Me Me Me

Eve Ronin returns…and Edison Bixby is coming

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Hidden in Smoke by Lee Goldberg

I know I’ve been very quiet lately… but that’s because I have been so busy!

Edison Bixby is coming

Today I delivered my new novel, Edison Bixby, to my publisher, a couple of weeks before my deadline. The novel is about a ridiculously wealthy (and amazingly attractive) LAPD homicide detective, an expert on how the “built world” influences behavior, who suffers a career-ending injury… and now solves baffling murders with the help of a struggling actor. It’s a comedic whodunit, closer in tone to my sixteen Monk novels than the various police procedurals and the action-adventure novels I’ve been writing for the last decade or so.

It’s not that I don’t love writing those books – I do and there will be more of them – but I was itching to write my own take on the traditional whodunit, to create an extraordinarily clever detective who uses his unusual skills, and unique perspective on the world, to solve crimes that nobody else can.

I guess you could call Edison Bixby a twisted mash-up of Columbo, Monk, Burke’s Law, Nero Wolfe, and Sherlock Holmes. Whatever it is, it was blast to write. The downside, though, was that it took an enormous amount of research. My author’s note at the end of the book reads more like the  bibliography for a thesis than a thank-you and over-view of my research. But at least now I have all the information I need to keep on writing more Bixby mysteries… assuming enough of you like the book when it comes out next summer.

Hidden in Smoke is here

In the meantime, Hidden in Smoke, the third Sharpe & Walker novel (about a team of arson investigators) and the second cross-over with my long-running Eve Ronin series (about a relentless young homicide detective), just came out a few weeks ago. It has been selling great, and has scored some of the best reader reviews I’ve ever had, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there will be another Sharpe & Walker novel in my future and yours. 

Fallen StarEve Ronin is coming back

And coming this October is Fallen Star, the sixth Eve Ronin novel, and a cross-over with the Sharpe & Walker series.  I am very excited about the book, because it pulls together strands from the previous Ronin novels into a new mystery that imperils both Eve’s career and her life. The book stands alone, but will pack a stronger punch of you’ve read Bone Canyon (Eve #2), and Movieland (Eve #4). So you might want to read those two novels first…if you haven’t already. There’s are two surprise cameos in the book for those of you familiar with my backlist…

Speaking of Eve Ronin, there is some big TV news about her that I have been keeping to myself and have been itching to share. I still can’t give you any specific details. But I will say this much – an actress you know and love is attached to play Eve, a terrific showrunner is developing the series, and I have high hopes things will come together soon.

I’m Returning to TV…

Also on the TV front, a big studio behind some of your favorite crime shows and a great team of writers and producers are developing a series version of my genre-bending novel Calico…and I can’t wait to see what they come up with. They have some fantastic ideas for expanding on the novel and for using some material I cut from the original manuscript (as well as incorporating some of my ideas for the sequel).

And speaking of TV shows, I’m presently hard-at-work for my old friend Robin Bernheim, with whom I co-created the hit Hallmark series Mystery 101, as a co-exec producer and writer on a presently-untitled new mystery series starring Brooke Shields for AMC/Acorn. Not only do I get to work with Robin on this delightful show, but also with my good buddy Phoef Sutton, the Emmy-Award winning writer/producer of Cheers and Boston Legal, among many other series. And, like me, Phoef co-authored books with my friend Janet Evanovich.

Phoef and I are drawing heavily on our mystery writing and co-authoring experiences for this series, which is about a hugely successful author who reluctantly teams up with a young woman, an inexperienced “true crime” podcaster, to write her next crime novel…and they end up solving murders together. I think of it as mash-up of Murder, She Wrote and Hacks…with a touch of Remington Steele and Lucille Ball thrown in. Casting is underway on the six-episode first season, which starts shooting soon…so watch for news. 

What’s Next?

And in the midst of all that, while I’m waiting to hear what my publisher wants me to write next (will it be Eve Ronin #7, Sharpe & Walker #4, or Edison Bixby #2? I don’t know), I am back to work on a standalone crime novel set in Baker, CA.

