Lee Goldberg

Publishers Weekly Gives MURDER BY DESIGN Some Love

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Murder by Design

I usually cringe while reading interviews with me… but this one by Conner Reed at Publishers Weekly that’s tied to the release of my new novel MURDER BY DESIGN, turned out really well.

Lee Goldberg knows his way around a murder mystery. If you combine his work on the page (as in the Eve Ronin series) and on screen (as on the 1990s medical crime procedural Diagnosis Murder), the 64-year-old crime writer has dreamt up something like 175 distinct mystery plots. Goldberg loves the genre. It’s given him a career. But a few years ago, he almost started to tire of it.

He insists it was nothing personal. “I’ve just written so many of the damn things,” he says on a video call from his home in Calabasas, Calif., flanked by posters of his own novels and various James Bond films. “I didn’t want to write another book inspired by Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to take all the tropes of the whodunit and turn them on their head.”

It’s a familiar enough refrain from a genre writer. Goldberg’s attempt, though, is admirably nutty: the kind of thing an author can only pull off if he really loves the material he’s turning topsy-turvy. In June, Thomas & Mercer will publish Murder by Design, the first installment in a series centered on former LAPD homicide detective Edison Bixby. It’s a lark.

Bixby is a brilliant, vain investigator with a 100% success rate. He gives partial credit for that record to his parents, an inventor and an architect, who taught him young that the entire world is a contrived environment designed to manipulate human behavior. Early in the novel, a perp shoots Bixby in the face, inducing a case of coprolalia—uncontrolled, often offensive verbal outbursts—that gets him fired from the force. Soon enough, a global insurance firm hires Bixby to flex his investigate genius vetting expensive claims.

“I wanted to come up with a character who was brilliant but wasn’t the typical detective who can’t get laid and has mental illness,” Goldberg quips.

You can read the rest of the interview on the PW site (where you can see three articles for free without a subscription). And, as a cherry on the cake, they also gave  the book a great review. Here’s an excerpt.

A struggling actor teams up with a suave, design-obsessed ex-cop to investigate a string of suspicious deaths in this zany series launch from Goldberg…with Bixby coming off like a cross between James Bond and Adrian Monk. This lighthearted whodunit goes down smooth.

I hope you like the book as much as PW does! You can preorder it here.

CBR says “Eve Ronin” Series Could be the new “Bosch”

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The CBR site, which covers pop culture television, just posted a new article arguing that Eve Ronin could be the new Bosch… and goes into more detail about my books and Madison Lintz’s casting as the lead. They say, in part:

The first novel in the Eve Ronin Series is called Lost Hills. The critically praised book even received a flattering blurb written by none other than Bosch‘s best-selling author, Michael Connelly. Of the novel, Connelly said, “Lost Hills is Lee Goldberg at his best. Inspired by the real-world grit and glitz of LA County crime, this book takes no prisoners. And neither does Eve Ronin. Take a ride with her, and you’ll find yourself with a heroine for the ages. And you’ll be left hoping for more.”

Ronin will need to prove she deserves her detective’s shield while grappling with the resentment of her colleagues. Her first case sees her investigating a missing mother and her two children.The fast-paced, dark, and gritty novel is praised for capturing the feel of California and depicting realistic police procedure. Much like Titus Welliver’s Bosch, Ronin is described as a flawed and complex character doggedly pursuing her investigation. While details are still sparse on Eve Ronin, it’s shaping up to be the perfect Bosch replacement series for fans still reeling from Legacy’s cancellation.

I hope they are right!

The Mail I Get: Rejection Edition

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How to never sell your book…

We received a submission at Brash Books, the small publishing company I co-founded six years ago with Joel Goldman. After reading the submission, we decided to pass. This is the entirety of the rejection letter we wrote to the author:

Thank you for thinking of Brash for XYZ. Unfortunately, it’s not a fit for us. We wish you the very best finding the right home for the book.

His reply:

Keep printing The same redundant shit Arrogant ass, just remember the title of this book, u will see it on the best sellers list asshole.

