Zoot-Suit Murders (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

"Powerful fiction...a vivid tale of political intrigue and romance by a master of pictorial detail." -- Chicago Tribune

"Zoot-Suit Murders matches the best of the war novels in its execution, and may be the best of the home-front novels of World War II....The novel alternates between intimacy and sweep, a cinematic quality similar to that of Chinatown, an excellent, near-Hitchcockian technique." -- Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

"A deeply political book told in hauntingly lyrical prose." --Washington Post Book World

"A master writer." --Vanity Fair

"Haunting ... Sanchez is a writer of sensitivity and power."--Boston Globe

"The no-nonsense tension present in the best of thrillers...Sanchez brings the novel to an unexpected and shocking climax."--Publishers Weekly

"[Sanchez is] a writer of enourmous gifts." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

It's the tumultuous days of World War II and from the mean streets of the Los Angeles barrio to the mansions of the Hollywood Hills the atmosphere is choked with tension. Nathan Younger, an undercover agent, is investigating the brutal murder of two FBI men and the infiltration of zoot-suit gangs by fascists when he crosses paths with Kathleen La Rue, a beautiful apostle of a bizarre religious cult. The search for the killers leads these two improbable lovers along a dangerous trail of heroin pushers, movie stars, and fanatical politicians.

Like his lavishly praised novels Rabbit Boss and Mile Zero, Thomas Sanchez'sZoot-Suit Murders combines a tautly arched narrative with fiercely visual prose and a starkly revisionist view of the American melting pot.