Lee Goldberg

You Can’t Tell a Book By It’s Cover

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SLEEPING DOGS by Ed Gorman proves the old adage that you can’t tell a book by it’s cover. He has been stuck with the ugliest St. Martin’s cover since my book, BEYOND THE BEYOND. It’s a damn shame, because his book deserves more thoughtful packaging– a LOT more. It’s a biting, fast-moving, darkly funny mystery set inside a Senatorial campaign. The hero is Dev Conrad, a political consultant who knows how to play the game and is growing increasingly uncomfortable with the lies, hypocrisy, and self-delusion inherent in his job.

Ed not only gives us an inside look at the dark side of campaigning, he also offers a good puzzle, too, where the "bad guys" are fully fleshed-out characters who aren’t that much different than the "good guys." And after countless books about tortured cops, PIs and forensic scientists…not to mention an endless number of amateur sleuths…Dev Conrad is a fresh, unconventional protagonist. The timing for this book couldn’t be better…but, based on the cover treatment, I fear the publisher isn’t in a position to take advantage of the opportunity.

As an aside, I am awed by Ed’s versatility…he writes westerns, whodunits, thrillers, procedurals and now political novels…all with equal skill. I wish I was that flexible.

An End Run Around Public Domain

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Richard Wheeler reports that some literary heirs have found a way to undermine public domain — they trademark the name of the author, as Zane Grey’s estate has done with his name.

What the trademark accomplishes is to make it impossible for anyone to
publish a Grey novel that has fallen into the public domain unless the
publisher licenses the name of the author from the heirs. Oh, you can
print the public domain material, all right; just don’t put the
author’s name on it.

I wonder if this has ever been tested in court? If not, it probably will be soon.

Me Everywhere

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I’ve got a busy signing and speaking schedule coming up…

You can find me at the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, CA on Friday, April 25th,  for their pre-Los Angeles Times Festival of Books party. And then I’ll be signing on Sunday, April 27th, at 11 a.m., at the Mystery Bookstore’s booth at the Festival.

On Monday, April 28,  I am interviewing producer Donald Belisario on camera for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Archive of American Television, and then I am hopping on a plane to New York, to participate in the Mystery Writers of America’s Crime Fiction Seminars  and to take part in the Edgar Awards.

In late May/early June, I’ll be signing at Book Expo in Los Angeles, alongside Max Allan Collins, but I’ll have more details about that as we get closer to the event.

And finally, I’m going to be traveling to the International Mystery Writers Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky on June 17-22 to see my screenplay "Mapes For Hire" (based on my book THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE) performed on stage "live radio"-style with a full cast, sound effects and music.  Here are the performance dates at the Berry Theatre in Owensboro:

  • Friday, June 13 – 2pm
  • Sunday, June 15 – 2pm
  • Wednesday, June 18 – 7:30pm
  • Sunday, June 22 – 4pm

For ticket information, click here.

Towards the Finish Line

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I’m in the final stretch of writing MR. MONK IS MISERABLE, which is due on April 30th…which is why I haven’t been contributing much here lately. No sooner  do I turn in that book than I have to start thinking about MONK #8. All I know about that one, after two books mostly set in Europe, is that it will take place in and around San Francisco.  Beyond that, I’ve got nothing. I’m sure something will occur to me, probably while I am on my way to New York next week for the Edgar Awards, where I will be seeing my publisher, editor and agent.

But before I go, I’ve got a couple of meet-and-greets this week with two A-list production companies,  thanks  to a spec script I wrote that these execs really liked but, for whatever reason, wouldn’t buy. They liked the writing and the sensibility enough to want to meet me, which is good, but the meetings are always a little awkward. There’s no way to really prepare for them. They aren’t structured, like a pitch, though I’ll gladly share a few ideas if I’m asked what I’m working on. It’s more casual and free-form, with no clear agenda. But make no mistake about it, you are pitching. You’re pitching yourself as a person.

A meet-and-greet is an opportunity for the executives to put a face to your name, get a sense of how you think, and decide whether or not they’d like to work with you some day. Nothing may ever come of the meet-and-greet…or weeks, months or years from now it might occur to the exec to bring me in on particular project or rewrite that matches my "sensibility." I’ve had a few jobs come to me this way over the years…like writing the Dame Edna movie (which, sadly, was not produced), so I am always open to meet-and-greets.

