BOOK REVIEW

California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker. Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery

(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  The Becker brothers stick together.  Back in 1954, all four of them were growing up in Tustin, California when the Santa Ana winds still wafted the smell of orange groves through the town.

Their futures await. Eighteen year-old David, smart and awkward, knows he has a calling to be a minister.  But sixteen year-old Nick, a strong and silent football player, has no idea he will end up a homicide detective. Thirteen year-old Andy's nervous aggression will channel into a newspaper reporter's career. 

But in 1954, the Becker brothers get into a rumble with the trailer-trash Vonn boys. The event has far-reaching consequences. The Vonn and Becker boys become life-long enemies. Nick gets a bash on the head that will trouble him for the rest of his life. And the Becker boys each lose their hearts, though none of them yet knows it, to their first glimpse of five year-old Janelle Vonn, an innocent little girl who will grow up to be a beauty queen. 

The winds of change move on to 1960: Nick is a cop and married to devoted Katie.  David is finishing divinity school.  Andy is torn between his writing career and getting engaged to home-maker who wants to settle down.  Through it all weaves the shadow-story of the Vonns: the boys are biker thugs, Mrs. Vonn commits suicide, the older sister Lynette runs away. 

On to 1963:  David and his new wife are setting up their highly unorthodox "drive-in" church when 14 year-old Janelle seeks shelter with them. Her brothers have been molesting her. This sends Nick the cop to seek vengeance on the Vonn boys to the fullest extent of the law. It gives Andy the reporter something to write about. The destinies of the Becker brothers and Janelle Vonn seem inexplicably intertwined.

So when Janelle's murdered body is found in 1968, dumped in the old orange-packing plant, the Becker boys' world comes crashing down. Who could have killed her? Yes, she did have her beauty-queen title revoked when she posed for a very tame spread in Playboy. She did take LSD and hang out with Timothy Leary and the other weirdoes in Laguna Beach.  But she was a beautiful and harmless person, a beacon of light to everyone who knew her. Nick gets assigned to her case, and he and Andy especially make it their mission to find out the truth and bring her killer to justice.

California Girl spans the years with elegant precision as the weird 1960s turn into the present day. The beautiful writing evokes a sad yearning for a simpler time.  It conveys humor and outrage, and leads us into some surprising revelations concerning the Becker boys (Nick and Andy are especially vivid characters) and Janelle.

In the meantime, minor celebrities come and go, melding seamlessly into the story: David, walking up to his parents' front door in 1968, exchanges pleasantries with their good friend (pre-election) Richard Nixon who expresses interest in his church. Nick hunts down Timothy Leary at a lecture and questions him. Andy beats up an obnoxious little folksinger named Charles Manson who will gain full notoriety after the Tate murders in the next year. 

California Girl is one of the best mysteries I've read in years, and it is not to be missed!  It gets five stars out of five, and can be found on Amazon through this link:

California Girl

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