Read @ Joe’s

Title: Where The Bones Lie (2025) Author: Nick Kolakowski Publisher: Datura Books Book jacket: For Dash Fuller, Hollywood’s underbelly is home sweet home. But when a young woman named Madeline Ironwood comes to him with a peculiar quest, Dash sees it as a chance for redemption. Joe says: This is a great genre read that doesn’t abide by all the genre rules. Where The Bones Lie is so hot it’s cool.

Nick Kolakowski knows that LA crime fiction is a well-trodden beat populated with PIs, adventurers, thieves, and jokers of all sorts. Fortunately that traffic-congested asphalt and the concrete running between those dark alleys are wide enough for one more. With Where The Bones Lie, Kolakowski hits that street with all the energy of a muscle car yet delivers the smoothest of rides. 

Comedian by day and PR fixit man by night, Dash Fuller – a perfect Hollywood PI name if there ever was one – is hired by red haired hipster Madeline Ironwood to find out who killed her father, a smuggler and murderer of notorious repute. But Dash ain’t really a PI. Just a fixer, ma’am. And as for Madeline? She’s young enough that she is not entirely sure she wants the full truth anyway. After all, this is Los Angeles, and lies can look pretty enough. 

Kolakowski provides more of a stumbling-and-bumbling around adventure than a noir-ish procedural. Lighthearted like Gregory Mcdonald at times; all twisty and turny like a Ellory yarn later on. Interestingly along the ride, Where The Bones Lie becomes something unique: a quest for understanding the truth, deciding who is hiding it the best, and an overall answer for where one sits in the world. Albeit one complete with classic Mustangs, murder, figures in masks, and the occasional backstabbing. Kolakowski has created an wholly entertaining crime fiction entry that feels fresh and modern, and about as safe as a Yelp review. 

Kolakowski mixes in humor to narrative – Dash is a comedian, or is trying to at least – but the comedy never goes full on absurd. If anything, there is a bit of a nervous tick to it all reminiscent of Gerry Conway’s run on Amazing Spider-Man back in the seventies where the titular hero used quips as a defense mechanism. Dash never gets annoying. If anything, his thine-own-self-be-true, nice-guy character is refreshing to read. He second-guesses. He rabbits instead of fights. And he doesn’t deviously maneuver into Madeline’s pants. 

Her vintage ride is another matter. 

Where The Bones Lie is a great genre read that doesn’t abide by all the genre rules. Sometimes, like during Dash and Madeline’s trip north of DTLA, you gotta go offroad where the wildfires are. Sometimes you need to feel those flames crisping at the edges to keep things hot. Where The Bones Lie is so hot it’s cool. 

I’m looking forward to Kolakowski’s next conflagration.