I’ve been researching my “Baker” novel off-and-on for years, but made a big effort back in December 2024 and January 2025, reading a ton of books and articles, and spending days out in the Mojave interviewing sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, teachers, and residents. I was a quarter of the way into writing the book when I got the contract for Edison Bixby…and then got hired on Robin’s show. So I had to set the manuscript aside. But now that Bixby is in, and the scripts for the show are nearly complete, I’ve opened up my research binders and am slowly picking up where I left off…

So that’s the latest from me and my desk… and again, I apologize for being so quiet lately (aside from my relentless self-promotion, of course)… but the good news is it means you’ll be getting a lot more books and TV shows from me over the next twelve months or so.

Remembering Joseph Wambaugh

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Lee Goldberg with Joseph Wambaugh Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 2012

I’m very sad to hear about Joseph Wambaugh‘s passing.

Like my brother Tod Goldberg, who has posted a Facebook remembrance of Joe, I don’t remember how I first met him, only that he was a friend of our family for years. It was probably through my Mom, and maybe at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference. But I have all of his books signed, and several photos with him over the years.

The last time we actually saw each other face-to-face (but not the last time we talked) was at the 2012 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books…he’d asked me to interview him on stage to promote his latest HOLLYWOOD STATION novel. I was delighted to do it. I read up on his old interviews, watched on YouTube his old appearances on Johnny Carson and Tom Snyder, and figured I’d just ask him the questions I knew he already had great answers for…and a few fresh questions of my own.

We had lunch together beforehand, and it was all great….but just before we were supposed to go on stage, he pulled me aside and said…”I can’t do it. We have to cancel the interview.” I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. He was having a panic attack. I told him you’ve been on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, this is nothing. I’m going to ask you softball questions you’ve been asked before, nothing you can’t answer. But he shook his head. I can’t do it. I’ve lost it. I’m terrible. I said you’ll be fine, if you don’t have the anecdote, I’ll give you a gentle reminder. You’ll kill, trust me.

And he did. He was wonderful, totally at ease, funny, insightful, his usual. But as we got off stage, he was shaking…and he said, “that’s it, I’m done. I won’t appear on stage ever again.”

To my knowledge, he never did.

But we stayed in touch. He blurbed a book of mine (KING CITY), he blurbed a book for Brash (Jack Bunker’s TRUE GRIFT…and there’s a great story behind that, too, but I will let Jack share it), and he congratulated me on LOST HILLS, which he thought was a great crime novel. I resisted the urge to ask him if I could use it as a blurb 🙂

He told me the secret to his cop novels was taking fellow cops to Ruth’s Chris, buying them a steak and some drinks, and letting them talk…and then just listening to what they had to say. Not so much to the specific stories, but the way they *told* their stories, what were the key details that matter to them, the observations they made, the language they used, how they held their bodies as they spoke… it never failed to inspire him.

And his work never failed to inspire me.

He will be missed.

Gene Hackman

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Lee with Gene Hackman in Owensboro

I was saddened to hear about Gene Hackman’s passing. I had a brief encounter with him after he retired and had become an author.

He was a guest at the International Mystery Writer’s Festival at the RiverPark Center in Owensboro, KY, which was run at the time by Zev Buffman, a well-known Broadway producer.

When I arrived, I was brought on stage, given the key to the city, a gavel making me an honorary judge advocate, and then the Governor (or was it the Secretary of State?) honored me as a Kentucky Colonel, telling me I was joining a long list of people including Pope John Paul, Elvis Presley, Florence Henderson, Teddy Rosevelt, Harlan Sanders, etc. I joked that he was making a terrible mistake, he had the wrong person, etc. There was a lot of laughs and that was that.

I was staying at the Comfort Inn, off the freeway, along with some of the other authors, but also truck drivers, traveling families, etc. It’s place people usually stay on their way to somewhere else.

