Kem Nunn

Skinny sad sack Ike Tucker, not yet 19 years old, takes the Greyhound bus nearly eight hours to Huntington Beach, Calif., to search for his wild runaway sister Ellen, who ran away a year ago. All he has is a crumpled piece of paper with three names and a garbled account of a trip his sister took with those three men to Mexico. Thus, a young man who has lived nowhere but a tiny desert town discovers inner strength and a working knowledge of the ways of the world — including the underworld show more and the shadowy world of bikers, runaways, and surfer punks.

Not knowing anyone in Huntington Beach when he arrives, Ike nonetheless manages to gradually piece together clues to Ellen’s fate. In the meantime, Ike tries to determine who he can trust — and who he cannot. After a leisurely start, in which author Kem Nunn introduces Ike — and us newbies who are reading Tapping the Source — to the world of surfing, the novel, a National Book Award finalist, turns into a gripping page-turner with more twists and turns than the Pacific Coast highway. To reveal more would be to ruin this five-star book. However, be sure to ride this wave. show less

I remember reading "Chance" by Kem Nunn, and wondering how could a guy who wrote: Tapping The Source, Pomona Queen, Tijuana Straits, and possibly the best of all of his books, Dogs of Winter, how could that author write a book this bad? Now I know. At some point after Tapping The Source, the author wrote this book "Unassigned Territory". What a dogs breakfast of a book this is. For some reason Mr Nunn, felt that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, didn't do justice to the death of the American show more Dream, and so he decided to write this little opus, and stage it in the Mojave Desert in 1970. All of the characters are boring and one dimensional, and there really doesn't seem to be any point to the story, and it drags on forever. I couldn't believe it was only 300 pages, it felt like 1000.
Skip this one and "Chance" and enjoy the rest of his books. show less

Nunn's books are often quite dark, bleak, and downright unpleasant, and this one is no exception. 'The Dogs of Winter' bugged me more than usual, though, because it's punctuated with particularly vile crimes and tragedies. If you've read Richard Price's heartbreaking 'Freedomland', you know what sort of thing I mean.

On top of it, Nunn's signature style is muted here. I, for one, really enjoyed his florid descriptions in 'Tapping the Source' and 'Tijuana Straits', so this book read a bit show more flat to me. It's certainly not bad, but it's hard to recommend. show less

Kem Nunn's stories are supremely strange, combining the simplest and lowest cliches of Americana with bizarrely violent situations. It's all a bit hard to categorize or recommend. Above it all, however, rises Nunn's own style, gripping enough to make any story work. Here, a tale of a vacuum-cleaner salesman sharing with trailer-trash bikers a night of drunken revenge becomes a modern-day adaptation of the history of Pomona, CA. A book that's hard to like but easy to love.