California Girl - Page 3

I'm made of that place - of the old wood and the rusted conveyors and the pigeons in the eaves and the sunlight slanting through the cracks. Of Janelle Vonn. Of everything that went down, there in October, 1968. Even made of the wind that blew that month, dry and hot off the desert, huffing across Orange County to the sea.

One interesting device Parker uses is to frame his story in the "here and now," with first person narration by Nick. The rest of the tale is told in third person, and begins with the "rumble" in 1954 between the Beckers and the Vonns over a baseball cap casually tossed to a German shepherd. It then fast-forwards through time, following the Beckers as they intersect with Janelle until the night Nick and Andy stand over her headless corpse in a dilapidated warehouse and realize, if only slightly, that the world will never be the same again. His framing device, of course, hammers home one immediate realization, spoken by Andy in the opening chapter as he and Nick meet for lunch in the present day: "Everything we thought about Janelle Vonn was wrong."

Having those words echo in your mind forces you to examine the unfolding story as in that light: all of a sudden, as the reader you're poking and prodding the unfolding evidence, hunting for the secret that has seemingly eluded discovery for thirty-six years, trying to identify what pieces of information were so "wrong" that demanded such attention after so long. While it also makes you assume at the outset that the investigation of her death must have yielded the wrong conclusion, Parker seems willing to abandon that sense of suspense for a corresponding impression of inevitability, that this is also a story about how sometimes, our perception of the past is simply wrong.

This isn't a rousing tale of action and adventure, nor is it a gruesome murder mystery despite the fact that the victim is discovered without a head. It is instead an often poignant and moving eulogy to the California that once was, and to the passion of youth and the steady beat of time. I was impressed with how Parker managed to develop the various threads of his story and incorporate the multiple leads into the investigation. Perhaps the greatest quibble was with David's character: it seemed as though David's secrets were almost too teasingly developed. The other complaint might be with Parker's use of characters like Nixon, Leary, or Manson as a backdrop for his story, but then again it would have been wrong to tell a story set in the environment Parker chose for this story and then ignore the history of the period. That said, I still have a problem with the inclusion of Manson in what appeared to be a throw-away scene as an obnoxious character Andy encounters in a bar: one could argue (and I might) that while the scene was fine, the use of Manson's character was a bit gratuitous.

Article Author: W.E. Wallo

W.E. Wallo is a book and movie junkie whose writings have appeared in a variety of print and online publications.

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