And I’m sure he wonders why he hasn’t sold a book yet. (BTW, his submission was awful). So I decided to respond:

I sincerely doubt it… and I say that as a novelist who has actually been at the top of the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestseller lists multiple times. To be a successful author, you not only need to write well, and tell a good story… you also need to have some decent people skills. If I lashed out and called every publisher who politely rejected my work an arrogant asshole, I wouldn’t have achieved my success. How do I know? Because I ultimately ended being published by two of the publishers who’d rejected my previous work. You are clearly the biggest obstacle to your success. You might want to rethink your strategy.

He responded a short time later. 

 
This book has a very complex plot and vivid characterization that you couldn’t have possibly ascertain in the brief time you review my story. is a very complex plot, and profound characterization. This story is very unique, and has major shocking twists at the end! A PHD from Western Kentucky, who was a professor for 38 years is editing it, and compared it to Silence of the Lambs. It is very, very unique story, and intertwines orwellian themes, which compare to today’s political and social upheaval. I DO APOLOGIZE FOR LASHING OUT, NOT PROFESSIONAL AT ALL, sorry just have my heart and soul in this book, and you rejected it in record time, this is not my first rodeo, again I do apologize!

Still a little crazy, but at least he apologized. I guess that’s progress.

The Mail I Get: For the Weatherman Edition

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There is are a lot of Lee Goldbergs out there. One of them is a popular weatherman at WABC in New York…and I get a lot of emails meant for him. I always reply and politely tell them they have the wrong Lee Goldberg (which you’d think would be obvious from the face on my website). By the same token, Lee the Weatherman also gets a lot of emails about my books. We met a few years ago and he invited me on his show. It was a lot of fun.

Here is just a tiny sampling of the mail I get for him:

Dear Lee,

Please be advised that Clason Point in the Bronx is pronounced CLAW-son and not CLAY-son.

And another:

Hi Lee it was nice you mentioned the Moon and Jupiter tonight but Saturn was there too.

If its clear tomorrow in fact you might want to mention in your forecast that the crescent Moon, Saturn and Jupiter are gathered even closer together.

And another:

What type of meter is on the wall in your home above the computer monitor?
While watching you broadcast from your home (I assume it is your home) there is a device with many numbers on it in red.
Is that something I can purchase?
Thanks

And another:

Thank you for thinking of Toms River Ocean County NJ. Other channels don’t talk about Toms River. You are the only one who speaks about Ocean County NJ. Thank you, thank you, thank you. BTW, I’m from Toms River.

And another:

Hi Lee- it’s a great idea to tell your viewers the reason for the nightly colors. However, please do it at 5 and 6 pm for the many viewers who are fast asleep at 11:20pm especially kids and my Nursing Home residents. Thanks – please reply if you get this request.

And another:

Hello, Lee!
Could I be of any assistance in reporting weather conditions/readings for the northeast Bronx – Pelham Bay Park/City Island?i.e.Rain, snow, flooding, temperature, barometric pressure, etc.
Basically.. just another set of eyes for this outer area of New York City.

And another:

I worked in landscaping for 43 years. Outside work 6 days a week, plus drove an oil delivery truck in the winter. Always out in the weather. In the last 3 years the wind, especially out of the northwest has been relentless! The only calm is early AM and in summer Bermuda high when dew points and humidity are raging. I’m on LI. so the proximity to ocean and sound and peconic bay, but REALLY…… what’s going on?

When I responded to this guy, and told him he had the wrong Lee Goldberg, he actually replied:

Sorry. I thought that was a little too easy.

The Other Lee Goldbergs

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Sunny with 200% chance of Lee Goldbergs

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. 

These two Lee Goldbergs write thrillers. One of them wrote TRUE FICTION.

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.

 

 

The Story Behind THE WALK

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Here’s a new video interview with me about my thriller THE WALK, which twice hit #1 on the Amazon bestseller list and, if you don’t count my co-authored books with Janet Evanovich, is the bestselling novel of my career. It didn’t start out that way. It was a bomb when it was originally published in hardcover by Five Star, a small press, in the early 2000s. But I re-released it in a new ebook and paperback edition when the Kindle came along and it was an immediate hit. The novel has been published in a German and, starting TODAY, in a new French edition, too!