Marketing copy: When good guy Marcus Ripps takes over his black sheep brother’s lucrative dry cleaning business, he has no idea what he’s in for. Before long, he is running one of the most popular escort services in West Hollywood. As the money starts pouring in, he revitalizes his marriage, buys a new Mercedes, and gives his son a bar mitzvah he’ll never forget. But, when his conscience—and the law—starts to catch up with him, Marcus must decide if his sudden financial windfall is worth all the risk.
A wild, clever, consistently hysterical romp, Shining City is an L.A. adventure that will keep you guessing to the very end.
One of the lessons I learned from Shining City is “don’t judge a book by its cover” (or its prologue, in this case!). I was a bit concerned when the book opened with the rotund Julian Ripps cavorting in a hot tub with two of the “ladies” from his escort service; like a cliche, the girls head for home and Julian suffers a heart attack and dies alone, fat and naked. As the novel progressed, I was pleased to see far fewer descriptions of enhanced breasts and much more of Seth Greenland’s witty, sharp and cynical writing style.
The protagonist, Marcus Ripps and his wife are suffering from a ho-hum love life after nearly 15 years of marriage. Ripps refers to his wife’s choice of an unflattering flannel nightgown as her “bedtime burka”. When Ripps is offered the opportunity to take over his brother’s “dry-cleaning” business and learns that it’s a front for a call-girl ring, he decides to make a go of being “the pimp who cares” and is a “family-values one…the girls have health coverage and retirement plans and everything” (even a book club!). The business runs smoothly, Ripps and his wife rekindle the romance, and the family moves up on the social ladder. For a while anyway … Marcus eventually has to face the consequences for the choices he has made; and the twists and turns continue.
The cast of characters is well-developed (no pun intended!) and extreme. From his mother-in-law Lenore, who smokes pot to relieve her suffering from glaucoma, to Tommy the Samoan, a bodyguard for a competing service who offers Marcus an unlikely “mozel tov” on his son’s Bar Mitzvah; the reader will chuckle at Greenland’s detailed descriptions. The plot is amusing and unexpected; just when I thought we were hitting a predictable patch, the story dipped into unknown territory.
Seth Greenland is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter; his first novel, The Bones, was published in2006. I enjoyed the dark humor of Shining City and will be adding The Bones to my reading list. More information about Greenland, and a short trailer about Shining City, can be found on his website.
She is too fond of books ... 