Malibu Burning is Now Available for Pre-Order

Malibu Burning

My new thriller Malibu Burning, is now available for pre-order and will be out in September. It’s a standalone novel, but it’s set in the same “universe” as my Eve Ronin series. In fact, it takes place at the same time as Lost Hills. Here’s the story:

Hell comes to Southern California every October. It rides in on searing Santa Ana winds that blast at near hurricane force, igniting voracious wildfires. Master thief Danny Cole longs for the flames. A tsunami of fire is exactly what he needs to pull off a daring crime and avenge a fallen friend.

As the most devastating firestorms in Los Angeles’ history scorch the hills of Malibu, relentless arson investigator Walter Sharpe and his wild card of a new partner, Andrew Walker, a former US marshal, suspect that someone set the massive blazes intentionally, a terrifying means to an unknown end.

While the flames rage out of control, Danny pursues his brilliant scheme, unaware that Sharpe and Walker are closing in. But when they all collide in a canyon of fire, everything changes, pitting them against an unexpected enemy within an inescapable inferno.

I’m fortunate that the book has earned some early praise from some fantastic authors.

Malibu Burning is a blistering thrill ride full of Southern California thieves, cops, and firefighters, all facing high stakes and imminent danger. Superbly researched and told, fast-paced, and downright fun, this is Lee Goldberg at his best!” —Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gray Man series

“By turns tense and rambunctious, wildly entertaining, and breakneck-paced, Lee Goldberg’s splendid Malibu Burning is pure storytelling pleasure from beginning to end.” —Megan Abbott, Edgar Award–, Anthony Award–, Thriller Award–, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning author of The Turnout

Malibu Burning is classic Lee Goldberg at the top of his game: a fast-paced, funny, and deeply satisfying page-turner.” —Jess Lourey, Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Quarry Girls

“An inventive, twisty, and funny caper from one of crime writing’s true pros. Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake would’ve loved this wild heist.” —Ace AtkinsNew York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s Bye Bye Baby and The Heathens

“This is a book I couldn’t put down. Lee Goldberg is a master when it comes to building tension and writing heart-pounding action scenes. Malibu Burning is a roundhouse kick of a thriller, a true nail-biting race against time.” —Simon Gervais, former RCMP counterterrorism officer and author of The Last Protector and Robert Ludlum’s The Blackbriar Genesis

If Malibu Burning does well, it could be the start of a new series. This novel will be followed in November by Calico, another standalone thriller, and then the fifth Eve Ronin novel in January 2024.
 

Lots of Ronin News

Gated Prey by Lee Goldberg
It’s been a busy summer for me. I just delivered MOVIE LAND, the 4th “Eve Ronin” crime novel, to my publisher for an early 2022 release. It was a breakneck 90 days from conception to delivery. I’ve written books that fast before (all 8 of my DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels and most of the 15 MONK novels), but I was younger and more foolish then. It’s nice to know I am still capable of doing it…though it helps that I’ve basically remained in pandemic lock-down at home. Typically, it takes me a leisurely five months to plot and write a novel. Now it’s back to work on the spec thriller I was writing in May…I need to cram a lot of writing into the next few weeks because I don’t have much time before I’ll be attending a whole bunch of events tied to the release of my 3rd “Eve Ronin” novel GATED PREY, which comes out in October. You can see some of the early reviews for GATED PREY (and my contribution to the new collection COLLECTIBLES) below along with some other exciting news.
 
One City / One Book Picks LOST HILLS
 
Each year, the City of Agoura Hills participates in the “One City / One Book” national literacy program to stimulate reading through group book discussions and other related activities. The community read is sponsored by the City of Agoura Hills, Friends of the Library, the Los Angeles County Library—Agoura Hills Cultural Arts Council, and the Las Virgenes Unified School District. This year they’ve picked my novel LOST HILLS!! I am so thrilled. I’ll be talking about the book, and signing copies, on Sept 30th at the Agoura Recreation center. The event is free, but seating is limited and tickets are required. Here’s where to get yours…
 
Publisher’s Weekly loves GATED PREY
 
I am thrilled that I got a great review this week from Publishers Weekly for my new novel GATED PREY, which is coming out Oct. 26th but is now available for pre-order.
 
“Lively descriptive prose enhances the tight plot of this episodic crime novel. Columbo fans will have fun.”
 
Best Thriller Books Loves GATED PREY
 
The popular blog Best Thriller Books gave me a great early review for GATED PREY.
 
“Violent crimes and desperate criminals and homicide detectives, oh my!  Lee Goldberg delivers an intriguing, fast-paced, satisfying novel…This is a series to keep an eye on if you’re a fan of police procedurals, formidable female characters, and stories with great pacing.”  
 
