Don Carpenter was one of the finest novelists working in the west. His first novel, A Hard Rain Falling, first published in 1966, has been championed by Richard Price, and George Pelacanos who called it ?a masterpiece?the definitive juvenile-delinquency novel and a damning indictment of our criminal justice system," is considered a classic. His novel A Couple of Comedians is thought by some the best novel about Hollywood ever written.He was a close friend of Evan Connell and other San Francisco writers, but his closest friendship was with Richard Brautigan, and when