Los Angeles Noir, published by Akashic Books, is a collection of 17 stories about the shadow side of the “City of Angels.” Each writer sets his or her story in a different Los Angeles-area city; Patt Morrison chose what she said is “the least noir city I could think of – Beverly Hills.”

The book spent a month on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list.

From The Times' review: “Viewed together, these 17 very different stories confirm just how many places L.A. has become. In ‘Mulholland Dive,’ Michael Connelly writes of the view high up on Mulholland Drive, the city’s dizzy backbone: ‘It could make you feel like the prince of a city where the laws of nature and physics didn’t apply.’ ... Robert Ferrigno walks knowingly through Long Beach in ‘The Hour When the Ship Comes In.’ L.A. Times columnist Patt Morrison's narrator pokes into Beverly Hills jewel heists using ‘the best intelligence network in town ... the cleaning ladies’ in ‘Morocco Junction 90210.’ ”

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" The stories are uniformly good, full of fine phrases and sharply observed landscapes. ... I particularly loved Patt Morrison’s debut of Minerva Quires, the rare Beverly Hills native who knows where the bodies are buried and can dissect the 90210 like Jane Goodall does the apes, in part with the help of the Cleaning Lady Mafia: On their long bus rides from Boyle Heights or Van Nuys, they have plenty of time to compare notes on their employers. What arcane plastic surgery Senora Tiffany treated herself to as a reward for hosting that godawful celebrity charity golf tournament. What little tattletale item Senor Roberto forgot to take out of the pocket of his Sea Island cotton shirt before dumping it in the hamper. Why they haven’t written their own nanny diaries, I don’t know, except that their idea of celebrity runs to the blondined spitfires on the Mexican telenovela soap operas, not some knotty-calved, tennis-playing billionaire studio mogul whose face they’ve never even seen on Telemundo. A sharp agent could build a series around her." — Bill Peschel, planetpeschel.com

"L.A. County comprises 450 square miles and is actually a collection of cities on two sides of a mountain range, from Calabasas to the Pacific Ocean (Santa Monica, say). You might call it The United Cities of Los Angeles … Happily, it's a hotbed of talent with a crossover of literary activity between movie and book authors. Exploiting that elite population, those who write mysteries -- set in the town where noir was born -- is this book compiled and edited by Denise Hamilton. Raymond Chandler would have been glad to have contributed.
Here's a taste: A genuine suicide and a discerning crime ring in Beverly Hills. "Morocco Junction 90210" by Patt Morrison." — Jules Brenner, Critical Mystery Tour

“Some of the stories take place in the wealthier parts of town such as in Patt Morrison’s “Morocco Junction 90210” where she notes that when you drive into Beverly Hills, “the road under your wheels isn’t asphalt anymore. It’s butter. Beverly Hills must have a law: Pavement shall at all times be as smooth and creamy as the faces of the makeup-counter girls at Saks.” And, of course, the moneyed denizens of the 90210 will do almost anything to keep their dirty little secrets safe from their neighbors.” — Daniel Olivas, guest review at The Elegant Variation

"Los Angeles Noir, thirteenth in the city-noir series by Akashic Books, is a collection of devilishly dark tales set in and around the City of Angels. ... In “Morocco Junction, 90210”, Patt Morrison writes about old money in Beverly Hills and the ultimate cover-up. Her skill in crafting vivid similes is remarkable. — Jackie Houchin, Mystery Scene Magazine

Perhaps the best of Akashic’s Noir series, Los Angeles Noir packs serious heat. Former L.A. Times reporter, Denise Hamilton has done a masterful job editing a truly incredible roster of authors; Michael Connelly, Naomi Hirahara, Emory Holmes II, Denise Hamilton, Janet Fitch, Patt Morrison, HÉctor Tobar, Susan Straight, Jim Pascoe, Neal Pollack, Lienna Silver, Gary Phillips, Scott Phillips, Brian Ascalon Roley, Robert Ferrigno, and Diana Wagman fill the pages with character-driven intensity ... Patt Morrison’s Morocco Junction 90210 invokes memories of the golden age of Hollywood, and of the old money of Beverly Hills. Even the rich have standards to separate themselves into haves and have nots...using class, manners and carefully hidden secrets as the dividing line. A noir tour de force not to be missed. — Carri Ellis, Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine

Drive west along the Sunset Strip, out of the $20 boutique martini zone they call West Hollywood, and you know it without even seeing the signs: you're in Beverly Hills.

