Product Description

The Orange County, California, that the Becker brothers knew as boys is no more -- unrecognizably altered since the afternoon in 1954 when Nick, Clay, David, and Andy rumbled with the lowlife Vonns, while five-year-old Janelle Vonn watched from the sidelines. The new decade has brought about the end of the orange groves and the birth of suburban sprawl. It is the era of Johnson, hippies, John Birchers, and LSD. Clay becomes a casualty of a far-off jungle war. Nick becomes a cop, Andy a reporter, David a minister. And the decapitated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse.

A hideous crime has touched the Beckers in ways that none of them could have anticipated, setting three brothers on a dangerous collision course that will change their family -- and their world -- forever.

And no one will emerge from the wreckage unscathed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #254660 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-01
• Released on: 2005-12-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 396 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060562373
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Parker’s 12th novel is a gripping saga of three brothers and their relationship to one doomed and abused young woman over the course of a generation. Parker uses Janelle as a focal point for examining a diverse set of characters; in investigating her murder, for example, the Becker brothers dig deep within themselves. Yet perhaps the best character is ‘60s-era Southern California itself: its blue sky, ocean, drive-in churches, orange groves, tract homes, peace protests, and drugs, spotted with cameos by Richard Nixon, Timothy Leary, and other celebrities. California Girl, though technically a crime novel, is also a family saga and history, though it tries too hard at the latter. If sometimes too self-conscious or superficial in tone, the novel offers a not-so-innocent look at the tarnished California dream.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
Since the Edgar-winning Laguna Beach in 1985, Parker has been known for his literate mysteries set in Southern California. This latest involves a very cold case from the 1960s. The story is framed by the elegiac meditations of Nick Becker, former L.A. cop, who deeply regrets lost youth and opportunities, but the bulk of the story suggests that Nick hasn't missed all that much. The core experience of his youth, his first case as an L.A. sheriff's officer, involved standing over the body of a neighbor girl, staring at it with his reporter brother, Andy. The girl, whom they knew had been molested and drugged by her brothers and later became a local beauty queen and Playboy cover girl, was found brutally murdered on the floor of a packinghouse. Before readers get to this core incident, which took place in 1968, the novel lurches through chapters depicting the Becker family in 1954, 1960, and 1963. It's obvious Parker wants to recapture the '60s, but he does so in an extremely heavy-handed, lugubrious fashion, hitting readers over the head with ways in which the times touched the family. The mystery itself moves extremely slowly, relying for its partial solution on an extremely corny deus ex machina device. Parker devotees will stick with him, but this one won't attract new fans. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Parker delivers yet again with this dynamic novel.
California Girl is about the Becker boys and follows them into early adulthood. One becomes a homicide detective, one a minister and one a reporter. The bulk of the novel is focused on the death of a young woman, whom the Becker men have known most of their life. Her death affects each of them in a different way.

I have to start by saying I am a fan of Parker's writing and have always been impressed by his work. Having said that, I think California Girl is an exciting step in a new direction. Less of a novel about catching the killer and more about the effects the murder has on the people around her. Like Lehane with Mystic River and Rozan with Absent Friends, Parker is stepping to the next level with a novel that is every bit a piece of literature as it is a crime novel.
It is work like this that helps remove any posible stigma that comes with the term "genre novel"

In April 2005, California Girl was awarded the Edgar award for best Novel of 2004, by the Mystery Writers of America.
It is Parker's second Best Novel Edgar, as Silent Joe also won.

Great stuff!
Mr. Parker has always been exceptional at characterization, but this book nails real atmosphere as well, and is at the top of my 2004 list, along with The Narrows by Michael Connelly, Memorial Day by Harry Shannon and that new Robert Crais. The 60's seem especially relevent these days (war and all) so the writing really make my skin ripple. Great stuff! Buy it, you won't be disappointed. As usual.

A masterpiece!


A Plus for T. Jefferson Parker's incredible "California Girl."

Stylish and engaging, it transports you back to 1968 in Orange County (and up to present day)...again mixing real life characters (Dick Nixon, Tim Leary, Charles Manson) with a fictional cast of vividly sketched characters.

The three Becker brothers (a cop, a crime reporter and a minister) have an intense commitment to finding the truth about a decapitated friend from their teenage years.

Their search for the facts leads to compromise, concessions and exposure of the brothers' secrets.

It is a subtle, sophisticated, cerebral novel with justice the overruling topic...no matter how long it may take.

A well-crafted look back at a period of time that fashioned a generation told in a most intriguing manner.

As good as any book I have read this year.