When Dalton Everest, a naive school teacher with a crackerjack, free-form way of expressing himself, forms a fast friendship with Nathan Lyme, a charmer who's cagey about his employment, everything Dalton knew of his previous life is swiftly upended. Set up by Nathan to fall hard for Melanee, a frequently drunk French girl and former purse snatcher, Dalton ends up in a pickle and then, paranoid out of his wits, is ultimately chased through the streets of downtown L.A. Angelino Heights is a crime novel obsessed with Los Angeles. It traipses across the city from a crooked pawn shop in Cudahy to a secretive mecca of modernism protruding from a hill in Pasadena to the old timey dive and themed bars, where its protagonists drink up the atmosphere of old L.A.