Suddenly, the road under your wheels isn't asphalt any more. It's butter. Beverly Hills must have a law: “Pavement shall at all times be as smooth and creamy as the faces of the makeup-counter girls at Saks.'' Not so much as a dimple allowed in the roadbed to shiver the undercarriage of a Bentley.

Even in a geriatric ride like mine, with tires as bald and thin-skinned as Jesse Ventura, you can feel the difference. Besides, for me, rolling onto Butter Boulevard means I'm home. I live here.

I don't live in Beverly Hills the way the Sultan of Brunei lived here, or even the way the Beverly Hillbillies did. I sure don't drive anything like whatever His Sultanity kept in his garage --- though my grungy old AMC Gremlin would give the Clampetts' jalopy a run for the ugly trophy.

But I'm still a local.

For as long as Beverly Hills has been here, the Quires have been here, which is more than I can say for a lot of the fast new crowd. During the glory days of the big studios, my father, Harold Quire, headed up security for one of the biggest. He never got anything like rich, but he made good money and he kept his mouth shut, which got him connections and friends money couldn't buy.

My father also bought a little hunk of land in a wild, scrubby canyon and built a Craftsman house on it, long before the neighbors started putting up Mediterranean villas. Anywhere else it'd be a classic but in Beverly Hills it makes me a one-woman slum.

That's what my father left me, that and the legacy of his reputation. It helped me carve out a nice little niche for myself tutoring actors. I choose my own clients, make my own hours, and am generally free to tool around town indulging my hobby, dabbling in what my father did best - intelligence gathering.

It turns out that the best intelligence network in town is the cleaning ladies. Most mornings, I pick them up from the bus stops on Sunset and give them a lift up the hill to the mansions where they work. That's how I found out about the jewelry heists -- from the cleaning ladies. Lots of small-m mafias operate in Beverly Hills [and a couple of big-M ones], and my favorite is the Cleaning Ladies' mafia. It is very tight and usually right about everything.

On their long bus rides from Boyle Heights or Van Nuys, they have plenty of time to compare notes on their employers. What arcane plastic surgery Senora Tiffany treated herself to as a reward for hosting that godawful celebrity charity golf tournament. What little tattletale item Senor Roberto forgot to take out of the pocket of his Sea Island cotton shirt before dumping it in the hamper.

Why they haven't written their own nanny diaries, I don't know, except that their idea of celebrity runs to the blondined spitfires on the Mexican telenovela soap operas, not some knotty-calved, tennis-playing billionaire studio mogul whose face they've never even seen on Telemundo.

Click here to buy Patt's book at:

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“If you want a feel that gets under your skin, that in the end leaves you soaked with this rich, quixotic river water, this is the book. — The Los Angeles Times. Read More of this review.

“(Morrison and Lamonica) should be commended for this love letter to one of Los Angeles's most ill-used natural treasures.” — Los Angeles magazine

“Nobody knows Los Angeles without knowing its river — this wonderful book goes straight to the spirit of the place.” — Joan Didion, Author of Political Fictions, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvadore and Play It As It Lays: A Novel .

“Patt Morrison writes so well she proves there is water in the L.A. River 425 days a year.” — Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451

“Part history, part sociology, part environmental cautionary tale, part travelogue, Rio L.A. is a marvelous look at a landmark most Angelenos don’t realize is there." — Tim Neagle, Faultline Magazine

“(The authors) champion the waterway as the artery that could unify the city and pump fresh life into urban L.A.” — New Times

In a city of stars, it is a has-been.

In a city of bone-shaking earthquakes and blowtorch winds, it has been tamed into a toothless creature of unnatural nature.

On any given day, ten months out of twelve, there is more water in the swimming Pools of Southern California than in the bed of the Los Angeles River. And short of painting the concrete riverbed the same shade of blue as a backyard swimming pool so that it resembles water — at least from the window of a 747 — every indignity has been visited upon it. But the Los Angeles River knows what it really is.

In leisurely centuries when its waters rippled like muscles across the broad flat belly of the yet-unbuilt city, it sustained millions of creatures that went on wing and fin and foot. Forests of willows and sycamores and ash and cottonwoods suckled at it. In its tumbling and churning course to the sea, it reduced the boulders of the mountains to the soft sand of the beaches.

The river watered the last wild native rose that once bloomed in fragrant profusion over the hills and hollows of the present-day Chinatown, and the first pound of California oranges ever grown and shipped. It powered the city’s printing presses and flour mills. It slaked the thirst and bathed the skins — first red, then brown, the white — of the men who dwelt along side it.

