Midwesterner Brian Lutterman‘s corporate mystery Downfall practically begged to be set in California, with its larger-than-life characters, fortunes made and lost overnight, and oversized schemes and speculations.

Brian on why he sent his main character Pen to LA

In crime, as in so much else, the Golden State is very much on the cutting edge, a natural setting for a sophisticated corporate sabotage scheme. Pen Wilkinson, a paraplegic young attorney who is a putting her life together after a tragic accident,  follows a long line of characters who arrive in LA looking for answers, looking for themselves, and making their way through a world of ambiguity and possibility. It is sometimes a lonely world, linked by freeways and technology, without the rootedness, tradition and comfort of the heartland.

The sheer scale and novelty of California threatens to overwhelm Pen, particularly in tracking down a killer who uses the state’s freewheeling economic environment to develop a corporate sabotage scheme of unprecedented scope and sophistication. Equally troubling, he uses California’s opportunities for reinvention to change his location, methods, and his very identity. 

Sydney comments

I’m starting to see a pattern. It seems that California’s infrastructure is a playground for out-of-state writers–

logicalnot|Stock.Xchng

freeways and freewheeling pave the way to great storytelling.

Brian digs deeper

California’s classic noir authors, like Chandler and Ellroy, explore the flip side, the dark moral underbelly—the evil made possible by the state’s openness and opportunities. The same themes are developed by my favorite contemporary LA crime fiction writers: Connelly, Mosley, Kellerman, Crais. Like Downfall, my last book, Poised to Kill, is a corporate thriller set in Orange County, and seeks to follow in that tradition.

As a visitor over the years, I’ve enjoyed scouting the locations, trying my best to get them right, but I have the advantage of seeing the area, as my characters do, as a non-native, in all of its vast, varied, jaw-dropping variety and splendor. I believe that thrillers, as opposed to cozy mysteries, are particularly well-suited to California. My characters are jolted out of familiar, manageable communities into an exotic, sprawling environment where evil is unseen, unknown, and even random.

I have the advantage of seeing the area, as my characters do, as a non-native, in all of its vast, varied, jaw-dropping variety and splendor.

The Story

Downfall is a contemporary thriller featuring Pen Wilkinson, a paraplegic young attorney who is a putting her life together after a tragic accident, working for a large bank in Minnesota. She soon begins to suspect that the job and the company are not what they seem to be, and suddenly, she is thrust into a nightmare. Pen is accused by her employer and the media of fraud and wrongdoing, creating a scandal that threatens to bring down her company. Fired from her job, alone, and dodging attempts on her life, Pen uncovers a string of sophisticated, deadly corporate sabotage incidents. In her quest to find the saboteurs, she follows a lead that takes her to Orange County. From there, her quest leads her up and down the coast, from Santa Monica, to San Francisco and Marin County, and back to L.A., finally culminating in a confrontation with the psychopathic financial manipulator who ruined her life. 

The Road Ahead

Downfall is scheduled for spring release. I have plans for future books featuring Pen Wilkinson, who at the end of Downfall accepts a job as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. Although there will be scenes from other places across the country, I expect Pen to be based in California, and for much of the action to occur there. I encourage readers to check out my books at my website, www.brianlutterman.com, or to email me at brian@brianlutterman.com.

About Brian

Brian Lutterman is the author of the corporate mystery-thrillers Bound to Die, a Minnesota Book Award runner-up, and Poised to Kill, described by the Midwest Book Review as “. . .a masterfully woven tale of tycoons and terrorists.” Lutterman, a former trial and corporate attorney, writes cutting-edge corporate thrillers, bringing to life the genre’s outsized conflicts and characters with breathtaking action and suspense. A graduate of the University of Minnesota and Georgetown University Law Center, he lives with his family in the Twin Cities.