Mystery Scene & Publishers Weekly Praise COLLECTIBLES
 
CollectiblesThis week Mystery Scene Magazine singled out my short story “Lost Shows” in their glowing review of Lawrence Block’s new anthology COLLECTIBLES
 
“This anthology’s true gem is Lee Goldberg’s ‘Lost Shows,’ a perfect, at times humorous story from an under-appreciated writer.” 
 
Not only that, but Publishers Weekly also singled out my story in their rave review:
 
“Villainy, paranormal goings-on, and cold-blooded murder…  Overshadowing everything, though, is Lee Goldberg’s Lost Shows, a delightful shocker about a fanatical collector of short-lived and unaired TV shows.”
 
You can order the book here
 
Entertainment Weekly Picks Summer Reads
 
My friends Rachel Howzell Hall , Shawn A. Cosby & I are among the authors recommending some thrillers in Entertainment Weekly by kick-ass writers like Hilary Davidson, Stephen Mack Jones and Matthew Farrell. You can find our picks here
 
Kirkus Reviews Loves GATED PREY
 
 
“Against all odds, Goldberg not only ties up most of the loose ends, leaving just a few deliberately dangling, but links some of Eve’s investigations in ways as disturbing as they are surprising.The seamy side of California dreaming.
 
Lots of Events Coming!
 
As I mentioned at the top, I’ve got lots of events lined up (with more to come). You can find them all here.
 
Okay, that’s the news for now. Back to writing!!

One City, One Book

I got some great news this week. The City of Agoura Hills has selected me and my novel LOST HILLS as their 2021 ONE CITY, ONE BOOK / AUTHOR. That means the local libaries, schools, etc. will be encouraging everyone to read the book and to come to City Hall on Sept 30th to see me in conversation, buy a copy of my book if they haven’t already…and get their copies signed. Past honorees include Michael Connelly and Dick Van Dyke. 

 

Their press release goes into more details:

Each year, the city of Agoura Hills participates in the One City One Book national literacy program
designed to stimulate reading through group book discussions and other related activities. The
community read is sponsored by the City of Agoura Hills, Friends of the Library, the Los Angeles
County Library—Agoura Hills Cultural Arts Council, and the Las Virgenes Unified School District.

“Lost Hills’ is a gripping story with twists and turns that take place on the very streets of our local
community. I especially love the tenacity of the detective and could picture myself riding past so
many familiar places and, typical when I read a book I love, I didn’t want the story to end,” said
Agoura Hills Mayor Denis Weber, who added he is a veracious reader and Goldberg is one of his
favorite authors.

The city is hosting “An Evening with the Author – Lee Goldberg” on Thursday, September 30,
2021, at the Agoura Hills Event and Recreation Center, 29900 Ladyface Court, Agoura Hills, CA
91301. The author will also be available for book signings. Registration will begin starting August
1, 2021 at www.agourahillsrec.org. Admission is free, but registration is required; space is limited.
For updated information on One City One Book 2021 events, call 818-597-7361 or visit the
website. For more information about the One City, One Book literary program, contact Amy Brink, Director of Community Services at (818) 597-7361 or email ajbrink@agourahillscity.org.

Walking the Walk

I’ve got two pieces of big news today. The first is that my novel THE WALK may soon be coming to a movie theater near you. Constantin Films has picked up my screenplay adaptation of book. Here’s an excerpt from the story in Variety. :

“Resident Evil” producer Constantin Film has acquired the rights to Lee Goldberg’s movie script for thriller “The Walk,” which he adapted from his bestselling novel. Goldberg has served as the showrunner of “Diagnosis Murder” and “Martial Law.”

Robert Kulzer of Constantin Film is producing “The Walk” with Monella Kaplan of eMotion Entertainment. Constantin’s Alex Westmore and Colin Scully are the creative executives handling the project.

Nick Hanks, Constantin’s senior exec VP of business and legal affairs and operations, negotiated the deal on Constantin’s behalf.

Kulzer said: “Lee’s adaptation of his own novel is a brilliant exploration of the human condition by using the ‘Big One’ as a backdrop to create unforgettable moments of hair-raising tragicomedy.”

Constantin is best known for the “Resident Evil” franchise, with six movies released that generated over $1.2 billion at the box office. A reboot of the series, “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” is set to be released on Nov. 24, 2021. Other credits include “Black Beauty” at Disney Plus and “Monster Hunter,” which is still in theaters around the world.

I am so excited and will keep you updated.

In other news, the cover for my next novel GATED PREY, coming out in October, was also released today. Here it is (click on it to see it full size):

Gated Prey

What it Takes to Write Bestsellers

My brother Tod, also a novelist, and I sat down with the good folks at Thrive Global for a long, and very detailed Q&A to discuss what it takes in terms of skill, experience, and dedication to sustain a successful writing career and write bestselling novels. Here’s an excerpt:

What was the biggest challenge you faced in your journey to becoming a bestselling author? How did you overcome it?

