Johnson's satire is not nearly as biting or cruel as Evelyn Waugh's in The Loved One (1948), which also deals with the antic behavior of Southern Californians, although of an earlier era. Nevertheless, Johnson's novel makes its points, possibly the more tellingly because the satire is not as sharp: The picture of life in Los Angeles appearsvery realistic. The controlling metaphor of burning throughout the novel, culminating in the actual holocaust that envelops the homes of the Harrises and the Edwardses, along with many others, suggests the sexual preoccupations bordering on obsessions of nearly all the characters, but it also suggests other "hot" aspects of their lifestyles, such as the stolen merchandise (Max lifts plants from botanical gardens to bring to Hal Harris, for example), the drug dealing and using, the passionate intensities of the police, social-welfare workers, firemen, Treasury agents, and others. For these...