Safe - Hardcover

An Amazon Best Book of August 2017: For a place known for so much sunshine and glitter, Los Angeles carries a rich tradition of writers willing to explore its shadows: Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, Ross MacDonald (the all-time overlooked-yet-not-underrated crime writer), Don Winslow, and James Ellroy, to name a just a few. Ryan Gattis is the latest to step into SoCal noir. Safe is a tale of two criminals: “Ghost” is a nominally reformed safecracker working for the feds and trying to stay straight; “Glasses” is a drug-runner and “cleaner,” younger and more violent. And when Ghost is sucked back into one final, illicit job, Glasses is compelled to defend his territory. Gattis’s strengths dialogue and plot, and his knack for style and language propels the action via alternating points of view, driving characters through deepening, darkening, and increasingly morally complex situations toward their inevitable fates. Safe might fall within a venerated and venerable tradition, but it’s all fun: fast, grim, twisty, and original. --Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review

Ryan Gattis is the author of Kung Fu High School and All Involved, a novel about the 1992 L.A. riots. He lives in Los Angeles.