Publisher's Synopsis
In 1970, Shasta Fay Hepworth visits the beach house of her ex-boyfriend, Larry "Doc" Sportello, a private investigator and hippie in Gordita Beach, Los Angeles County. She tells him about her new lover, Michael Z. "Mickey" Wolfmann, a wealthy real estate developer, and asks him to help prevent Mickey's wife and her lover from abducting Mickey and committing him to an insane asylum. Doc meets with Tariq Khalil, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family, who hires him to find Glen Charlock, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood he met in jail, who owes him money and is one of Wolfmann's bodyguards. Doc visits Mickey's Channel View Estates project and enters the only business in the developing strip mall, a massage parlor, where he meets an employee, Jade. He searches the premises for Charlock, but is hit with a baseball bat and collapses. He wakes outside, lying next to Charlock's dead body and surrounded by policemen. Doc is interrogated by LAPD detective Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen and learns that Wolfmann has disappeared. He is helped by his attorney, Sauncho Smilax, who arranges for his release by the LAPD.
