Peace, Love and Haight

When San Francisco gallery owner Freddie Dorn gets rid of the city’s most ruthless drug dealer in the summer of ’69, he becomes an unlikely player in a deadly game—hunted by the mafia, courted by the cops, and risking everything if his hippie friends learn the truth.

The Summer of Love has soured. What was once a utopia of free-spirited idealism has rotted into a crime-ridden nightmare of heroin overdoses and tainted psychedelics. For Freddie, the breaking point comes when a former girlfriend dies from an overdose, and his best friend Van Monk loses his mind to bad acid. Determined to cleanse his neighborhood of the worst drug scourge, he secretly aligns with the SFPD to target the infamous Rat-Man Rathkin. But when their late-night meeting on the Golden Gate Bridge ends with the accidental death of the dealer, Dorn’s life takes a dangerous turn.

The cops are glad to be rid of the dealer. The West Coast Mob is also satisfied—Rathkin owed them a lot of money. But now both the cops and the mob see Dorn as a useful tool. With art sales lagging and rent due, he reluctantly agrees to serve as a “private third eye” for hire, feeding intel to both sides while vowing to only target the most dangerous criminals. But as he navigates a world of undercover detectives, mobsters, and counterculture cults—rescuing a young woman from a cult, dodging the corrupt “Hippie Frankenstein,” and delivering bribe money between criminals—Dorn’s carefully constructed double life starts to unravel.

Juggling a fractured love life with Alison and a fragile friendship with Van Monk, Freddie lives in constant fear of discovery. Because in 1969, nothing is worse than being outed as a narc. And if the wrong people find out, it won’t just be his reputation at stake—it’ll be his life.

Max Talley is the award-winning author of more than 50 short stories and essays, plus several mystery and horror novels, including Santa Fe Psychosis and Yesterday We Forget Tomorrow. He lives in Santa Barbara, CA.