
Mission Accomplished: Hardman is Back

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
Today is launch day for KILLER THRILLER, the sequel to my novel TRUE FICTION. Amazon released this book trailer for the novel:
And here is a video I shot a few weeks ago…giving you a behind-the-scenes peek at where the story takes place. There will be more of these coming…
To celebrate the upcoming release of KILLER THRILLER on 2/12, Amazon Publishing has dramatically slashed the prices on everything I’ve ever written for them. Here’s the rundown…
THE BIG DISCOUNTS:
The ebook edition of TRUE FICTION is only $1.99 and the print editions are 50% off.
“Thriller fiction at its absolute finest—and it could happen for real. But not to me, I hope.” —Lee Child
“This may be the most fun you’ll ever have reading a thriller. It’s a breathtaking rush of suspense, intrigue, and laughter that only Lee Goldberg could pull off. I loved it.” —Janet Evanovich
The ebook edition of KING CITY is only 99 cents…and the print edition is 20% off.
“I could tell you that Lee Goldberg’s King City is one of the best reads of the year or that Lee is one of my favorite writers for so many reasons—plotting, character, or his incredible sense of humor—but that might ruin the surprise of reading King City for yourself. Suffice to say that Goldberg is one infinitely readable master of crime fiction, and King Cityis Lee at his best.” —Craig Johnson
The seven volumes of THE DEAD MAN series, each one containing three action/adventure/horror novellas, are only 99 cents each…and the print editions are 25% off. You can find the entire series here.
“Buckle up! THE DEAD MAN starts at full-speed and never lets up. This is big-ticket horror with characters you care about who are driven to the very edge. Highly recommended!” —Jonathan Maberry
The Big Thrill, the magazine of the International Thriller Writers, has published a detailed interview with me about KILLER THRILLER, how I write, the traits I share with my characters, and how many goats I sacrifice for each book. You can find it here. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt:
The character of “Ian Ludlow” is based on your first pen name. If you were writing your own story, would it read like these novels?
Not at all. My life isn’t as exciting as his…
I lead a very normal, domestic home life. I’m your average husband and father…I walk the dog (and pick up poop), I go shopping at Costco, I grill a lot of meat, I buy clothes at the outlet mall, I embarrass my daughter, I exasperate my wife—nothing very glamorous or exciting. And I love every minute of it. The only difference between me and a million other dads out there is that I get paid to make stuff up.
What Ian and I share in common is our physical build, the way we dress, and what we do for a living. And, like him, I’m creeped out by how much of the stuff that I make up to entertain people is coming true.
I’ve got lots of exciting news to share about the new books and movies that I’ve written that are coming your way over the next few weeks…
Set your DVRs! I co-wrote and co-created, with my good friend Robin Bernheim, the mystery movie/TV series pilot MYSTERY 101, which airs on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries on January 27th. If you’ve enjoyed my work on DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK, I think you’ll like this movie, which stars Jill Wagner as an English professor who specializes in crime fiction…and applies what she’s learned from the great detectives to solve murders herself. You cam learn more about the movie, and see some sneak previews and behind-the-scenes interviews here. If the movie does well in the ratings, you can expect to see more MYSTERY 101 movies later this year.
The reviews have started coming in for my new novel KILLER THRILLER, the sequel to TRUE FICTION, which will be released on February 12th.
