John Brady

John Brady has written speeches for mayors, CEOs and community leaders; helped citizens fight the dark arts of bureaucratic obfuscation and created political policies that turned out to be pretty useful. His non-fiction writing has appeared in various outlets, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mother Jones, Punk Planet, the San Francisco Chronicle and on National Public Radio.​

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Golden Palms

Crime Fiction

Don’t pick up Golden Palms expecting your usual LA noir. You won’t find any bitter police detectives haunted by their personal demons. Jaded private dicks all sour on society and themselves are also in short supply.

You will find a femme fatale. But she rides a bike and likes her cocktails of the Molotov variety.

Of course, there are murders. In fact, they seem to be the work of a ruthless gang assassin. Here’s your curveball, though. Everyone, including the LAPD, thought he was dead.

There is a hero you can get invested in. Ted Burek is his name. His challenge? Ted’s not much of a sleuth. He’s a disgraced college teacher who drinks too much, gets angry too easily and tries too often to surf away his problems.

Ted’s going to have to get up to speed on the detecting game pretty quick. He’s washed up in LA with one last chance to get his life right.

Landing a job as a low-level political hack, he’s looking for redemption in the halls of power. Don’t you think it will be easy, though. Ted stumbles on the trail of out-of-town hard boys who have come to LA to make trouble for his new boss. To stop them, he’ll journey through a world of slick real estate developers, bloviating pols, over-confident tech bros and radical bicyclists. Along the way, Ted will discover just how high the price of justice can be.

Politics. Surfing. Constituent Services. Murder. Funny places. Gentrification. More murder. Lots of LA atmosphere. Golden Palms has all that and a whole lot more.

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