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"Two worlds, two cats, both existing simultaneously; only by looking inside the box does one of these worlds collapse." In LOS ANGELES, by Edgar Award-winning novelist Peter Moore Smith, Angel Veronchek contemplates physics as he tries to unravel the mystery of his neighbour Angela's disappearance. Like the cat in the box in the famous physics experiment, Angela is apparently alive and dead at once. His equal and opposite wave to his particle, the nature of Angela's existence, may explain his own. Or, then, it could be the massive doses of antipsychotic medication that he downs with his regular cups of coffee. Or the fact that as a light-sensitive albino, he must live in darkness -- just like the cat in the box. But whose world will collapse upon investigation -- Angela's or Angel's? Fragmented and self-consciously postmodernist, LOS ANGELES should appeal to fans of physics and to those who know nothing about physics but like creative confusion. Angel thinks like a physicist and talks like a poet. "In the morning the Los Angeles sun rolls over the dusty San Gabriel mountains and snores through a gray-brown smog that drapes the city like a dirty sheet," he explains. "When the smog lifts and the sun crawls out, hungover, its eyes swollen, its hair a mess, it takes a few moments for its daily ablutions, then puts on its gaudiest, most audacious costume -- it becomes Louis XIV, Amen-Ra, and Vegas Elvis all rolled into one." Before studying physics and having a nervous breakdown, Angel grew up in Hollywood. As the son of a callous Hollywood producer and a Swiss model-turned-actress-turned-masterpiece of plastic surgery, he is used to the hijacking of reality by illusion. He thinks it can't surprise him, but when the illusionist can't control the act, the result is both mystery and horror. I kept thinking, as I read this, of David Lynch's film MULHOLLAND DRIVE -- the fragmentation, uncertainty, and doubling splashed against the glitzy geography of Hollywood. However, LOS ANGELES clearly stands on its own. Smith's latest experiment is a success.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, March 2006
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