"Revenge," protested the sensitive tycoon, "me?"

And here we have something beautiful. A sprawling, epic detective story, told in a marijuana haze, mixed with Los Angeles smog, paranoia, and all smushed together by the soft hands of Thomas Pynchon.

The year is 1969, and Doc Sportello, a private investigator, is trying to help out his ex-girlfriend. See, Shasta needs Doc to look into a problem involving the man she's having an affair with, Mickey Z. Wolfmann, the hotshot real-estate mogul with his fingers seemingly in every potential lot in town. So Doc lights a joint and decides to do it. Only then Mickey Z. goes missing, along with Shasta, murder ensues, and Doc finds himself immersed in a ridiculously complex conspiracy so deep that it may or may not date back to the sinking of Atlantis and Lemuria.

Doc watches Looney Tunes, drinks Mai Tais and Tequila Zombies, smokes fine Hawaiian weed with his lawyer, Sauncho Smilax. He worries about Richard Nixon, rolls a joint of Vietnamese marijuana, drives down to the beach, tries to buy the Pussy-Eater Special. Pieces of the puzzle become illuminated, involving dentists, a mysterious schooner, a colony of zomes. The mystery seemingly seeped into every pore of Los Angeles, and beyond. But maybe that's just the weed talking.

Doc runs into, helps out, sometimes shares a joint with, people named Bigfoot Bjornsen, Dr. Buddy Tubeside, Jason Velveeta (a very sad pimp), Leonard Jermain Loosemeat, FBI Special Agents Borderline and Flatweed, Blondie-san, Scott Oof, Asymmetric Bob, Trevor "Shiny Mac" McNutley. He gets an erection when women hold eye contact. He uses a ouija board to find drug connects when the city is dry. He's the kind of PI who just goes with the flow, and trusts that if he smokes an after-breakfast joint and gets in the car, he'll end up where he needs to be. And he does, again and again and again.

But Doc's worried. It feels like something terrible is just on the periphery. The sixties are about to come to an end. This thing called the ARPAnet is around, in computers, connecting you to different worlds of space and time. People are sprinkling PCP into their weed, and Charlie Manson feels everywhere. But then Doc smokes a joint, some rare Hawaiian blend, and he remembers to quit being such a bummer. And then he steps out into the haze of Los Angeles, and it swallows him up.