Before author Max Allan Collins hit the big time with his Joe Heller novels and The Road to Perdition, he wrote several novels about an Iowa mystery writer with a sideline in real-life sleuthing, called Mallory (no first name; his friends call him Mal). Judging by A Shroud for Aquarius, Collins was already at that point an excellent writer.

Mallory is called in by the county sheriff to view the scene of the violent death of Ginnie Mullens. Ginnie was Mal’s oldest friend (never a lover). Though estranged in high school, after which Ginnie became a hippie and got into the drug world, they’ve kept in touch, and Mal has always intended to try to mend fences. He never quite got around to it.

The scene looks like a suicide by handgun, but the sheriff isn’t sure. Ginnie is known to have had dangerous connections, and he suspects foul play. There’s also a double indemnity insurance angle. Mal, partly from feelings of guilt, agrees to look into it. Danger, ugly revelations, and a new love await him on his quest.

One thing that’s especially interesting about this book, written in the ʼ80s, is that today’s reader has to view it through a double lens of history. A Shroud for Aquarius is largely a meditation on the aftereffects – which Mal sees as mainly bad – of ʼ60s counterculture.

But for the reader in the 2010s, the ʼ80s setting is in itself a distant mirror, and it’s hard not to think that the hippies won after all, considering that we have an acolyte of Bill Ayers in the White House right now.

Which is a melancholy thought, at least for me.

But the book is good, and is recommended. The usual mild cautions for language and themes apply.