IN Sam Wasson's The Big Goodbye, the story of Chinatown becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history.

Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage death of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, the scene of the crime, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered dealmaking of "The Kid" Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written.

Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the unvarnished account of its creation.