Synopsis
Nick Palladino, an 18-year-old long-haired loner with a police record who drives a hot rod '55 Chevy, "the fastest and coolest ride in the whole world, or at least we thought so", is the guy the cops want to nail. But the evidence points elsewhere. Other suspects include members of a drug-dealing motorcycle gang called the Caretakers, Vito Siri, the mysterious Mafia-type night club owner, and Otis Davis, the drunken ex-con step-father of one of the victims.
First Carol Palladino, Nick's older sister, is murdered - strangled and tossed out of her second story apartment window. Then Reba Davis, Nick's girl friend, is found strangled in an old gravel pit outside of town.
The plot gets more complicated when Nick walks into Vito's night club and guns him down and is killed by Vito Siri's bodyguards.
The narrator, who is a 15-year-old boy in 1963 and who hero-worships Nick, is almost convinced that Nick is responsible for the murders of the girls when it comes out that they were both hookers working for Vito. But when Otis Davis is arrested and convicted of Reba's murder, he decides his suspicions were groundless.
Thirty years later the narrator, who is now a famous rock'n'roll star, tracks down Nick's old Chevy in a car collector's garage in Dallas and buys it over the phone to restore. It's a big day when the car is delivered to his home in Los Angeles - he hasn't seen the car since he went back to Calhoun in 1963 for the end of Davis's murder trial, at which he was a witness. The car is in bad shape, but restorable. The big shock comes when he goes through the car and discovers new evidence that identifies the real murderer.
Read the whole book:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter
8 Chapter 9
Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16
Chapter 17