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A California Century Mystery
by Ken Kuhlken
In 1926, when musician Tom Hickey reads in a broadside about a lynching the Los Angeles newspapers failed to report, and discovers the Negro victim was an old friend, he goes to his neighbor Leo Weiss, an LAPD detective. Leo confirms that, officially, the lynching didn’t occur.
Tom has a dance orchestra to lead and a wild younger sister to raise. Yet he decides to investigate the murder. Since the lynching occurred in Echo Park, across the street from evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple, he goes there looking for clues and is greeted and watched by an usher who follows him after the service and continues to shadow him daily.
The investigation earns Tom beatings, gunfire meant to dissuade him, and warnings from Leo, a speakeasy owner, and a Klansman, that he’s made formidable enemies. Among them may be infamous Police Chief Two Gun Davis, Examiner publisher and political heavyweight William Randolph Hearst, and Harry Chandler, owner of the Times, who owns more land than any man in the world.
After Sister Aimee announces that on November 2, election day, she will preach a sermon entitled "The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles," Tom deduces that the cover up may involve local politics, perhaps a ballot referendum that will decide who the city’s future belongs to: the railroads, whose plans include subways and elevated trains; or the oil, automobile, and suburban development interests, devoted to building highways.
Meanwhile, Tom also discovers that the key to the murder, as is too often the case, lies close to home.
"Kuhlken mixes historical and fictional characters with an ease that will remind many of Max Allan Collins's Nate Heller series .... He's equally adept at melding the murder inquiry with Hickey's struggles with his dysfunctional family." - Publishers Weekly
"Kuhlken overloads his plot beyond his ability to keep the tangled lines clear and sprinkles 1926 decor with the gusto of a tour bus guide." - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review. Kuhlken demonstrates his command of keeping a story moving with a meticulously thought-out plot while populating it with believable characters." - Library Journal
This information about The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles 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.
Ken Kuhlken’s novels have been honored as finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first novel, won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press Best First Novel competition, and been chosen as a finalist for the Shamus Best Novel Award. His California Century novels, featuring detective Tom Hickey and sons, are: The Loud Adios (set in 1943), The Venus Deal (set in 1942), The Angel Gang (set in 1949), The Do-Re-Mi (set in 1971), The Vagabond Virgins (set in 1979), and The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles (set in 1926).
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