"Some visitors find L.A. an insider's city. The contrary is in fact true. ... Shallow it is, but also captivating, if you can just hold on to your sense of humor. Every now and then, an earthquake will crack the city open, just to ensure that things stay interesting, or someone will threaten to blow up LAX, or raging fires will sweep through the West Valley and everyone will lionize firemen for a week. Santa Monica waters will turn toxic. A mercury scare will put everyone off sushi. Carbs will be vilified, or Pilates, or the caloric content of Jamba Juice."

Hurwitz portrays L.A. in "dirty poetics in some sequences and a terse tone in the dialogue."

He has wanted to be a writer since he was in the first grade, when he wrote books with cardboard covers — such as "Willie, Julie and the Case of the Buried Treasure." Today he keeps that one on the same shelf as his published novels.

He studied English and psychology in school and wrote a rough draft of his first novel, "The Tower," when he was a 19-year-old college sophomore and was supposed to be working on Shakespeare.

Today, he said, he writes "at a furious pace," but then does a lot of rewriting afterward. "I write a first draft in 14-hour days — it's almost like I'm in a rage. Then I settle down and do the fine-tuning. Some books demand an outline before I start, but this one I just wrote — in ten weeks. Then I revised it for over a year."

He can tell when he's "in the zone — the characters are doing things and cracking jokes. Drew Danner is a lot funnier than I am. They're going through a labyrinth and I'm just writing to keep up with them."

Hurwitz enjoys occasional teaching stints in creative writing and he has lectured at Harvard and UCLA. But he says he doesn't have "the stamina" to teach a course; one lecture here and there is good. "I really love writing! I work a little on the Hollywood side, with scripts. It's really fun when I do it The aim is always to do something unique."

In "The Crime Writer," Drew wakes up in the hospital after he has had a brain tumor removed. He's told he was found standing over his ex-girlfriend's body with a knife in his hand. Presumably, the brain tumor has something to do with why he can't remember, but he is depressed and determined to find out if he really killed the woman.

A crucial point Hurwitz tries to make in this compelling book is that "any one person is capable of anything. People are capable of doing horrible things. So Drew, my character, can't just block out the possibility that he did this terrible thing."

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E-mail: dennis@desnews.com