So, the next moring, I went down for breakfast, and it was mobbed with people…families, screaming kids, etc. I sat down with the late Bob Levinson to eat my bagel and Gene Hackman comes in. At first, nobody noticed him. The last person you expect to see at a Comfort Inn in Owensboro is somebody famous, certainly not an Oscar winning actor.

Hackman went through the motions of gathering his breakfast, and one by one, people recognized him… they were startled. They’d did spit-takes, or jumped back, or shrieked, and on each occasion, he smiled politely and took their shock in stride. It impressed me. It was also hilarious. Bob and I could have spent all day watching people react to Gene Hackman.

Later that day, Hackman was also brought up on stage, and given the key to the city and the gavel, and then the Governor made him a Kentucky Colonel, repeating the bit that Hackman was joining such luminaries as bla bla bla bla and, of course, the Governor looked at me now with a glint in his eye, Lee Goldberg.

Later, I approached Hackman and asked if I could have my picture taken with him, and he said of course…we also exchanged signed books.

I asked him what he was doing in Owensboro, and he said that Zev had given him one of his first jobs on Broadway, so if Zev calls, he shows up. I mentioned how impressed I was by his reaction at breakfast to being recognized and he said was used to it, but it had also surprised him, because off-camera, he looks like such an “everyman,” that he can often get away unnoticed.

I think that may have been one of his great gifts as an actor. He didn’t look like a movie star. He looked like a regular guy … but I think, when he wanted to, he could also *be* one.

Roger Corman, RIP

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I’m sad to hear about the passing of Roger Corman. William Rabkin & I worked for him in the late 1980s/early 1990s on an unmade TV series version of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS for the USA Network (that’s a long story in itself). He was cheap, but he paid us on time, treated us well and was a wonderful, creative collaborator. But for me the best part of the experience were the anecdotes from his career that he shared with us along the way.

For instance, while giving us a tour of his Venice studio and pointing out sets that had been used dozens of times, he told us that he’d made so many movies that he had a recurring nightmare that he’d made one that he’d forgotten to release

“Did I release BODY CHEMISTRY 3 or was it SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE 3? I wake up in a cold sweat & have to double check.”

During story meetings with us, sometimes he’d take out an electric razor and just run it over his face while he pondered a story point.

He also didn’t suffer fools. At one point in our 7000th notes meeting with an idiot network executive, Roger got so frustrated that he told her that the time it had taken us to get the bible approved, stories approved, and then two episodes written, he’d made and released eight movies.

The final straw on the LITTLE SHOP project was when the idiot exec asked us to underline the jokes and to put asterisks next to the ones that were social commentary. Roger was furious. He said something like, “if you need the jokes pointed out to you, you shouldn’t be in the movie business,” got up and walked out…and we walked out with him. In the elevator, he told us he was done, he’d never develop a TV series with a network again. He couldn’t understand how we could stomach working with such stupid, indecisive people. But he was kind enough to say how much he enjoyed working with us and that he was proud of the scripts we’d written.

Some years later, he did do a TV series… but he made it himself and then sold the final product to a cable channel as an acquisition.

Executive Producers of Showtime’s “The Chi” Acquire Screen Rights to Lee Goldberg’s bestseller “Malibu Burning”

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Malibu Burning

I can finally reveal the news! ID8 Multimedia, led by industry veterans Derek Dudley and Shelby Stone, have acquired the screen rights to my thriller  to “Malibu Burning.” Here’s the full story from the press release:

The high-concept, 2023 bestseller follows two Los Angeles County arson investigators who suspect that a massive wildfire raging through the Santa Monica mountains is part of an elaborate heist by a professional thief and his skilled crew. Dudley and Stone, producers on the TV series “The Chi” and “Horror Noir,” are set to executive produce the adaptation alongside Goldberg and talent manager Craig Dorfman.

“‘Malibu Burning’ embodies the pulse-pounding energy of classic cat-and-mouse thrillers like Heat, pitting a seasoned arson investigator and an ex-U.S. Marshal against a brilliant, charismatic thief trying to pull off an impossible score.” Stone said. “Derek and I are thrilled to bring this electrifying story to the screen.”

