So Much to Talk About

Kim Cooper is the creator of 1947project , the crime-a-day time travel blog that spawned Esotouric 's popular crime bus tours, including Pasadena Confidential and the Real Black Dahlia. With husband Richard Schave, Kim curates the Salons of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. When the third-generation Angeleno isn't combing old newspapers for forgotten scandals, she is a passionate advocate for historic preservation of signage, vernacular architecture and writers' homes. Kim was for many years the editrix of Scram , a journal of unpopular culture. Her books include Fall in Love For Life , Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth , Lost in the Grooves , and an oral history of the cult band Neutral Milk Hotel. The Kept Girl is her first novel. Having reviewed The Kept Girl last week, I'm pleased to welcome Kim back for a second blog tour stop:

L.A. historian Kim Cooper's indie-published debut novel, The Kept Girl , is inspired by a sensational real-life Los Angeles cult murder spree which exploded into the public consciousness when fraud charges were filed against the cult's leaders in 1929. The victim was the nephew of oil company president Joseph Dabney, Raymond Chandler's boss. In the novel, Chandler, still several years away from publishing his first short story, is one of three amateur detectives who uncover the ghastly truth about the Great Eleven cult over one frenetic week. Informed by the author's extensive research into the literary, spiritual, criminal and architectural history of Southern California, The Kept Girl is a terrifying noir love story, set against the backdrop of a glittering pre-crash metropolis. The first chapter-and-a-half of The Kept Girl is written in first-person from Chandler's viewpoint as he's tasked with tracing $40,000 scammed from Joseph Dabney's nephe