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    California Girl
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    California Girl
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    California Girl
    Ebook459 pages7 hours

    California Girl

    By T. Jefferson Parker

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    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 ushered in 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 a terrible crime touches them all in ways they could never have anticipated when the mutilated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061834059
    Author

    T. Jefferson Parker

    T. Jefferson Parker is the author of numerous novels and short stories, the winner of three Edgar Awards (for Silent Joe, California Girl, and the short story "Skinhead Central"), and the recipient of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best mystery (Silent Joe). Before becoming a full-time novelist, he was an award-winning reporter. He lives in Fallbrook, California.

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    Reviews for California Girl

    3.5/5

    134 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Story of three brothers, policeman, journalist, minister (and the one who would probably have been the Indian Chief is killed off early). Begins in 1954 in California with the brothers' involvement with a doomed young woman. It's one of those stories about the past that is supposed to elicit feelings of nostalgia and regret. But it's a little too gimmicky. The writer is worth another look, but I would not recommend this novel.
    • 4/5
      Thanks Ellen! My introduction to T. Jefferson Parker. For someone who thinks he keeps up with such authors, it's a rare treat to find a new "police procedural" series.Parker ranks with Michael Connelly, Scott Turow, and Dick Francis as master craftsmen of the genre novel that actually includes depth of characterization. (I'm leaving off Elmore Leonard here, because while his characters are fascinating, his craft is dialogue and an ear for the absurdity and simplicity of the criminal mind.)
    • 4/5
      A great story of a family who interact with a girls murder in the 1960's in Orange county California. Fiction but very historical.
    • 4/5
      Like Parker’s earlier Edgar winner,Silent Joe, California Girl is set in Orange County and brought home even more than the earlier book that Orange County is not Los Angeles.There are a lot of ways one could describe California Girl. It’s a story about two families, the Beckers and the Vonns, and how they intersect and affect each other’s lives. It’s definitely a story of the changes in America, and specifically Orange County, from the 50s through the 60s and onward. Richard Nixon and Charles Manson make brief appearances, as does Timothy Leary. It’s also the story of three brothers – a clergyman, a journalist, and a cop – trying to love and support each other and be honest men in spite of their own human frailties and the compromises they sometimes have to make.I have a hard time reading Parker’s books. They evoke corruption so well I almost have to hold my nose – even this book, which was not really about corruption, has a character who makes a fortune from a cleaner made of rotten oranges. Parker’s world is not a world I want to visit often. Although his characters enjoy the beauty and good weather of Southern California, they are also surrounded by urban sprawl and commercial ugliness (not to mention some extremely right-wing characters and others who are just generally unpleasant.) In some ways Parker’s books remind me of Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti novels. But although Brunetti goes on beating his head against the wall of bureaucracy and corruption that confronts him at the end of nearly every book, he has the many compensations of Venice to console him. Parker’s Orange County doesn’t seem like a good place to live, but it’s a place we need to know about, and the stories he tells about it are worth hearing. So even though in many ways I didn’t “like” this book, I would highly recommend it.