Lee: I think it’s rejection and failure, which are inevitable in the writing business. Your manuscripts will be rejected again and again and again before they land a publisher. But some books simply won’t sell. Some of your published books will bomb and be savaged by reviewers. Not everything you write will be a winner or find the right audience. The key is not to become crippled by self-doubt and pain but to learn from the experience (Why was the manuscript rejected? Why did the book bomb?) and incorporate those lessons into your next book. The only way to overcome the failure is to keep writing.

Tod: Well, finding out what I was meant to write was a big part of it for me. When I was starting out, for some reason, I was averse to writing crime fiction and so I wrote these kind of quasi-literary books that even I wasn’t interested in reading. The public responded in kind! Once I finally decided to write crime fiction, everything sort of began to line up for me. But, too, as Lee said, self-doubt can be paralyzing. It’s odd. A coal miner isn’t paralyzed by self-doubt that prevents him or her from working, so talking about it as a challenge seems sort of silly in context. A job is a job, be it creative or physical. It’s what you do to make a living. I think once I began to think of writing as a job, as the thing that fed my family, these more ephemeral things began to fade away. Still, you have to write books people want to read.

You can find the entire interview here.

My KILLER THRILLER Playlist

I like to listen to soundtrack music while I write. In fact, I’m just sitting down now to start working on the sequel to my upcoming novel LOST HILLS and I’ve been listening a lot to THE QUINN MARTIN COLLECTION VOL. 1 and the soundtrack to the 1975 TV series ARCHER. Both albums contain a lot of Jerry Goldsmith’s best 1970s TV work.

Here’s the music I was listening to when I wrote my new release KILLER THRILLER, the sequel to the #1 Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller TRUE FICTION.

Enter the Dragon and Rush Hour by Lalo Schifrin

I’m a huge fan of Lalo’s TV themes (Mission Impossible, Mannix, Petrocelli, Bronk etc) and his two forays into “kung fu” cinema are pure 1970s action-score gold. A big chunk of KILLER THRILLER is set in Hong Kong and these soundtracks put me in the perfect frame of mind to write those scenes. (Yes, I know Rush Hour was made in the late ‘90s, but Lalo’s score was basically a reboot/homage of his Enter the Dragon work)

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation by Joe Kraemer & Mission Impossible 3 by Michael Giacchino

These are two pulse-pounding, soaring, propulsive, contemporary action scores based Lalo’s original themes …and evoke the foreign locales and over-the-top stunts of the Tom Cruise feature, putting me in the right frame of mind for writing the chases and fights in my book.

Hawaii Five-O by Morton Stevens

I love Morton Stevens, one of the best television composers ever (he also did the theme for Police Woman), and this classic soundtrack screams adventure, mystery and, of course, Hawaii to me. Although nothing in KILLER THRILLER is set in Hawaii, this soundtrack is always part of my playlist when I’m writing anything with action and colorful locations. It also creates a great tempo for writing punchy dialogue.

Goldfinger by John Barry

This is the iconic Bond theme song and is still the best of the Bond movie scores (though I am also a fan of David Arnold’s TOMORROW NEVER DIES score, which is essentially a contemporary rethink of Barry’s style and is also part of my playlist). GOLDFINGER immediately transports me to a world of intrigue and adventure…and puts me in a 007-frame of mind. Perfect for writing spy fiction.

The Bourne Film Soundtracks by John Powell and Moby

These soundtracks are the gold standard for the modern espionage tale…Powell’s score is dark and moody at times, thrilling and propulsive when the action reaches a fever pitch. Moby reworks his end titles / theme song Extreme Ways for each film in the series and hearing it always puts me in the mood to either see or write some kick-ass spy action.

The Wild Wild West TV Soundtrack by Richard Markowitz et al

I absolutely loved The Wild Wild West when I was a kid. If you don’t remember the show, it was a western take on James Bond starring Robert Conrad as superspy James West and Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon, his partner and a master of disguise. My sister and I used to pretend we were the two of them….I was always West, of course, and she was always stuck being Artemus. Even way back then, I had Wild Wild West music, recorded off the air on my cassette deck, playing when we were pretending to do cool stuff. Little did I know I was rehearsing for what I’d be doing decades later as a writer. Hearing the iconic themes and individual cues sparked my imagination as a kid and they still do today, putting me into the “let’s pretend and have fun” mode that I need to be in to write fiction. Although this is a “western” score, it’s still in the spy genre for me and is the perfect for writing about Ian and Margo.