Dudley echoed Stone’s enthusiasm. “I am blessed to collaborate with Lee, Craig, and Shelby to bring ‘Malibu Burning’ to life. Lee is a prolific storyteller who creates novels filled with rich and intriguing characters. He has stuck gold again with this fast-paced, action-packed Robin hood heist in a raging inferno.”

Talent Manager Craig Dorfman brought the project to ID8. “I’ve been a fan of Lee’s since I read his 2018 bestseller ‘True Fiction‘ and my obsession continues to this day. I’m excited to work with this team on ‘Malibu Burning,’ which is full of fascinating characters, relentless action, and crackling dialogue.”

“I’m so lucky to be in business with such a creative, enthusiastic, collaborative, and successful team,” said Goldberg, who is repped for film & TV by Mitchel Stein of The Stein Agency and in publishing by Amy Tannenbaum of the Jane Rotrosen Agency. His novel “Ashes Never Lie,” a sequel to “Malibu Burning,” will be published in September. A third book is slated for Spring 2025.

With over 40 novels to his credit, among them the bestselling “True Fiction,” “Lost Hills,” “Calico” and a five-book collaboration with Janet Evanovich, Goldberg’s diverse portfolio also includes extensive television writing and producing credits, including “Diagnosis Murder,” “SeaQuest,” and “Monk,” and co-creating the Hallmark movie series “Mystery 101.”

Shelby Stone is a prolific, Emmy Award-winning producer with numerous projects in development, including “Hate to See You Go” starring Morgan Freeman and a new feature documentary from Oscar-winner Questlove (“Summer of Soul”) on Sly Stone. She is also an experienced executive, having run production companies for several high-profile stars, including Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah and Common.

Derek Dudley is an industry veteran with a successful entertainment career spanning over three decades, shaping and managing the careers of music heavyweights such as acclaimed producer and record label mogul Jermaine Dupri and Academy Award winning artist, actor, author and social activist Common.

Craig Dorfman, whose client roster includes Lorraine Toussaint, Adrienne C. Moore, Joshua Malina, Patricia Richardson and Jabari Banks, is known for his keen eye for emerging talent and his adept management of established artists.

The next step is for the producers to attach a screenwriter, director and star to the project, which I hear they are hard at work doing right now. I’ve been sitting on the news for a while now, so it’s exciting to finally be able to share it with you. I hope to have more exciting news to share with you about one of my other novels as soon as the “powers that be” give me the ok.

Cover Reveal!

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COVER REVEAL! The paperback edition of my genre-bending thriller CALICO is coming in July in the UK and in Sept in the U.S. But you can pre-order it now from your favorite booksellers 

“A superb twin-track thriller. Could be Lee Goldberg’s best ever” LEE CHILD, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A genre-bending, gripping read” HARLAN COBEN, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“I guarantee you’ve never read a crime novel like it. The X Files meets Deadwood. Totally gripping.”  IAN RANKIN, New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author

“A mind-bending thriller unlike anything I have read before” LINWOOD BARCLAY, New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author

“If you have time for only one mystery, one Western, and one SF this year, this will ding all three targets” Kirkus Reviews

“A riveting mystery. . . Goldberg expertly paces the narrative, ensuring continuous engagement until the thrilling conclusion” Mystery & Suspense Magazine

“A genre-busting, mystery-thriller that defies easy classification” CrimeTime FM

“A cleverly complex plot wreathed in Goldberg’s brilliant humour makes this a rocket-paced story” Historical Novels Review (Editors’ Choice)

“A remarkably unconventional crime novel that is warm, thrilling, and fun to read” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

“Goldberg’s plots are always first-rate, but this one is especially suspenseful and surprising”Booklist

“Goldberg has crafted is a page-turning novel that has surprises up to the final page. Calico is arguably one of his best” FirstCLUE

“Something altogether new, radical and exciting” Paperback Warrior

“A double-barreled blast, melding the tense, edge-of-your-seat contemporary police procedural with a gritty 1880s Wild West tale” The Roundup, the Magazine of the Western Writers of America

