IV Background Reading?

[Robin Landseadel]

On Apr 23, 2009, at 7:51 AM, rich wrote:

> can anyone recommend a good book about LA in the late 60s
>
> danke
>
> rich

Ross Macdonald's "Sleeping Beauty", published 1973, has Lew Archer  
mixed up with drugs, oil money and an oil spill at "Pacific Point."  
Maybe more early Seventies than late Sixties, but you get a lot of  
Chandleresque description of the lay of the land in a post-hippie  
environment. Macdonald's earlier "Instant Enemy" is set in 1968. LSD  
figures in heavily. Remember that it's LEW Basnight who plays the  
private dick in AtD:  it's a good bet that Ross Macdonald is a major  
inspiration of OBA's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Macdonald

Have yet to get my hands on The Underground Man [1971], but:

	. . .It achieves a complexity of plot, theme and structure not seen
	before in hard-boiled fiction. Among its concerns are ecological
	ravages, drugs, and the alienation of youth culture. . .

http://www.detnovel.com/UndergroundMan.html