“The pleasure here is watching Goldberg mock the thriller form while creating a first-rate one, boiling with chases, fights, sweaty-palm tension, snappy dialogue, and glamorous, exotic locations—this time, post-Maugham Hong Kong and its stunning outdoor escalators. It’s really a sophisticated exercise in metafiction: commenting on narrative while creating it.” Booklist
It grabs you from page one with brilliant wit, sharply honed suspense, and a huge helping of pure originality.” —Jeffery Deaver, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Goldberg’s thrillers are some of the wittiest around, and his newest doesn’t disappoint…a meta-thriller that’s genuinely heart-pounding but also clever enough to keep you smiling and reading on.” Crime Reads
“Killer Thriller by Lee Goldberg is an action-packed treasure filled with intrigue, engaging characters, and exciting, well-rendered locales. With Goldberg’s hyper-clever plotting, dialogue, and wit on every page, readers are in for a blast with this one!”—Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“A solid thriller that moves fast and is tons of fun. It’s rare for a sequel to be better than the original, but Lee Goldberg’s Killer Thriller takes Ian Ludlow to new heights. Diehard fans of the genre should definitely check this one out.” The Real Book Spy
“A delight from start-to-finish, a round-the-world, thrill-a-minute, laser-guided missile of a book.” —Joseph Finder, #1 New York Times bestselling author
You can pre-order the book here. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079L6Q5KS/lg-website-20}
Goodreads is giving away 100 copies of KILLER THRILLER. You can sign up for free here
The imminent release of KILLER THRILLER means there will soon be some big discounts and special offers on my “backlist” titles like TRUE FICTON and THE WALK. Don’t miss out! Be sure to click “follow” on my Amazon Author page to be alerted to all the upcoming discounts and special offers on my books.
I’ll be hitting the road to spread the good word about KILLER THRILLER, starting on February 12th. You can find my tour/event schedule here.
This has been a passion project for me ever since Bill Crider and Paul Bishop introduced me to the Hardman novels five years ago. I immediately decided I had to get them back into print, so I sought out the advice of my good friend Joel Goldman…and as a result of those discussions, a partnership and a publishing company were born. Now, after the publishing nearly 100 titles together, we are finally putting out the novels that we’d hoped would be our first releases.
Ralph Dennis isn’t a household name… but I believe that he should be. He is widely considered among crime writers as a master of the genre, denied the recognition he deserved because his series of twelve Hardman books, which are beloved and highly sought-after collectables now, were poorly packaged in the 1970s by Popular Library as cheap men’s action-adventure paperbacks with numbered titles.
Even so, some top critics saw past the cheesy covers and noticed that he was producing work as good as John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross MacDonald.
The New York Times praised the Hardman novels for “expert writing, plotting, and an unusual degree of sensitivity. Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment.” The Philadelphia Daily News proclaimed Hardman “the best series around…”
Unfortunately, Popular Library didn’t take the hint and continued to present the series like hack work, dooming the novels to a short shelf-life and obscurity…except among generations of crime writers, like novelist Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap & Leonard series) and screenwriter Shane Black (the Lethal Weapon movies), who’ve kept Dennis’ legacy alive through word-of-mouth and by acknowledging his influence on their stellar work.
For years, I’ve been getting emails, tweets, and posts meant for Lee Goldberg, the WABC weatherman, and for Lee Goldberg, also a novelist, both of whom happen to live in New York, where Thrillerfest was held this past weekend and I was booked to be a panelist. So while I was at the conference, I decided to sneak away to finally meet my doppelgangers.
Weatherman Lee graciously invited me to the WABC studios on the upper east side. When my wife Valerie and I arrived at the front desk, I introduced myself to the security guard — “Hello, I’m Lee Goldberg, this is my wife Valerie, and we’re here to see Lee Goldberg.” The guard took our IDs, picked up the phone, and called the newsroom to let Weatherman Lee know that “his parents are here to see him.”
Valerie and I looked at each other in horror. Do we look that old?
Weatherman Lee bounded out to meet us, full of good cheer, and brought us back to the Eyewitness News set, where we took some photos and had a nice chat about the surprising parallels in our lives (for example my father Alan was the anchorman on Eyewitness News on KPIX in San Francisco). Weatherman Lee introduced us to the afternoon anchor David Navarro… and then he asked me if I’d like to join him on-camera to be a guest on his live “on the street” weather report. Of course I said yes. You can see the Facebook Live version here. It was a lot of fun.