If anything comes from one of them, I’ll let you know. Okay, enough procrasatinating, back to MONK!

The Verdict is In

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51bs1pwmgol_ss500_ There’s no question about it.  Paul Brownstein is the best producer of DVD boxed sets in the industry and he’s proved it once again with PERRY MASON: THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, which includes twelve episodes (featuring future stars like Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, James Coburn, and Burt Reynolds) and is loaded with special features that, on their own, are well worth the purchase price. The extras include the original audition/screen tests for Hamilton Burger and Perry Mason, two Charlie Rose interviews with Raymond Burr, and a late 1950s episode of "Person to Person" in which Burr gives viewers a tour of his L.A. home. As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve also got interviews, featurettes, and the "Perry Mason Returns" TV movie. I wish they’d included an episode of  THE NEW PERRY MASON, starring Monte Markham, for the hell of it.  If you you’re a TV geek like me, you’re going to love this boxed set.  I also strongly recommend Brownstein’s amazing GUNSMOKE, DICK VAN DYKE SHOW and WILD WILD WEST sets.

STINGRAY: THE COMPLETE SERIES, the Steve Cannell series that starred Nick Mancuso, arrived in51enjrxehnl_ss500_
my mailbox today from Amazon in Canada, which sells it for half as much as Amazon stateside ($22 vs $44!). It’s a quirky series that I loved when it aired and that is probably not as good as I remember it, but I’ll let you know.

Sad News

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Stanley Kamel, who portrayed Dr. Kroger on MONK, died yesterday of a heart attack. Besides being a very talented and versatile actor, he was also a very nice man. I worked with him long before MONK on an episode of the early 90s FOX series LIKELY SUSPECTS. He played a restaurant owner with an indecipherable accent. Much to my delight, when I met him again over a decade later at a MONK rap party, he not only remembered the LIKELY SUSPECTS role…he even remembered his lines! He will be missed.

(That’s Stanley with my daughter Maddie at last year’s wrap party).

Killing Castro

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Hard Case Crime is reprinting a long-lost Lawrence Block novel called KILLING CASTRO. It’s a book Block wrote under a pseudonym fifty years ago. And if this excerpt doesn’t whet your appetite for more, you don’t have a pulse:

The taxi, one headlight out and one fender crimped, cut through
downtown Tampa and headed into Ybor City. Turner sat in the back seat
with his eyes half closed. He was a tall, thin ramrod of a man who was
never tense and yet never entirely relaxed. His hair was the color of
damp sand, his eyes steel gray. His lips were thin and he rarely
smiled. He was not smiling now.

The stub of a cigarette burned
between the second and third fingers of his right hand. The fingers
were yellow-brown from the thousands and thousands of cigarettes which
had curled their tar-laden smoke around them. He looked at the
cigarette, raised it to his lips for a final drag. The smoke was
strong. He rolled down the window and flipped the butt into the street.

Night.
The street lights were on in Ybor City, Tampa’s Latin quarter. Taverns
winked seductively in red and green neon. Cubans, Puerto Ricans and
Negroes walked the streets, congregated around pool halls and small
bars. Here and there butt-twitching hustlers were rushing the season,
looking to catch an early trick before the competition got stiff.
Turner watched all this through the taxi window, his thin lips not
smiling, not frowning. He had bigger things on his mind than corner
loungers or early-bird whores.

He was thirty-four years old, and he was wanted for murder.

What’s amazing about it is that he was so good from the get-go, long before he would achieve all his well-earned honors and accolades.

Indulging My Inner Geek

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I’m a big BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fan and I was eager to catch-up on the season premiere…but I have to say, it left me underwhelmed. The stuff with Baltar was fun, but I found the rest of the episode plodding. Plus, I was nagged by some big issues that went unaddressed. For one thing, 600 people are killed in the opening moments of the show…and are never referred to again. This is a massive loss of life and yet it isn’t discussed…the characters are too busy whining about their feelings about Starbuck’s return or, in the case of a handful of characters, the realization that they are Cylons. Which brings up another issue…in the first couple of seasons, a lot of time and angst were devoted to Boomer’s "human-Cylon" baby. Well, now that we know the Chief is a Cylon, too, that means his baby is also a cross between a  human and a Cylon.  Doesn’t that make his child every bit as important to the humans and the Cylon’s as Boomer’s child is/was? And if Six can "feel" the presence of the other Cylons in the fleet, why can’t Boomer?