the capital of one, purveyor of the other. Media through and through, I’ve written covered the from over three decadesI  – so Iabsolutely ate up the first novel of one of my colleagues, Hollywood Reporter award winning journalist Gary Baum, The Pursuit of Beauty (Blackstone, July 1). It’s pretty clear I’m not the only one: The New York Post picked it as one of this year’s thirty best beach reads – while THR’s Q and A with Gary ponders the question, is his lead character – Wes, a probing investigative journalist – based on himself?? At a Q and A/signing with the author at Book Soup last week, Gary explained  both Wes and the plastic surgeon Roya, referred to as “the Robin Hood of Roxbury Drive,” are elaborated versions of himself, other journalists and some plastic surgeons he interviewed for a 2014 story on the shocking death of a recent facelift patient. Bestselling author Lili Anolik (Didion & Babitz, Hollywood’s Eve), an oft chronicler of Hollywood hedonism, summed it up well in her book blurb: “In Pursuit of Beauty is part medical noir, part sociological confection, all giddy pleasure. The book just zips along. Its writer, Gary Baum, a journalist for The Hollywood Reporter, understands LA—and the neuroses of the people who live there—in a bone-deep way. This is one queasy and kinky delight.”

L.A. Born and bred, the studious Baum’s a writer you wouldn’t expect to pen a semi-pulp, semi-noir, philosophical polemic, explained to THR: “My father’s a neurologist; my wife a doctor. I feel probably more comfortable exploring these areas because of proximity. And so those things just kind of put me in that realm.”