Episode #5

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

—Raymond Chandler, Red Wind

Los Angeles.

The kind of city where anything that can happen, does happen. And everything that does happen, right and wrong, seems to belong here—it couldn’t happen anywhere else. There’s an air of beauty and shame here, a twisted knot of the city’s glory and its sins bound tight together—unlike the comparatively ancient New York, say, L.A.’s sins are still recent, the wounds still scabbed and unhealed across its golden-hued, suntanned skin. Missing neighborhoods, missing gangs, missing loves, missing lives. In this city, turn any corner, walk down any mean street, and you’ll find a mystery, cruel and enticing and magic and heartbreaking, waiting for you there.

And that’s just one of the topics touched upon between our host and today’s guest, Jordan Harper, whose epic, feature-length conversation rumbles from such topics as L.A. crime, race-based prison gangs, the history of Los Angeles land use and abuse, noir’s unique relationship to L.A., James Ellroy, adapting difficult novels, Jordan’s wrestling with the PTA oeuvre, and much, much more (including where to find the best BBQ in Missouri).