Flip Your Wig

San Francisco. August 1966. The Beatles are coming and the murders have begun…

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Danny O’Day came to San Francisco to write songs and play his guitar. Just like his idols, the Beatles–the hottest pop combo on the radio. Now Danny is dead, found with a Halloween mask stuck to his bloodied face–a mask that resembles one of the Moptops.

 

A rooftop sniper, a self-professed beatnik named Tina Gone, and the sinister Beatles bootleg ‘skeleton’ LP may be the keys to O’Day’s murder, and other recent killings. Suddenly, two San Francisco PD homicide inspectors are confronted with a trail of death that leads fatefully to a ritualistic execution, and a clash of armies on a fog-bound night. As the murder investigation twists in the wind, the Beatles themselves arrive to play a contested concert at Candlestick Park.

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Flip Your Wig is also a story of people living in prisons of their own design, told through the chiaroscuro lens of the noir novel. And yet Flip Your Wig displays the robust creative spirit that made the Sixties artistic counterculture interesting in the first place.

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If you’re going to be murdered in San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…

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Reviews

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“Masterful…A historically rich mystery with a delectable noir touch."

—Kirkus Reviews

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“A ‘60s-set procedural that’s both gritty and amusing… Chaney finds room in the fog for the older spirits of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade.”

—Booklife

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“Layered with intrigue and a tight-knit web of suspense... A captivsating noir character study."

—IndieReader

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“A dark and intriguing thriller that delicately blends historical elements with hard boiled crime…”

—2024 Booklife Prize

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