Where Murder Lies

Death and Deception in West Hollywood

By: Burl Barer, Frank C. Girardot Jr.

Narrated by: Miró Siegel

Fully clothed, the dead man looks as if he is simply taking a nap. There is no forced entry into the apartment, but there seems to have been a violent battle at the locked bedroom door-- and get this: the phone call reporting the murder came from inside the dead man's bedroom by someone using the poor fellow's cordless phone. The last people to see this victim alive were a young couple -- teens, actually, the girl was 7 months pregnant, and a mutual friend of both the teens and the murder victim -- a low level criminal specializing in identity theft and bank fraud.

Investigating this 2004 murder in West Hollywood took us down a path of deception and dishonesty involving a plot to steal a fortune gold, smuggle Molly (MDMA) into California, billions of dollars stolen from the government by a joint effort of the American Mafia and the Russian Mob, and we even get to the #1 reason you can't get a fair trial if you are set up by a snitch. BUT WHO MURDERED THE DEAD GUY ON THE BED?

©2025 Burl Barer (P)2026 WildBlue Press

A good true crime novel

First, I received a free copy of the book in exchange for ab honest review.

Overall, this was a decent story about a murder of a retired teacher and how digging into the reason of the murder opened up the Russian mafia operated in LA. Because of this, the book introduces you to a variety of people and their stories on how they were involved, either directly or indirectly, to show the web that was cast by the Russian mafia. While this was interesting, and I did like it, the book did jump around a bit, which for me, was a little difficult to follow. This did distract from the book for me in the audiobook format. This being said, I think I would have enjoyed the book more in print format so I could quickly look at back and remind myself of the larger picture and everyone else who was involved while reading about a specific person and their part in everything.

The narrator did a fine job and I didn't have any complaints with the narrator.

Could not follow

The writing was all over the place and the narrator seemed disconnected from the material