Cinnamon Girl

Daniel Weizmann’s Cinnamon Girl, the follow-up to his pitch perfect The Last Songbird, charts his course as a new and impressive writer of LA neo-noir. With his Pacific Coast Highway series, he brings a refreshing addition to the noir tradition with a musical influence stemming from his background in the “Paisley Underground” spirit of punk and post-punk. Noir for a new generation.

LA noir for the “edgy, crazy restless.” Throw in a cast of characters from an Israeli widower to a good friend named Double Fry to the mysterious Cinnamon, and you’re on the mind-bending, twisty trip through LA streets and fractured dreams.

Lyft driver and failed songwriter Adam “Addy” Zantz is studying for an investigator’s license when he’s called to Shalom Terrace Retirement Home by his former piano teacher and mentor, Charles Elkaim. Elkaim is dying and wants Addy to prove his son’s innocence in a decades-earlier murder case. Addy doesn’t hold much hope to solve this until he stumbles upon a test pressing of a never-released vinyl LP of a 1980s garage band on the cusp of fame.

This relic of the acid-fueled 80s throws Addy down the rabbit hole of crooked DJs, a teen cult, a wellness peddler, and Cinnamon, the de facto manager of the band, and the key to the band’s success and ruin. Promo for Cinnamon Girl insightfully states this roustabout noir is “one part Raymond Chandler and one part Ziggy Stardust.” But more, it’s a wild, twisty ride through a modern LA and a nostalgic, drug-fueled, music-infused city that made few dreams come true.

Refreshingly, our hero is a sensitive, middle-class Jewish kid, exactly the kind of protagonist we need for today’s neo-noir. Someone a little naive but sincere, someone we can root for even if what he finds isn’t what we expect, especially that. But what we don’t expect and come to identify as his major ability to solve this crime is not the usual detective trope, but an intuitive use of song lyrics to deduce and connect the clues.

Haunting and fast-paced, this noir is vivid, seductive, dangerous, cool, and weird. You can’t ask for more.

Except there is more. Weizmann includes a playlist that can be found on all digital music platforms, thus providing what could be a playlist for a movie based on the book. Let’s hope that happens.