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Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA
by Jesse Katz
Baby-faced teen Giovanni Macedo is desperate to find belonging in one of LA's most predatory gangs, the Columbia Lil Cycos—so desperate that he agrees to kill an undocumented Mexican street vendor.
The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to give in to the gang's shakedown demands. But Giovanni botches the hit, accidentally killing a newborn instead. The overlords who rule the Lil Cycos from a Supermax prison 1,000 miles away must be placated and Giovanni is lured across the border where, in turn, the gang botches his killing. And so, incredibly, Giovanni rises from the dead, determined to both seek redemption for his unforgivable crime and take down the gang who drove him to do it.
With The Rent Collectors, Jesse Katz has built a teeth clenching and breathless narrative that explicates the difficult and proud lives of undocumented black market workers who are being extorted by the gangs and fined by the city of LA—in other words, exploited by two sets of rent collectors.
"A searing account of gang violence and its consequences...Macedo's grim story, expertly documented by Katz, cries for a documentary series to follow his fortunes as, after years in prison, he strives for redemption. A masterful work of true crime—and, to be sure, true punishment." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Katz writes with a propulsive verve, his prose both evocative and raw ... Tackling immigration, the prison system, city ordinances, and the complicated bonds of family, the experience of reading The Rent Collectors is white-knuckle and, ultimately, wholly transformative." —Booklist (starred review)
"With admirable clarity and compassion, Katz unravels a complex narrative that has no easy answers ... Abstaining from painting heroes or villains, Katz offers instead a plethora of thoughtful, nuanced profiles and a zoomed-out view of immigrant L.A., its street vendors, its gangs, and its intricacies. The result is relentless, multi-faceted, and incisive." —Shelf Awareness
"The Rent Collectors will not leave you where it found you. Its searing, breathtaking detail always invites you to a reverence for complexity. This book helps us all to no longer settle for the one dimensional view again. Katz taps into our ache to find our shared humanity and indeed discover compassion as the answer to every question. This is urban reportage at its finest and most human." —Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries and bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart
"More than a work about a gang, Katz's book is a portrait of a city on the brink, a family in disarray, a criminal group on the rise, and the police's scramble to catch up. These dynamics swallow kids like Giovanni. But rather than break him, the experience remakes him. To his credit, Katz does not rely on stereotypical tropes. He gives us a raw, intimate, and brutal picture of gang life from the inside where escape is impossible and freedom is ephemeral." —Steven Dudley, author of MS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang
"The Rent Collectors is a must-read book for our times. An insightful and deeply researched journey through the underbelly of LA, Jesse Katz has written a breathtaking true-crime narrative—one that you won't be able to put down." —Gus Garcia-Roberts, author of Jimmy the King
This information about The Rent Collectors was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jesse Katz is a former Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles magazine writer whose honors include the James Beard Foundation's M. F. K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, PEN Center USA's Literary Journalism Award, a National Magazine Award nomination, and two shared Pulitzer Prizes. His writing has appeared in the anthologies Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Writing, and Best American Sports Writing. As a volunteer with InsideOUT Writers, he has mentored incarcerated teenagers at Central Juvenile Hall and the former California Youth Authority. His first book, The Opposite Field, was set in LA's immigrant suburbs.
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