Cinnamon Girl

March 25, 2024
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. Agent: Janet Oshiro, Robbins Office.

April 15, 2024
Adam Zantz, a 37-year-old Jewish Lyft driver earning his P.I. certification, is summoned by an old family friend to solve a decades-old mystery. Charles Elkaim is dying and wants closure. Forty years ago, his son Emil ("the Israeli Keith Richards") was arrested for the murder of Reynaldo Durazo ("the Mexican Keith Moon"), then shivved in prison while awaiting trial. Charles is convinced Emil was framed, as is reinforced by a recent visit from Devon Hawley, a man who claims he can prove Emil's innocence. Adam, Charles' old piano student, remembers a young Emil "strumming Beatles on a scratched-up acoustic," and spurred by both Jewish guilt and a desire not to be seen as "the king of jumping ship," agrees to investigate. He learns that Emil, Reynaldo, and Devon all played in The Daily Telegraph, a band that was either the next big thing or "some nothing rock band," depending on who's asked. After discovering an old Telegraph record--whose transcribed lyrics are scattered over many chapters--Adam is drawn into a web of psychedelia and "the dream." Weizmann is conversant in the vocabulary of detective fiction, counterculture, and Judaism, but his descriptions feel superficial. Yiddishisms like noodnik and schmuck are peppered throughout, and characters ask questions like: "Mind if I make like Bob Marley and light a fire?" Noir, even when its plot isn't watertight, largely lives and breathes on evocative settings and idiosyncratic characters. Unfortunately, Adam's narration is inconsistent, characters traffic in exposition and cliches--and occasionally negative stereotypes about homelessness and mental health--and the L.A. landscape is scarcely sketched, particularly egregious considering that Adam drives around for a living. Convoluted mysteries aren't an automatic impediment to success (see Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice), but absent stronger craft elements, this one lacks intrigue. A soft-boiled detective yarn.

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