Mike Brosnan
PANDORA'S BOX
a novel of 60s Los Angeles
PANDORA'S BOX is an upmarket mystery set against the rock music backdrop of 1966 Hollywood and the famous Sunset Strip youth riots. A story of how the loss of dignity can drive some to violence while offering others an opportunity for transformation, it is the first in a proposed series that follows photographer Don Ravenswood as he grapples with love, politics, social unrest and murder within the ever-changing Los Angeles music scene.
Aspiring photographer Don Ravenswood is a young man in free fall; the love of his life has just left town with another man. Groping for any diversion, Don befriends four groupies enjoying their pre-college summer in Sunset Strip's groovy mod scene. He quickly forms a bond with elder leader Wendy and the artistically talented Rochelle, but it is in the troubled Renee that Don sees a reflection of his own heartbreak. When Renee is found dead after a music industry party the police dismiss it as a drug overdose, but this doesn't ring true for Don, whose investigation turns up no shortage of suspects: a pair of bickering club owners, an angry ex-con boyfriend, a wild young lead singer, a hedonistic music producer, a recluse artist and even the shady police detective handling the case. Most unsettling of all, the groupie girls seem to be harboring secrets of their own.
After an attempt on Don's life and another suspicious death, Don finds himself in the middle of a teenage rebellion against police harassment and ground zero is Rochelle, a witness to a crime who is on the run and may be the next murder victim, unless Don can stop it. First, he’ll need to transcend the despair of a lost love and defeat a determined killer in a life-or-death struggle atop Malibu's desolate Point Dume.