John Easy

John Easy searches California for a screenwriter's daughter who's back from the dead. In 1972, Los Angeles is the wacko capital of the world. Gurus, junkies, and wannabe actresses all wind up here, and when one goes missing, John Easy is there to investigate. A hip private eye with a battered VW and a major turtleneck collection, he's pondering an encroaching wildfire when his secretary tells him that Frederic McCleary's daughter has risen from the dead.   Five years ago, Jackie McCleary took a dive into the Pacific Ocean, leaving her old man nothing but a suicide note and his Academy Awards to keep him company. Her body was never found, and her father has long nursed a secret hope that she is still alive. Out of the blue, he receives a letter in Jackie's handwriting asking for a meeting. When she doesn't show, he hires John Easy to find his daughter in a city whose citizens all too often resemble the living dead.

As earthquakes shake Los Angeles, John Easy looks for a missing adman. John Easy never likes to get out of bed, especially when the woman beside him is as beautiful as Jill Jeffers, but no man can argue with an earthquake. The quake subsides after a few moments, but another one is coming. Something fierce is about to rock Los Angeles, and California's hippest private detective is going to be right in the middle of it.   Gay Holland, Easy's newest client, is rich, lonely, and missing her brother Gary. The owner of a boutique radio advertising firm, Gary is recently divorced and has a married girlfriend. His apartment has been trashed, and whoever did it was violent, professional, and in search of something to do with Gary's collection of archaeology texts. Finding Gary will mean digging deep under Los Angeles, assuming the next quake doesn't shake the city apart first.

A vanished jungle princess forces John Easy to visit the capitol of kook: San Francisco The jungle scenery is costing Marco Killespie a cool hundred thousand dollars. A stickler for quality, this king of television advertising doesn't mind writing big checks, but his latest masterpiece-a root beer commercial-is in serious danger of going over budget. Everything was going fine until his leading lady, the up-and-coming Jill Jeffers, disappeared.   When a blonde goes missing in 1970s Los Angeles, it's best to call John Easy. A too-cool private eye whose wardrobe is in better shape than his worn-out VW, he knows every hiding spot in California. The first thing he learns is that Jill is a senator's daughter. Next he discovers that she's gone to San Francisco, the weirdest place on Earth. Finding her there will be just as simple as a walk in the jungle.

A copywriter's wife has vanished, and only John Easy is slick enough to save her Jim Benning makes $25,000 a year writing drivel for the admen at the Arbogast & Joseph Agency, and his wife thinks he's worth a whole lot less. Joanna is a model: nervous, beautiful, and prone to meltdowns. In a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage, she agrees to a few sessions with a psychiatrist in San Ignacio-a quack whose psychobabble is more sinister than it appears. But when Joanna disappears, Jim's only hope is John Easy, the hippest P.I. in Hollywood.   Jim gives John a matchbook found in his wife's purse for a club called Maybe-a swinger's hideout where morality is not in style-and John plunges into the seedy side of sunny San Ignacio, where the copywriter's wife led an entirely different sort of existence. To save Joanna from her shadow self, John Easy will have to swing harder than ever before.