Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
It’s an egregious felony that author Gerald Petievich is not more widely read. He remains a cult crime-fiction author, spoken about in whispers [and the occasional scream] by readers who seek out the most disturbing hard-boiled noir. His writing is slippery in that it weaves intricate plots effortlessly about the greasy lives [and nefarious deeds] of the criminal[s], into the lives of the men and women who pursue justice and redemption in a very dangerous world. Petievich’s latest work [not unlike its precursors] provoke deep-thought as his fiction poses harsh moral and ethical dilemmas for his characters that the reader unpacks as the narrative unspools to the violent climax.
His latest police procedural backdrops Hollywood California both the geography, as well as the darker edges of the film industry.
In Petievichs’s cynical world-view, “good” and “evil” are not two opposite edges on a graduated line; but as human nature bends the line - it becomes curved, so the edges interlock to shape a distorted circle.
The novel commences with former Military Veteran [from Afghanistan] Detective Michael ‘Legs’ Casey of the Hollywood Station, Los Angeles Police Department [LAPD], working the stolen-car beat in penance for a past indiscretion, related to drinking. He’s nicknamed ‘Legs’ due to his running [to successfully apprehend a criminal] over three city blocks. His last partner died of a gunshot wound, following a stake-out of a jewellery store. ‘Legs’ ended up in the hospital for several months due to sustaining his own injuries following the Jewellery Store heist. It’s of little comfort that ‘Leg’s killed the three jewel thieves or that he’s kicked the alcoholic crutch that helped him after release from the hospital rehabilitation.
He is relieved when Chief-of-Police Donna Slade, redeploys him from the car theft squad to Homicide, reporting to Captain Dollinger. There are politics that ‘Legs’ has to avoid. It seems when former Chief-of-Police Donald Braun retired – instead of Dollinger [who was next in line] taking his seat – the outsider, and more politically astute Donna Slade became Braun’s successor.
The scene is set, as ‘Legs’ has something to prove – no longer shackled to investigating grand-theft-automobiles, he’s tasked to solve a double homicide in the address that eponymously provides the novel its title. The road ‘Legs’ will have to traverse will twist-and-turn not unlike the narrow roads that weave alongside the treacherous Hollywood Hills and the cliff-sided Canyon passes.
It appears Bobby Lanza, ex-husband of fading Hollywood legend Gloria Channing has been found dead with her housekeeper Rosa Hernandez in the kitchen of 13 Hillcrest Drive. Both are victims of multiple gun-shots. ‘Legs’ is assigned Kristina Sutherland as a partner on the investigation. It seems that bullets used to murder Lanza and Hernandez were fired earlier from the same gun that ended life of [former cocaine addicted] Hollywood PR Agent Meredith Fox in the parking garage of an exclusive Beverly Hills Hotel.
Chief of Police Donna Slade and Captain Dollinger have the Mayor’s Office breathing down their necks. Politically the now triple murder has top priority; so both Detectives ‘Legs’ Casey and Kristina Sutherland feel the pressure exerted.
Petievich’s stories are authentic. You can smell the sweat, the aroma of stale beer, tobacco and reefer above the cordite as our detectives investigate. Complicated characters enter the fray, from Hollywood Personal Assistants, Druggies, Psychiatrists, Lawyers, Private Detectives, Blackmailers and Lotharios servicing Hollywood players from Film Producers, to Starlets to criminal underworld types. Not unlike the backdrop featured in Jordan Harper’s 2023 ‘Everybody Knows’ except Petievich’s Hollywood is more authentic, darker and tonally grittier. In [and on] 13 Hillcrest Drive we have the perversity of Hollywood Babylon slowly being revealed by Perievich’s characters as plot strands start to coalesce. The writing is beautiful, concise, and raw as the dialogue bleeds off the page and into the readers imagination painting vivid [and alarming] images into the mind.
Though a warning - what is revealed is frightening but then again, Petievich is only drawing from his own life experiences and those that surrounded him when he worked in law enforcement.
And like my all-time favourite action film [based on the novel and screenplay by Gerald Petievich] To Live and Die in LA – his latest novel scorches the mind.
For crime-fiction readers, it would be an egregious felony to miss one of 2025’s most exhilarating police procedural thrillers - 13 Hillcrest Drive.
