DEAD WEST

Minneapolis investigator Nils Shapiro heads west for fun, sun, and murder.

Beverly Mayer is used to getting what she wants, and what she wants from Nils is that he fly to Los Angeles and see if the sudden death of her grandson Ebben’s fiancee has jolted him into frittering away any more of his $50 million trust fund. Arriving in La La Land with Jameson White, the nurse practitioner he’s been nursing over a nervous breakdown, in time for Juliana Marquez’s memorial service, Nils learns that Ebben has used $1 million in seed money to persuade other investors to pony up the much larger sum needed to launch The Creative Collective, a cooperative that aims to fund artists without diverting any money to agents, producers, executives, or other bloodsuckers. By the time he’s persuaded himself that Ebben is displaying admirable moral and financial responsibility, Nils has already satisfied himself that Juliana was murdered, slipped a lethal dose of caffeine very likely intended for her intended. As one-eyed Russian stalker Vasily Zaytzev hovers menacingly in the background, Nils finds himself in the middle of a hilarious pitch meeting with Ebben’s current team—screenwriter Brit Dawsey, line producer Thom Burke, manager Debra Schmidt, and one-named agent Sebastiano—that could have come straight out of Get Shorty. Declining Ebben’s tearful request for him to stay in town and watch over him, Nils jets back to Minnesota to report to Beverly that she has nothing to fear except her grandson’s sudden death, but the urgent report of a second murder drags him back to hunker down until he ties up all the loose ends. Well, maybe not quite all of them.

A droll portrait of “a town where almost everything and everyone was for sale,” with felonies obbligato.