Hypnotized: A Turnbull Canyon Mystery
During the long hot summer of 1969, the lives of four very different men and women intersect when the nineteen-year-old heir to a local business tycoon goes missing. In this tale of misguided love and local legends, the narrative intertwines several perspectives, primarily that of Nick, a recently discharged Army veteran trying to come to grips with his life choices; Hampton, a painfully shy and very tall young man who believes women will never find him attractive due to his height; Imelda (Eme᷄), a young housekeeper and aspiring actress yearning to find her true birth father; and the aging detective Harry Roach, Nick's landlord, who has become obsessed with a 1943 cold case involving the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl.
The primary narrator is Nick O'Brien, an Army veteran who feels that he has been exiled back to his hometown after his wife discovers he's having an affair. Nick suffers from guilt and remorse, and after landing a new job and a new apartment, is working on restarting his life when he catches the eye of a strange woman in a smoky pool hall. Nick is strangely transfixed, even hypnotized, and becomes obsessed with her.
Rich and spoiled, yet painfully awkward and shy, Hampton Masters III is our secondary character. Still a virgin at 19, his pot-smoking friends tell him of a wanton young woman called Margo, and he quickly decides she will be the answer to his dreams. After parading her through his favorite hangout, the local pool hall, he spends just one wild night with her and soon enough wishes he hadn't.
Imelda is our third actor, who spends most days helping her mother clean wealthy people's homes, including one in Hacienda Heights, at the top of Turnbull Canyon. It is the old Stewart house, where a young girl named Margo once lived, before her disappearance in 1943.
Margo Stewart is a local legend. Nobody seems to know who she really is. Or was. One story tells of a high school girl who disappeared late one night in 1943 and was last seen running through the gate of an abandoned asylum for unwed mothers high in the hills of Turnbull Canyon. This much of her story is true. But Hell's Gate and its ghosts are local legends, especially among Whittier area teens.
Harry Roach is Nick's new landlord, but he's also a retired Sheriff's Detective who has become obsessed with solving the old mystery. When Hampton vanishes and no demands are made, solving that mystery becomes urgent.
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