The Thrill of Research

Lee in Hong Kong researching a key scene in KILLER THRILLER

Research is absolutely necessary when you’re writing thrillers…and it’s a part of the process I love, perhaps because I come from a family of journalists (and I was one once). The danger, for me, is that the more I learn about a topic, the more I want to learn…and it’s easy for me to end up spending far more time than is necessary on the research (it’s also a great form of procrastination.. you can fool yourself into thinking you’re working instead of actually avoiding work). I can talk to dozens of experts, and read three or four books and countless articles, for what might end up being only a few lines of dialogue or description in the book (or, OTOH, what ends up being the core of the story). But that’s always better than writing pages of exposition, description, or dialogue to show off how much research you’ve done. I’m a big believe that one sentence offering a telling detail is far better than a paragraph of description. That said, having the “extra” knowledge on a particular topic in the back of your mind as you write ends up deepening the story and the characters in subtle ways… and often, at least for me, research inspires new characters or plot twists that I never would have come up with otherwise.

Travel is my favorite part of research (and it was a lot of fun to do for KILLER THRILLER, my latest release). Sure, you can use guidebooks, watch Bourdain or Rick Steves episodes, and do a deep dive into Google Earth to fake it, and I’ve done that a few times out of necessity, but I truly believe that nothing beats “feet on the ground” to get that tiny detail, smell, taste or sound that will bring a place, a moment, or a character to life. It’s important to truly experience the place you are writing about. That means not just hitting the tourist spots, but the places where the “locals” live and work. It also means being gregarious and talking to those people — so you can create realistic characters who truly reflect the places you’ve been. I usually already have my story in mind before I travel for research… but inevitably, my story changes dramatically after what I learn from actually experiencing a place I only imagined as I was plotting.

Lee in Paris researching KILLER THRILLER

To write my books, I’ve traveled to France, China, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, and all over the United States, among other places. But travel research can mean just stepping outside your door and seeing your own city in a new way.

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over 30 years. In my novel THE WALK, a guy is stuck in downtown in LA when the big one hits and has to walk across a landscape of destruction back to his gated community in the San Fernando Valley. I know the L.A. well, but I still read a bunch of books and articles on the city, the architecture, and the neighborhoods that make it up, on earthquakes and what experts expect the damage from The Big One is likely to be. I had the story plotted out but then decided, if I was going to do this right, I really needed to take the walk myself. And when I did (not all at once, like my character), I saw things that made me rethink my plot and I picked up the key details of place and character that made the book come alive. When it was over, I had a better understanding, and a new affection, for the city I live in and thought I already knew.

I attended a homicide investigators training conference almost two years ago — I was one of only three civilians invited —  as research for a book I was thinking about writing (and had already loosely plotted). While I was there, however, I learned about a case that I couldn’t get out of my head. I was smart enough to throw out my story and to focus instead on using this real case as the inspiration for my novel. I introduced myself to all of the detectives, forensic specialists, etc. who were there to present the case, told them I intended to write about it, and asked if they would let me talk with them in more depth in the weeks following the conference. They all agreed. The novel that came out of that wonderful research experience, LOST HILLS, is being released this fall and I’ve already signed to write the sequel. The book would never have happened if I hadn’t done the research my story…and been open to the inspiration that can come when you begin exploring the “reality” that is the foundation for our fiction.

 

 

LOST HILLS is coming!

I’m so excited about this! Yesterday KILLER THRILLER launched and today my novel LOST HILLS, the first in a new series, is now available for preorder on Amazon.
 
Here are just some of the pre-release blurbs:
 
Lost Hills is what you get when you polish the police procedural to a shine: a gripping premise, a great twist, fresh spins and knowing winks to the genre conventions, and all the smart, snappy ease of an expert at work.” Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of the Edgar, Anthony, Barry and Macavity award-winning Into The Woods and a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
 
Lost Hills is a tense, pacy read from one of America’s greatest crime and thriller writers. We have a sense of real characters doing real police work, not snatching answers out of the air.” — Garry Disher, the Ned Kelly Award-winning, international bestselling author of the Inspector Challis series
 
“Thrills and chills! Lost Hills is the perfect combination of action and suspense, not to mention Eve Ronin is one of the best new female characters in ages. You will race through the pages!” — Lisa Gardner, New York Times bestselling author
 
Lost Hills is a top-notch procedural that shines like a true gem.” —Craig Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mysteries, the basis of Netflix’s Longmire
 
“A winner. Packed with procedure, forensics, vivid descriptions, and the right amount of humor. Fervent fans of Connelly and Crais, this is your next read.” —Kendra Elliot, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of A Merciful Secret
 
“Brilliant! Eve Ronin rocks! With a baffling and brutal case, tight plotting, and a fascinating look at police procedure, Lost Hills is a stunning start to a new detective series. A must-read for crime fiction fans. –-Melinda Leigh, Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Charts Bestselling author