Thank you Celadon Books, #partner, for the finished copy of Bad City in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Celadon Books
Published: July 19, 2022
Summary:
“Pringle’s fast-paced book is a master class in investigative journalism… when institutions collude to protect one another, reporting may be our last best hope for accountability.”
—The New York Times
For fans of Spotlight and Catch and Kill comes a nonfiction thriller about corruption and betrayal radiating across Los Angeles from one of the region’s most powerful institutions, a riveting tale from a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who investigated the shocking events and helped bring justice in the face of formidable odds.
On a cool, overcast afternoon in April 2016, a salacious tip arrived at the L.A. Times that reporter Paul Pringle thought should have taken, at most, a few weeks to check out: a drug overdose at a fancy hotel involving one of the University of Southern California’s shiniest stars—Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the head of the prestigious medical school. Pringle, who’d long done battle with USC and its almost impenetrable culture of silence, knew reporting the story wouldn’t be a walk in the park. USC is one of the biggest employers in L.A., and it casts a long shadow.
But what he couldn’t have foreseen was that this tip would lead to the unveiling of not one major scandal at USC but two, wrapped in a web of crimes and cover-ups. The rot rooted out by Pringle and his colleagues at The Times would creep closer to home than they could have imagined—spilling into their own newsroom.
Packed with details never before disclosed, Pringle goes behind the scenes to reveal how he and his fellow reporters triumphed over the city’s debased institutions, in a narrative that reads like L.A. noir. This is L.A. at its darkest and investigative journalism at its brightest.
My thoughts:
Thanks to Celadon Books, I was first given a sampler of this book and asked if I wanted to continued reading. That sampler was the first 50 pages of this book and I was riveted! I knew nothing about this case but I knew I had to keep reading…and let me just say, I’m so glad I requested the book…I found myself equally riveted to the rest of the book as well – and that was during my recovery from surgery, which is saying something!
This book takes us deep into three major scandals that happened at USC. Scandals that the college did their very best to try to keep hidden through coverups and corruptions, but also through coverups with the city of LA, spotlighting just how broken that system is. It is both eye-opening and appalling and I give such credit to Paul and his team for not backing down with all the roadblocks they constantly faced in getting this published. It’s amazing how many people did not want this story to be published!
This book, which I will say reads a bit like a thriller at times, gripped me from the get-go. Between the shocking events that happened to the complex investigating that went into exposing everyone and everything, I was glued to the pages and found myself reading this book in just a day. It is incredibly well-written and I was completely engaged. I highly recommend this to all true crime or investigative journalism readers.
