Ronin series). I have read and enjoyed 1-4 (Lost Hills, Bone Canyon, Gated Prey, and Movieland), and after seeing and hearing Lee at Bouchercon in San Diego, I am solidly a fan!
Regarding the series, credit to Anne at Books Of My Heart who summed it up perfectly: “ Eve is a new homicide detective in a misogynistic, political department in Los Angeles California. She became famous in the first book for arresting a tv star behaving badly, which helped her get the promotion.” She also noted that “…focus is on the police procedural, with a small background of personal life but the Hollywood scene is almost a character itself.”
Dream Town is set in LA, specifically the area around Calabasas, Hidden Hills, and Malibu. Hidden Hills is filled with uber-rich and entitled people, who are shocked the murder of Kitty Winslow, whose family has a reality show featuring the entire family, shot in a fabulous home — not where they actually live. (Think Kardashians). I’m in awe of how Goldberg deals with characters, and I particularly love how Goldberg describes people. Through each novel and in the entire series, he reveals more and more about Eve and her struggle to be acknowledged by her colleagues as someone qualified to hold the job. “It had taken her months to heal from her last big homicide case, and now she finally felt whole again. She was determined to stay that way by changing the way she approached the job. Otherwise, she might be dead before she reached thirty.” The matriarch of the reality show family is Brandy (shades of Kris K), a classic LA woman described PERFECTLY: “…the angles of her face unnaturally squared by a scalpel held by an inarticulate hand.”
Kitty is murdered inside the gates of the community where the rich (mostly white) folks used to feel safe. Then more bodies are found in the open land just outside the safety of Hidden Hills, and Eve and her partner Duncan (“Donuts”) are hard at work on the case. Similar to the faux reality of the show starring the Winslow clan, Eve is the subject of a new TV show. This is unsettling for Eve, as it features a female detective, is being shot in the area where she lives and works, and is directed by the father she abhors and even has a bit part for her pathetic mother, who would seemingly sell her soul for a speaking role in a hit show.
The plot is complex yet easy to follow and includes Chilean drug gangs, entertainment industry feuds, a music industry war, and more. Impossible to describe further without spoilers and trust me, you want to go into the ending of this one without knowing what is going to happen. I loved it. Five stars.