A startling panorama of Los Angeles in the fifties. New Year's Eve as 1949 turns to 1950, Los Angeles: The City of Angels has becomes the city of the Angel of Death.

Communist witch-hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a maelstrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness. The second of the LA Quartet, the epigraph for The Big Nowhere is a passage from a novel; "It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice- Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness."