Synopsis: For four months the retired Army Colonel assumed the identity of a hippie and prowled the counterculture underground from Laurel Canyon to Haight Ashbury in the hunt for his daughter’s killers. On this hallucinatory odyssey he encounters acid gurus, movie stars, mobsters and government agents that soon have him questioning reality itself.

Review: On August 8th, 1969 Sharon Tate was murdered in her home. The crime quickly entered the pop culture imagination and became a true crime sensation. Fifty years after her death, Quentin Tarantino rewrote Sharon Tate’s tragedy and gave her an alternate life where she lived and thrived. A small footnote in the aftermath of her murder is that her father, Paul Tate, a retired lieutenant colonel in Army intelligence, conducted an undercover investigation for four months. Very little is known about what he did. The Hippie Hunter is a fictionalized account of the private investigation conducted by Colonel Paul Tate.

There’s a couple of ways to approach a story like this. It can either be played straight or, ironically enough, it can be Tarantino’d up and just made pulpy as hell. History or grindhouse.

The Hippie Hunter starts off pretty firmly in the former category. The reader is rooted in Col. Tate’s perspective in the immediate aftermath of the murder. There’s a bustle of activity but not much forward movement, the press is sensationalizing is daughter’s life, and this man of action is frustrated. When the gears of the story shift, as they must, it doesn’t move into full action/revenge territory. Instead, Col Tate becomes our guide into the heady mix of forces that were gathering in the California hills at that time: sleazy movie types, the mob, cults, gurus, the CIA, drugs, MKULTRA, soldiers, movie stars, musicians, and various hangers on, scenesters, and unwashed masses. Tom O'Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s 2019 book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties is name checked.

All of this is draped over a plot structure familiar to crime fiction fans: a crime happens, someone starts pulling on a loose thread that they are told to leave alone, and the investigation expands out and up into the higher corridors of power. The real Paul Tate died in 2005 so this can’t ever go full noir, but it doesn’t need to end like that to be effective and there are other ways to get burned during an investigation.

The book employs various art styles to great effect. The simple lines will sometimes get loose and other times crisp depending on the mood conveyed. There are panels and pages that make great use of negative space. And as the story enters into its trippy stage, shocks of color appear. There is also a mixed media element on display with images, posters, advertisements, and news clippings that appear.

The Hippie Hunter is four issues/books that tell a complete story. A collected edition was released recently. I believe this is only available digitally. Each issue is available to purchase on Kindle and I read the whole thing on GlobalComix. I am not aware of a print edition though I would love to add it to my collection.

Rating: positive/highly recommended