This Rancid Mill

Book excerpt: With his blue mohawk and ragged leather jacket, Alex Damage fits in to only a small pocket of 1981 Los Angeles: the dynamic, changing punk scene. In this world, he survives on favors and reputation as a small-time private investigator, but when a young woman hires him to solve the potential murder of the singer of one of his favorite local bands, everything in his life amps up. As he digs deeper into what really happened, Alex must both seek out and dodge an endless array of dangerously powerful drug dealers, aging porn stars, crooked cops, neo-Nazi skinheads, and shadowy, corrupt politicians. The deeper he gets—and the more punishment his body takes and the more he begins to fall for the woman who hired him—the more determined he becomes to follow the trail to its conclusion. In the end, the truth is far more complicated than Alex had thought: not only about the murder and the victim’s unsavory private life but also about Alex’s own past behaviors and attitudes. Meticulously researched and drawing from memoirs, zines, and documentaries, Alex Damage’s story comes to life with real hangouts and real shows from LA in 1981, which makes the book immersive for the people who were there as well as those who wish they could have been.