The next morning I met up with Novelist Lee, author of The Mentor, for breakfast. It turns out we also had some interesting parallels in our lives. For example. were both published by the Thomas Dunne imprint at St. Martin’s Press (they originally published my novels My Gun Has Bullets and Beyond the Beyond). We had a great time sharing stories about our experiences in publishing and in Hollywood.
Now I’ve got to meet Lee Goldberg, the TV sportscaster in Maine, and Lee Goldberg, the technology writer…and maybe we Lee Goldbergs can figure out why there are so many Lee Goldbergs in publishing and television.
Okay, this is weird. I meant to simply upload this photo to my website… and that headline was supposed to be the caption… but somehow it accidentally became a blog post instead. Well, now that it’s here, I guess I better hurry up and say something about it.
I just returned late last night from Billings Montana, where I attended the Spur Awards, which are the Oscars of western writing. I’ve always been a huge western fan and I’ve been looking for an excuse to attend the Western Writers of America conference for years. I finally got one: DOUBLE WIDE by Leo Banks won two Spurs — for Best First Novel and Best Contemporary Western — and it was published by Brash Books, the company I co-founded with Joel Goldman four years ago. So I jumped on a plane to be there for Leo and to bask in all the praise he’d be getting.
I was delighted to discover that my old friend producer Rob Word was there, too. Rob and I teamed up some years back to turn Bill Crider’s OUTRAGE AT BLANCO into a TV mini-series. The project fell through, but we had great fun casting and scouting locations in California and Calgary (we haven’t given up hope on filming it someday). He’s a true western lover and historian and is the host of A Word on Westerns. We headed out to Little Big Horn for the day, which we really enjoyed, and hung out at the conference with western literary legends like Craig Johnson, Loren D. Estleman, Preston Lewis, and Johnny Boggs, among others. Rob even convinced me to buy a cowboy hat for the Spur Awards banquet. And it’s a good thing I did, because it turned out that Brash got matching Spur Awards to go along with the two that Leo won.
Here are some more photos from the event…
I’ve been out-and-about a lot the last few weeks and I’m just getting a chance now to catch you up on all the latest news.
Two weeks ago, I was traveling in Memphis to research a new book, and visited Owensboro Kentucky, for a TRUE FICTION booksigning and a screening of the two short films, BUMSICLE and REMAINDERED, that I shot there. At the same time, I delivered the script for a new Hallmark Mystery Movie that I co-wrote with the amazing Robin Bernheim, whose many credits include REMINGTON STEELE, QUANTUM LEAP, and WHEN CALLS THE HEART.
Speaking of Hallmark Mysteries, my friend Phoef Sutton just scored raves, and big ratings, for his latest Hallmark movie, DARROW & DARROW: IN THE KEY OF MURDER. You can read an interview with him about it at Kings River Life magazines.
I was only hone for a few days before I had to jet off to New York, where I was shot some new TRUE FICTION promos for Amazon Publishing. While I was there, I got a chance to see Amazon Publishing honcho Jeff Belle (who has been a big supporter of me and my books for years), and Amazon-bestselling authors Robert Dugoni and Mark Sullivan, who has co-authored five books with James Patterson.
Speaking of Patterson, it’s great to see my friend, Edgar-winning author, and Appellate Court Judge David Ellis get a shout-out/acknowledgment as the ghostwriter channeling Bill Clinton & Patterson in Janet Maslin’s review of THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING.
I learned this morning that Scott Brick, narrator of the five Fox & O’Hare books I co-wrote with Janet Evanovich, and HOUSE OF SECRETS (coauthored by my brother Tod Goldberg and Brad Meltzer), has been as the new voice of Lee Child‘s Jack Reacher! (The legendary Dick Hill is retiring). I’m very happy for Scott and hope he’ll still squeeze in time to narrate more of my books 🙂
And, in case you missed it last week, author/editor Steph Cha had the brilliant idea of assigning my brother Tod to interview me for Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB)….the result is probably the most personal, and indepth interview I’ve ever done. I hope you like it.