It is as old as myth, and as patient as time, and the Los Angeles River knows what it really is.

Gary Snyder, the poet of Zen and Beat and of the same spare and silent places of the world, writes that it may be that the true river is “alive an well under the city streets,” and under all that concrete, “it may be amused ...”

No one speaks of “the Los Angeles” as one speaks of “the Thames” or “the Nile.”

No one gives directions using the river. People say they live north of some boulevard, or west of some freeway, but the river is a cipher, invisible, unknown, occupying no point on the civic compass. Say “the river” in Los angeles and you only get blank looks.

The poor river couldn’t even hold onto a name. the Spaniards who came upon it on a Wednesday, the second day of August in 1769, saddled it with El Rio y Valle de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de la Porciúncula, The River and Valley of Our Lady Queen of the Angels of the Porciúncula, for the feast day honoring St. Francis of Assisi’s tiny chapel in Italy the Porziuncola, the “little portion.” For short — all things being relative — they called this place the Porciúncula. Eighty years later, American soldiers were simply mapping it as Rio de Los Angeles, the Los Angeles River.

Los Angeles brags about its beaches and its mountains. On the subject of its river, however, it is silent. Within the river’s banks lies more acreage than Central Park — walled up, fenced off, locked away from human eyes, like a loony aunt hidden in the attic, not to be discussed in front of company. A city with enough bravado to sell tourists cans of “L.A. Smog” could not bring itself to manufacture a single souvenir of its dismal river.

And yet for 125 years, nearly half of the life of modern Los Angeles, this unmentionable river was where the city drew every pail and cup of its water. Until 1913, the river’s water, and the river’s water alone. kept the city alive.

In other cities, great rivers a fringed by great houses and grand legends. St. Petersburg’s palaces edge the canals of the Neva, where Rasputin drowned, full of cyanide and bullets. Slave-built plantation mansions front the reaches of the Mississippi, where young Mark Twain learned his river pilot’s trade and his storytelling one.

Not so here.

This vagabond stream was always too mercurial for the rich to entrust their homes to its banks. On a fine winter morning in 1884, any poor man who walked to the water’s edge could enjoy the sight of a rich man come to ruin. John M. Baldwin, the editor of the Daily and Weekly Herald, had built his mansion near the river at the foot of what is now the north edge of Griffith Park. He put in the first golf course in Los Angeles — a private one of course. The winter floods carried house and links away down the river an out toward the sea.

And so rich men looked elsewhere to build their mansions, and the river was left to humbler people and lesser purposes. Such a wayward, dangerous river could only be warily entrusted with expendable and renewable enterprises like farms and ranches at its fringes. Along the rest of it, Los Angeles soon relegated all the smelly and noisy backstage work of the city.

The city’s foundling shelters, the dog pound and the orphanage found room at the river. Warehouses and slaughterhouses rose on river-front property, and railroads and foundries, a bleach factory and an asphalt plant, makers of aluminum and steel and fertilizer. In the 1980s, when the state wanted to complete the degradation of the river and neighborhood with a prison on the river across from Boyle Heights, a group became a movement and the Mothers of East Los Angeles rose up and said “No, enough.”

Unless you have business that takes you to the river, you are hard-pressed to find it with a casual look-see. It is too low to be seen from the vantage point of freeways, too trifling to be listed under “points of interest” in the Trusty Thomas Guide. For most of its fifty-one miles, it is as unmarked, and as pauper’s grave.

Once it had been confined — “built,” in the language of the engineers — the river was erased from the city’s mental map as blithely as movie studios obliterated their stars’ real lives and names, and rewrote them to the moguls’ liking. A city whose will was steely enough to invent an image and build a megalopolis to match it had no trouble with a mere river.

The mayor of Portland, Oregon, had an inkling of that singular power to conjure an to deny. In 1939, he got a postcard from a friend that purported to show “the rivers and mountains of California.” The mayor swore that those were Oregon rivers, not California ones. “What I suggest you do,’ he put forward, “is go down and take a picture of the Los Angeles River and let people see that. of course there isn’t any water in it, but that shouldn’t make any difference to you people, as you probably imagine there is.”

And yet it was a river, and still is, somewhere in there. Without it there would be no Los Angeles, and nothing tells the story of the city better than its river. Its tale is like the early verses of Genesis, of the division of water and land, and the twinned fears, both very rational, of drought and flood, of too little water and too much.

Over two centuries, in the service of those needs and as the incarnation of those fears, the river has found itself cast first as a blessing, then a monster, and at last a nullity.