Luckily I haven’t read any of this author’s other books, and went into this one completely blind.
A thriller/mystery set in the late 1960’s in Laguna Beach, Southern California, it is packed with memories from the author’s own childhood, and it turns out to be sort of a nostalgia trip turned into a mystery adventure. The quirky characters are here: a beachfront hippies, suspicious swami, murder, kidnapping, LSD and all the counterculture escapades of the revolutionaries of the era.
The writer did a great job capturing those times, sometimes going a little overboard with the cultural references, but the hits far outweighed the misses and I really enjoyed reading this book.
It helps that the main character is a likable teenager just hitting manhood in a time of great upheaval in the United States. You always are pulling for him, and we’re with him as he finds the seamy side of the world he lives in, and makes some moral decisions and has to live with the consequences.
I’ve read quite a few thrillers and mysteries, but this one really felt different – maybe because of the time shift and maybe because the author really loved his memories of growing up in this place. The result is a story that he put a lot of love into, and so it was naturally pleasant to read.
Next I’m reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.
