From Publishers Weekly
Set on Parker's usual turf, this Orange County, Calif., saga is a family drama carefully wrapped around a mystery involving a murdered beauty queen. Back in 1954, the Becker brothers, David, Nick, Clay and Andy, win a fight with the wrong-side-of-the-tracks Vonn brothers at the Sunblesst orange packinghouse. After the rumble, the Vonns' little sisters, Lynette and Janelle, show up to throw rocks. Thus begins a lifelong association between three of the brothers and the two girls. In 1968, Janelle is back at the packinghouse, only now she's lying dead on the floor, her decapitated head several feet from her torso. Nick is with the county sheriff's department working his first case as lead detective. Brother Clay has been killed in Vietnam, Andy is a reporter on a local newspaper and David is a minister. Framing the occasionally glacial narrative with Nick's present-day reworking of the case, Parker (
Cold Pursuit, etc.) introduces a wide variety of quirky period characters, from stoned-out hippies to Dick Nixon and his conservative cronies, one of whom might be Janelle's killer. Readers should think mainstream novel rather than thriller and prepare to wait patiently for the rewards offered by this intricately plotted tale.
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Parker's twelfth novel is a family saga and whodunit set against the turbulent '60s. The Becker brothers grew up among the orange groves of Southern California, brawling and scrapping with the low-class Vonn boys through most of the 1950s. By 1967, Janelle, the tomboyish little sister of the Vonn boys, has grown into a cover-girl beauty with a tragic edge. When her decapitated body is found in an abandoned orange-packing plant, the Becker brothers struggle to find the truth amid conflicting politics and family secrets. Patrick G. Lawlor reads the novel with a precise deliberation that at first seems stiffly at odds with the sunny setting of the story. But as the novel proceeds, Lawlor loosens and the book takes on a life if its own. Dotted with cameos by Richard Nixon, Timothy Leary, and even a young Charles Manson, CALIFORNIA GIRL is a beautiful, moving, and memorable novel. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
