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Official Site of Author Robert S. Levinson
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MSNBC HOMEPAGE BOOKCLUB The description of our August BookClub selection, �The James Dean Affair,� (Forge) by Robert S. Levinson, reads like a recipe for the perfect late summer literary cocktail to join you in a hammock, on the beach, or in a rocking chair on the porch. By Digby Diehl POUR A GENEROUS SLUG of well-plotted murder mystery into a mixture of romance and witty repartee. Add equal parts of Old Hollywood lore and contemporary Hollywood cynicism. Spice with a bit of sex and sweeten with humor. Shake - do not stir. The story opens at a ceremony for a new James Dean commemorative stamp in the Hollywood branch of the Post Office, where Levinson's intrepid sleuths - Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner - just happen to be on hand. Stevie is trying to pump up publicity for her �Bedrooms and Board Rooms� soap opera and drags her ex-husband, Neil, along to cajole him into writing about it for his Hollywood column in the Los Angeles Daily. From out of nowhere, a gunman appears and kills an old actor in the crowd. What is most astonishing is that the gunman looks exactly like James Dean. From there, Levinson races off into a fast, exciting saga based on the premise that someone is systematically murdering people associated with the films of James Dean - and the murderer may be Dean himself. This, of course, necessitates explaining how Dean might have lived after his Spyder Porsche convertible spun out-of-control near the Y intersection of Routes 466 and 41 and wrapped around a telephone pole on September 30, 1955. Levinson deftly bobs and weaves through stories of Dean's legend in Hollywood in such movies as �Rebel Without A Cause,� �East of Eden,� and �Giant.� He cleverly plants seeds of doubt and builds a plausible, if fictional, case for Dean's presence. Along the way, he probes into the deaths of Nick Adams, Sal Mineo, and
Natalie Wood, who were Dean's co-stars in �Rebel Without A Cause.� Neil and Stevie are a Nick and Nora Charles for the 21st century. Married for seven years and divorced for the same amount of time, they are still in love - but can't stand the idea of living together. This does not preclude some sweetly romantic scenes and some steamy sleepovers that make their attraction/rejection relationship richly complicated. Levinson can turn a neat descriptive phrase: �Lupe's Golden Enchilada was a take-out joint too small to qualify for as a hole in the wall, a half block east of Hollywood and Vine, across from the Pantages Theater, currently between shows, its iron gate pulled across the entrance to keep the walking wounded from using it as an overnight refuge�. I cut across the street-level plaza smiling at the decor at this [Red Line subway] stop, as camp as a drag queen's wardrobe. Replicas of the old Brown Derby restaurant, the roof of the Chinese Theater, and a white stretch limo sat on top of the pedestrian shelters. A yellow brick road of tile started a twist down a stairway to the mezzanine level. The station's roof lined with actual reels of 35-millimeter film, painted blue. In all, the reality of the unreal, near a crossroads that once marked the film capital of the world and now was the center of an area that needed a miracle to go with the Chamber of Commerce's revitalization efforts.� Eventually, Neil and Stevie head to Fairmount, Indiana - James Dean's
hometown - to pursue this whodunit to its amazing conclusion. Naturally, I can't
tell you how it ends. But I can assure you that the plot keeps you guessing, and
the scary fun never stops. Once you take a sip of this page-turning concoction,
you'll keep sipping until you get to the bottom of the story. Hollywood Curse? Los Angeles newspaper columnist Neil Gulliver and his ex-wife, Stevie
Marriner, the �sex queen of the soaps,� discover a pattern in the supposed
accidental deaths of movie icon James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause co-stars
Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Nick Adams. Were they and others associated with
Dean murdered? Was Dean's tragic death in a fiery highway crash forty-five years
ago no accident, or is it possible that-as millions of his fans continue to
believe-James Dean Neil and Stevie escape threats on their own lives while tracking those
answers and a solution to a series of new murders on a trail that takes them
over the same death route the star drove in his Porsche and, finally, to his
boyhood home in Fairmount, Indiana. Nothing is as it seems about James Dean, not
the truth and, for certain, not the lies. But-which is which? |
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