Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon - private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog. He is drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, ...