Of John Kaye's first novel, Newsday wrote, "an utterly original L.A. novel ... the fiction debut of the year." Now, with The Dead Circus, Kaye again shows us another side of Los Angeles -- a city of rockers and private eyes, script girls and wiseguys, whose golden orbit is pierced by a streak of American evil named Manson. It's 1986. Gene Burk is an ex-cop, a fanatical record collector, and private eye. Devastated by the death of his fiancee, Gene becomes obsessed with an unsolved mystery from his days with the LAPD: the death of up-and-coming rockabilly star Bobby Fuller. As Gene attempts to reconstruct the circumstances that led to Fuller's demise, he is unexpectedly contacted by a survivor of the Manson family, who needs Gene's help to bury her past. As Gene travels back in history to the moment Manson partied alongside Bobby Fuller and the Beach Boys, John Kaye spins a masterful, disturbing portrait of twenty years in Los Angeles, of the promise of the sixties and the hellish realities of the morning after. "Kaye's touch is so light, the naturalism of his scenes is like an ambush." -- Greil Marcus, Interview