“Stunningly original – a magical mixture of a murder mystery and an old-fashioned Western” MATT WITTEN, author of Killer Story

“Lee Goldberg delivers with the unapologetically savvy Beth McDade . . .Calico couples history with good old fashioned detective work”
YASMIN ANGOE, award-winning author of the Nena Knight series

“A tour de force of a novel” JAMES ROBERT DANIELS, author of The Comanche Kid and Jane Fury, both Spur Award finalist for Best Western Novel

“One of the most compelling novels I’ve read in a long time”  JAMES REASONER, Spur-Award finalist and author of more than 350 Westerns

“A two-fisted western mystery with a compelling heroine in Beth McDade. If you like the Yellowstone series and its spinoffs, you’ll love Calico!” PETER BRANDVOLD, multiple Spur Award finalist and Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Award honoree

“If you’re looking for an exciting mystery within a mystery, flawed characters who work toward redemption, and a few unexpected twists, you should read Calico” Kings River Life Magazine

 

CALICO is out… and I’m EVERYWHERE!

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Calico by Lee Goldberg

My new thriller CALICO, a genre mash-up that (to my relief) is getting fantastic reviews, is out today. But that’s not all. I’m all ove the Internet, writing essays about the book and doing interviews to explain myself…and my decision to write this seemingly sharp departure from my usual work.

Today, in CrimeReads, I out myself as a closeted wesstern writer.

I decided to do it by writing a gritty western set in 1883 in the Mojave desert mining town of Calico, which is now a cheesy roadside attraction off the I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It’s actually a notion I’ve had in the back of my mind for years…maybe even decades.

But there have been a thousand westerns. What could I bring to the genre that nobody else had? How could I make it my own? 

The answer was obvious: I’d use the novel to reconcile my creative, split personality. And I’d do that by combining a seemingly traditional western with a present-day crime novel… a seemingly straight-forward police procedural set in the Mojave in 2019. 

Notice the repetition of the word seemingly in the previous paragraph. 

That’s because, to truly make it mine, I’d have to acknowledge the tropes of both genres…and then ruthlessly subvert them.  That’s my brand, or so I am told, exemplified by my “Ian Ludlow” trilogy of spy novels (True Fiction, Killer Thriller, and Fake Truth)

What would connect the two storylines? 

The answer was easy. 

They would share the same corpse. 

 

And I visited my friends at Rogue Women Writers to talk about how I wrote the book:

When you read a contemporary police procedural or a period western, you go into them with certain expectations about the stories, the characters, and the themes you’re going to find. Those expectations are what defines those very different genres. While some of those tropes are necessary, many of them are tired, ridiculous cliches. I set out with my thriller Calico to honor the tropes of those two genres while twisting them in new ways and bringing them together in a single, propulsive thriller.

And over at The Dossier, I was grilled about how I work.

DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music/silence/ocean-front veranda where sea nymphs emerge from the water to serve you chilled Bollinger and Oreos?)

GOLDBERG: Sadly, no sea nymphs. Just my dog laying on my office couch, loudly licking his ass or barking in a dream.

I do my best writing between 8 p.m and 2 a.m. in my home office. I like to listen to instrumental TV and movie soundtracks while I work (and to drown out the canine farting). If I am writing action, I might listen to Goldfinger (or other Bond scores), The Bourne Identity, or Mission Impossible (mostly Lalo Schifrin’s original TV soundtracks, and a couple of the features). If I am writing “procedural” scenes, I might listen to Jon Burlingame’s excellent collection of Quinn Martin TV series soundtracks (Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, etc), or Jerry Goldsmith’s Police Story, or Morton Steven’s Hawaii Five-O, for example. I have a collection of hundreds of soundtracks to choose from.

I wish I could munch on Oreos and potato chips while I write, but these days it’s Keto Bars and roasted almonds… washed down with Diet Coke.

I hope you enjoy all of that…but, most of all, I hope you will grab a copy of CALICO. It’s a book I’ve wanted to write for decades and I’m so excited to finally have it out there in the world.