This haunting mystery, set in the author’s usual territory of Orange County-California, walks in the footsteps of the Becker brothers whose destinies are linked to the mysterious and beautiful Janelle Vonn. They all live in the sleepy town of Tustin back when its orange groves perfumed the air.
They first catch sight of Janelle in 1952 when they have to back each other up in a street-fight against her thuggish older brothers. They are adolescent boys and she is a mischievous five year-old. Already they can see that she will have a hard life growing up in the trailer-trash Vonn household.
From 1960 to 1963, their futures take shape. Shy David, raised a Presbyterian, wants to become a minister and open the world’s first “drive-in” church. Stoic Nick will come to love being a homicide detective. Nervous Andy will channel his aggressions into the competitive world of newspaper reporting.
Poor Janelle? Her mother commits suicide and her older sister runs off with a biker gang. When she’s 14, she comes to David and his wife for refuge: her brothers have been molesting her. This sends Nick on a mission of revenge against the Vonn boys who have already embarked on a life of crime. This in turn provides great copy for Andy.
The Becker boys, whether married or not, are all half-in-love with the beautiful free-spirit that is Janelle. They express their indignation when local authorities revoke her beauty-queen title just for posing in a mostly-clothed feature in Playboy. They worry about her when she disappears for days at a time, taking LSD down at Laguna Beach with Timothy Leary and his hippie followers. But when she turns up murdered and abandoned in an old orange-packing plant, they are shaken to the core and determined to find her killer.
Nick gets himself assigned to her case. Andy pursues his own leads. (In a related development, David knows something as well, but he’s too busy fending off some sinister FBI agents who want to blackmail him into infiltrating his parents’ local John Birch society whom they regard as a sinister influence possibly on the level of the Ku Klux Klan.)
Who could have killed beautiful and innocent Janelle? This question will lead Nick and his older, super-square partner to take a hair-raising trip after drug runners in Mexico. It will give David the reserves of courage he needs to face his own dark secret. And it will lead Andy, in a weak moment at a local bar, to slap around a creepy little folksinger named Charles Manson who will achieve notoriety the following year with the Tate murders.
California Girl is steeped in its time and place. You totally believe it in 1968 just before the presidential election when David visits his parents and runs into their good friend Richard Nixon who is just leaving. They chat about David’s drive-in church, and David wishes Nixon good luck in the election.
Gradually the weirdness of the 1960s gives way to the present-day, and some shocking revelations with which a much-older Nick and Andy have to deal. California Girl conveys humor, nostalgia, and suspense, and is probably the best book I’ve read so far this year. You owe it to yourself to get this nearly perfect Edgar-Award winner for your collection.
California Girl can be found on Amazon through this link: California Girl
