LOS ANGELES

As an albino in sunny Los Angeles, Angel Veronchek is a stranger in a strange land, and Smith's moody and atmospheric psychological thriller embraces the noir aesthetic that's so much a part of the city's history. Veronchek is rich—his father is a successful movie producer—and richly dysfunctional, ingesting a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals while working, obsessively, on a screenplay about his hometown while a DVD of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner plays continuously in his dark apartment. The hermit-like Angel begins to connect with the world when Angela, a mysterious beauty, moves in next door, but a few weeks later she disappears. Angel's quest to find Angela takes him out of his apartment and into the city, but the more important journey is the one he takes into his bizarre psychology and family history. Smith's prose can be strong, particularly in his rendering of the hellish dystopia of the City of Angels: "the smog is absolute... the exhaust fumes of a million engines rising... through an atmosphere that almost never breathes." But his plot is only mildly compelling; it can't support the weight of the narrator's musings on the nature of reality—nor is any character, including the pathetic Angel, attractive enough to command our attention. Agent, Mary Ann Maples at Creative Culture. (Jan. 5)

FYI: Smith's first novel, Raveling (2000), was nominated for an Edgar Award.