The Book You Have to Read: “White Rabbit,” by David Daniel

(Editor’s note: This is the 180th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
David Daniel’s White Rabbit (2003) is a 1960s blast from the past, but in this psychedelic police procedural flower power is more of a fashion statement and mindset than a weapon. A few people (all the wrong ones, you dig?) recognize that pie-in-the-sky optimism is useless to foment change, and there are always a few bad apples that are tolerated (until they become really bad), but what else could you expect? It’s 1967 in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, the epicenter of the counterculture, and the “Summer of Love” is well and truly underway.

The flower children in their eye-grabbing garb (yet anonymous with their noms de paix—Toad, Jester, Circe, among many others) believed they could change the world, force forth utopia with a kind word and a peace sign. A few were adamant that violent revolution was the legit answer (does 1776 ring a bell?), but it appeared to many on either side that beneath the surface this ’hood was a powder keg of antagonism with more us-against-them sentiment than any quantity of love beads or patchouli oil could hide. And as the Establishment and its heirs were busy circling each other with suspicion, into this Garden of Eden slithers real evil.

White Rabbit finds a serial killer at work in the Haight, and no one wants a role in identifying the murderer; that would involve talking to the cops, and cooperating with those “pigs” is not cool, according to Seth, an activist and editor of Rag, an underground newspaper. Seth is the pampered son of Bay Area limousine liberals. He supplies a handy subplot to Daniel’s yarn, as does his counterpoint, former firebrand and University of California, Berkeley professor Terry Gordon, who has literally “bought the farm” and now rusticates as he preaches non-violence. Impetuous Seth can’t see that violence will only hurt his cause and sour his romance with fellow journalist Amy Cole. But enough about him; the real story here is about Amy and San Francisco Police investigating detective John Sparrow. Too busy spitting vitriol and mixing Molotov cocktails, Seth doesn’t notice that Amy and John Sparrow are investigating each other.

Cole’s relationship with Sparrow begins simply enough: she wants a scoop, he wants the killer, pretty much the same thing. Not exactly a “meet cute,” they cross paths at the Hall of Justice during a press conference addressing the murders. A mutual trust begins when Amy becomes the straight-laced Sparrow’s Haight-Ashbury tour guide and apologist for the counterculture. He gets an eyeful of the tramps and prophets, the artists and charlatans, teen runaways, draft dodgers, drug dealers, rockers on the make, and the deeply disturbed. It should come as no surprise that the legendary activist Emmett Grogan has a walk-on role in this very busy and character-laden novel.

All is not groovy with Sparrow, however. Still grieving the death of his wife, transferred from homicide to the repugnant vice squad then back to homicide to work the serial-killer case, Sparrow must also maneuver around SFPD Captain George Moon, an archenemy who knows Sparrow quite well. Once Sparrow’s wingman, professional equal, and long-ago romantic rival (he blames the death of Sparrow’s spouse from cancer on him), Moon is now champing at the bit to unleash his riot squad on an upcoming anti-war rally in Golden Gate Park. His goal is to cleanse his beloved San Francisco of the unwashed hippie scourge, and the hippies know this, deepening their mistrust of law enforcement.

Sparrow at first resists the counterculture community that Amy Cole embraces, but to get anywhere with the investigation he realizes he must make the scene and extend an olive branch as best he can. He doesn’t trade his badge and .38 Police Special for flowers in his hair, but later a fistfight and worse involving fellow officers gets this complicated man relieved of both, allowing him to operate outside department rules. With Sparrow finally sidelined, Moon also hopes to trump him by finding the killer. Sparrow needs to move fast to make an arrest, before City Hall gives Moon the go-ahead to move in and most likely incite the riot he’s supposed to subdue.

Sparrow reminds Cole of her role as a responsible reporter and persuades her to print an appeal for local cooperation in finding the killer. However, the editorial Cole pens also places her on the killer’s radar, turning her into irresistible bait that leads to a showdown where everyone gets what they’ve asked for or deserve—to a point. Lovers for a heartbeat, it almost seemed as if a white picket fence and 2.5 children were in Amy and John’s future, and they still might be. But Daniels wields irony—the whimsical force of surprise—with discretion and tact as this story rolls along. And history seems to deliver its own irony, as if 1967 was the swan song of the Age of Aquarius.

What author Thomas McGuane (himself no stranger to San Franciso during that era) called the “hideous sixties” is often looked upon with awe, disgust, puzzlement, or all three. But what was it really like to be there from, say, 1965 to 1969, when the pot smoke really hit the fan? It’s said that if you can remember the ’60s you “weren’t really there.” That might be true of the participants who had sandals on the ground and a head full of LSD, but the writers who experienced counterculture life during its heyday possessed reliable memories, overflowing notebooks, and rich imaginations to fill in the blanks. Others, intellectuals such as Theodore Roszak, were able to observe the counterculture phenomenon with scientific detachment.

(Right) Author David Daniel.

To some observers, though, the American counterculture of the 1960s was nothing more than the spoiled children of the “greatest generation” disturbing mom and dad’s well-deserved nap after they’d survived the Great Depression, World War II, and threats of nuclear annihilation. But tune in and turn on to Roszak: he gives explanations from technological, spiritual, sociological, and drug-oriented analysis, among several others, in The Making of a Counterculture (1969). Those who immersed themselves into the culture, such as Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, used different techniques: she the cool eye of a journalist, he with an over-the-top-exuberance that attempts to convey the experience of an acid trip. Ringolevio, the above-mentioned Emmett Grogan’s 1972 memoir, is the story of a feral vagabond youth who alit for a while in the Haight where he and others founded the community-action group the Diggers, who were in the thick of things back then.

As for David Daniels, solid plot and character development in White Rabbit are not sacrificed to give the readers a feel for Haight-Ashbury in this solid crime novel. It’s not clear whether he was present during the Summer of Love, but it sure sounds like it.