BAD CITY Peril and Power in the City of Angels

Robert Petkoff is especially effective at narrating this account in which the author’s judgments heavily dominate the narrative. L.A. TIMES reporter Pringle’s painstaking multi-year investigation, starting in 2016, pitted him against the prestigious University of Southern California and his own editors, who did not want to run afoul of the city’s most influential advertiser—or its friends. The news story involved the married dean of USC’s Keck School of Medicine, his drug habit, and his drug-addicted 22-year-old girlfriend, whom he repeatedly sprung from rehab. Pringle’s no-holds-barred journalism is dramatic listening, and Petkoff keeps a brisk pace, maintaining suspense and narrative tension even through passages that are repetitive. Petkoff takes on the author’s gripes and ruminations, along with his passion, indignation, and abiding sense of justice—for a true-crime story as compelling as any novel. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2022 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2022]