Tapping the Source
by Kem Nunn, 1984

"People go to Huntington Beach in search of the endless parties, the ultimate highs and the perfect waves. Ike Tucker has come to look for his missing sister and for the three men who may have murdered her. In that place of gilded surfers and sun-bleached blondes, Ike's search takes him on a journey through a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers. Ike looks into the shadows and finds parties that drift towards pointless violence, joyless vacations and highs you might never come down from ... and a sea of old hatreds and dreams gone bad. And if he's not careful, his is a journey from which he will never return."

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The book is about "snuff films," but Kem Nunn never goes into details about what "tapping the source" has to do with snuff films. Tapping the source is supposedly about getting drugs south of the border, but the title never made real sense to me, until I saw this thread.