Blog Archives
A Flawed Obsessive
Bad Actor follows a washed-up TV writer turned private investigator who is investigating the death of a high-profile agent while struggling with his own personal issues. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
As always, I set out to place my work in the lineage of L.A. noir—from James M. Cain to Joseph Schneider; Sunset Boulevard to Mulholland Drive—with its damaged characters on the razor’s edge of glamor and desperation. While I was outlining the book, I saw something on TV about the Beltway Sniper, and it changed the direction of what I was writing. That was when Bad Actor took shape.
What was the inspiration for Ellis Dunaway’s character traits and dialogue?
Like most–if not all–detectives in hardboiled crime fiction, Ellis Dunaway is a flawed obsessive. His voice reveals his unique sentimentality and sense of the absurd, filtered through Gen-X media literacy (reruns) and lots of weed.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
All the characters struggle with problems resulting from a combination of family dysfunction, identity crisis, and malignant ambition.
Can you tell us more about what’s in store for Ellis Dunaway and the direction of the next book?
The log line is Terms of Endearment meets I Wake Up Screaming, plus weed.
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Bad Actor
Bad Actor is a gritty and sharply observed noir that follows Ellis Dunaway, a washed-up TV writer turned private investigator, as he’s pulled back toward the fringes of Hollywood. The book blends a murder mystery involving the death of a high-profile agent, the troubles of fallen actor Urs Schreiber, and Ellis’s own struggles with sobriety, fading relevance, and financial strain. Vaughn sets the action against a vividly sketched Los Angeles, equal parts glitz, decay, and absurdity, while drawing the reader deep into Ellis’s sardonic inner world.
The writing had me hooked from page one. Vaughn’s voice is lean, smart, and sly, with a knack for tossing in lines that sting as much as they amuse. The dialogue crackles, bouncing between bone-dry humor and tense undercurrents. I loved how Ellis is flawed without being a cliché. He’s self-aware enough to see his own failings, but still likely to trip over them anyway. The mix of PI procedural detail, showbiz satire, and personal confessions makes the book feel like it’s living in multiple genres at once. And somehow, Vaughn keeps the balance.
Beneath the twists and snappy banter, there’s a steady hum of commentary on reinvention, ego, and the way Los Angeles eats its own. Vaughn doesn’t preach; he just lets his characters prove the point. I found myself laughing in one paragraph and then unexpectedly feeling the weight of Ellis’s loneliness in the next. The city in this book isn’t just a backdrop, it’s a character with its own moods, grudges, and jokes. It reminded me of walking through Hollywood after midnight: the beauty, the weirdness, the sense that anything could happen, good or bad.
Bad Actor delivers as both a mystery and a character study. It’s for readers who like their noir with bite, their comedy tinged with sadness, and their protagonists both frustrating and impossible to abandon. If you’re into Michael Connelly but wish Harry Bosch swore more, smoked more weed, and wandered into surreal Hollywood detours, this is your book. I’d hand it to anyone who loves a crime story that doesn’t just solve a case but also lays bare the person doing the solving.
Pages: 245 | ISBN: 979-8-9865319-3-9
The Perfect Setting For Noir
The Loneliest Places follows a private investigator who has everything going against him when he makes a last-ditch effort to change his situation and ends up investigating a brutal cartel. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I was inspired by all the great Los-Angeles-based crime fiction and noir that came before me, and is being written now—everything from Nathaniel West and Raymond Chandler to James Ellroy and Michael Connelly. Initially, my only goal was to insinuate myself into that legacy and hopefully honor it.
Was there a reason why you chose this location as the backdrop for your story?
I love Los Angeles. What shows on the city’s face, often tragically, belies what’s in its heart. That makes it the perfect setting for noir. I knew The Loneliest Places would be set in L.A. even before I knew my detective Ellis Dunaway’s name.
What scene in the book did you have the most fun writing?
The scene where Ellis visits his old friend Kent at the TV studio. Ellis can barely contain his envy and resentment while the mega-successful Kent struts around, humble bragging and grandstanding. Also, the scenes where Ellis talks to Bettina were a lot of fun, because she is so shallow and self-involved, requiring Ellis, again, to try and hide his irritation in the interest of getting hired by her. Writing dialogue that plays against what Ellis is actually feeling is always fun.
Will this novel be the start of a series or are you working on a different story?
The answer to both parts of the question is yes. I just started taking notes for a second Ellis Dunaway novel. And I am currently drafting a couple of stand-alone novels about other characters in the Ellis Dunaway universe.
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The Loneliest Places
In The Loneliest Places, Keith Edward Vaughn delivers a captivating debut that navigates the grittier side of Los Angeles through the eyes of Ellis Dunaway, a man of enormous desires – especially when it pertains to his drug habits. Dunaway’s vocation as a private investigator incessantly plunges him deeper into society’s darker corners, exacerbating his feelings of solitude and purposelessness. His continuous struggle to align his lifestyle with the expectations of his late father serves as an intimate backdrop to his story. Dunaway’s world is thrown into chaos when he crosses paths with the Black Fist, a sophisticated crime syndicate. With his life in turmoil, he must decipher a complex mystery while confronting his personal shortcomings.
Keith Edward Vaughn showcases his distinctive literary prowess in this gripping noir novel teeming with morally ambiguous characters straddling both sides of the law. Ellis Dunaway emerges as the perfect protagonist to guide us through the unseen, darker recesses of Los Angeles, offering a stark contrast to the city’s regular tourist highlights.
I can’t help but draw comparisons with iconic noir movies such as “LA Confidential” and “Chinatown.” Much like Jake Gittes from the latter, Dunaway is a proficient detective whose worst adversary is often his own self, a fact that constantly puts him in precarious situations. Dunaway’s journey is not only thrilling but also deeply empathetic, as readers find themselves rooting for him while understanding that his emotional immaturity is his most formidable foe.
Vaughn’s narrative style is largely driven by dialogue, with judicious use of descriptive details to portray the characters and locations that make up this bleak rendition of the City of Angels. His intimate knowledge of this terrain is evident, yet he selectively unveils only fragments, effectively amplifying the sense of intrigue.
The Loneliest Places is a mesmerizing exploration of one man’s journey through the underworld of a city and his own inner demons, marking Keith Edward Vaughn as a notable new talent in the literary world.
Pages: 249 | ASIN : B0C9MXQ2MY
LITERARY TITAN 