"Savages" Prequel Novel In Stores Now, With Even More Laguna Content!

Don Winslow sure is an expert with timing, seeing that the movie version of his Laguna Beach-set crime novel Savages is just two weeks away from hitting theaters, and that he's just rolled out that book's prequel, The Kings of Cool, which hit bookstores and assorted Internet purchasing portals this week.

Whether it's because of the film's advance buzz (Oliver Stone directed it, John Travolta and assorted other big celebs star in it, blah-blah-blah ... we've only been saying this ever since of filming), the book is getting attention from the likes of this big Janet Maslin review in the New York Times.

It's there where we realized that The Kings of Cool, which is also set in Laguna Beach, is clearly based at least in part on the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the notorious hippie drug mob and quasi-religious cult that turned Laguna into the LSD capital of the world in the late 1960s. Winslow's new tome centers partially around the parents of his Savages protaganists Ben, Chon and O, and Winslow appears to have obtained research from author Nick Schou's 2009 Brotherhood history Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and its Quest to Spread Peace, Love and Acid to the World (Patch produced a video piece on it last year when the paperback came out—). 

Kings of Cool introduces Chon's drug-dealing dad John McAlister, who Maslin says "arrives in the book just in time to see an older sun-kissed surfer attracting a crowd at the local Taco Bell." That surfer is Doc, a Jesus-like character Winslow seems to have modeled after Brotherhood ringleader John Griggs. The Taco Bell would be our own on the corner of Coast Hwy. and Cleo St., one of the oldest in the chain, which Schou revealed was Laguna's major LSD dealing spot back in the day. Characters also live in caves—much like the Brotherhood—and talk of opening a bookstore that could only be a reference to the Brotherhood's Mystic Arts World shop.

Maslin's review makes us want to go get the book and hunt down all the other Laguna Beach references, and we're sure there are plenty. Or, y'know, we could also just wait for the movie ...