Review: Crown Vic 2: If I Were a Rich Man - Lee Goldberg

CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is the second volume in Lee Goldberg’s new series featuring ex-con and former professional car thief Ray Boyd. Ray wanders the country driving an old Crown Victoria interceptor that’s been decommissioned as a police car, making money when and how he can—often, but not always, illegally—and looking for just enough adventure and excitement to keep life interesting.

In this novella, Ray is on the hunt for a fortune in diamonds stolen in a robbery years earlier. He was in prison with one of the men who pulled off the heist. Legend has it that the guy hid the gems somewhere, and they’ve never been found. The problem is that the thief is an older man, he’s been released from prison, and he’s now in an assisted living center, suffering from dementia, so he may not even remember where he cached the diamonds. But if he does, Ray is going to find them and get his hands on them himself.

However, Ray’s plans are complicated by a beautiful young woman and a little matter of blackmail that ultimately may endanger his life.

Goldberg really keeps things racing along in this yarn. There are a couple of twists I should have seen coming but didn’t, and that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s skill in maintaining a breakneck pace. And Ray Boyd continues to be a fascinating character. He’s not a nice guy, at all. He reminds me a little of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker, except that Parker has some sort of moral compass that Ray seems to lack completely. In fact, this guy is so terrible you have to ask yourself how anybody could make him the protagonist of a series. But despite that, in the end you find yourself rooting for Ray to succeed, or at least I do. And that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s talent, too.

I don’t know if there are more Ray Boyd stories in the works, but I hope so. For now, CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is available in e-book and paperback editions. I really enjoyed it, and if you like hardboiled crime yarns, I give it a high recommendation.

Review: Crown Vic - Lee Goldberg

I’m not sure how this book slipped past me when Lee Goldberg published it a couple of years ago, but I’ve seen several mentions of it and its sequel recently and figured it was time for me to read it. CROWN VIC is a collection of two novellas featuring Ray Boyd, an ex-con and former professional car thief who drifts around in a black-and-white Crown Victoria that was once a police car, not looking for trouble, mind you, but usually finding it anyway.

The first novella is called “Ray Boyd Isn’t Stupid”, and he proves that when he takes a job as a handyman at a lakeside resort and winds up involved with the beautiful but amoral wife of the place’s middle-aged owner. It seems he treats her badly and has a lot of money stashed, and things would be so much better if Ray would just get rid of the guy for her . . .

This is, of course, the plot of countless 1950s noir novels published by Gold Medal, Dell, Avon, etc. But unlike the protagonists of those books, Ray isn’t stupid and turns the whole thing on its head—or at least he tries to. But Goldberg is pretty tricky with the plot of this one, springing twist after twist. It’s very well-written and very, very entertaining.

The second novella, “Occasional Risk”, finds Ray stopping for a few days at a rundown motel in Arizona. Every reader of noir novels knows that nothing good ever happens at rundown motels, especially when a beautiful blonde with trouble dogging her heels checks in. Goldberg draws some pretty specific comparisons between Ray and Jack Reacher in this one, and the comments are not only accurate but also pretty funny. The plot doesn’t have quite as many twists but still carries the reader along in fine fashion.

I read both of these novellas in one sitting each, which is pretty unusual for me these days. That’s how good they are. Ray may not be the most admirable character around, but he does make for compelling reading. This one, which is available on Amazon in e-book, audiobook, and paperback editions, gets a high recommendation. There’s a sequel out already and I’m looking forward to reading it.

Malibu Burning - Lee Goldberg

Lee Goldberg is one of the best thriller authors in the business and proves it again with MALIBU BURNING, the first book in a new series featuring a team of arson investigators for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Walter Sharpe is a veteran when it comes to figuring out the source of fires, a Sherlock Holmes of arson. Andrew Walker is Sharpe’s new partner, a former U.S. Marshal who has switched jobs because he’s promised his pregnant wife that he’ll do something safer than chasing down fugitives.

I think we can all guess how that’s going to work out.

On the opposite side of this equation from Sharpe and Walker is Danny Cole, a brilliant con man and master thief who was arrested by Walker at one time in the past and became a convict firefighter. This background gives Danny the idea for a spectacular heist when he gets out, and also provides him with a motive for revenge on a wealthy businessman who has a huge mansion in the Malibu hills. All Danny has to do is reunite his old team and set a few huge wildfires . . .

With some flashbacks to Danny working out his plan and setting things up, in classic heist novel fashion, Goldberg keeps things racing along at such a pace, and in such smooth prose, that it’s almost impossible to stop reading in this novel. I stayed up late to finish it, which is almost unheard of for me these days. Us old guys need our sleep! But giving up a little of it was well worthwhile because MALIBU BURNING barrels along to a great climax and a very satisfying ending. I thoroughly enjoyed it and give it a very high recommendation. It’ll be available from Amazon in e-book and paperback editions on September 1, but you can pre-order it now.

The Wrap Up

There’s no point in denying that 2022 was a rotten year in many ways, but there’s also no point in dwelling on that. So let’s turn our attention to more pleasant endeavors, such as writing, reading, editing, and publishing.

To take those things in reverse order, for most of this year I was the editor of Rough Edges Press, the mystery/thriller/men’s adventure imprint of Wolfpack Publishing. It was a wonderful job, as I got to work with Mike Bray, Jake Bray, Patience Bramlett, and all the other great people at Wolfpack, in addition to all the authors involved. While there, I was privileged to edit some really excellent books, and I’m proud of what the line accomplished. However, I stepped down at the end of October because I discovered that I couldn’t both edit and write at the level I wanted to, and although I didn’t mind slowing down some on my page production (more about that in the next paragraph) I just wasn’t ready to stop writing full-time. There are still too many books in my head clamoring to get out.

As I mentioned a few posts back, 2022 was the first year since 2004 that I didn’t write at least a million words of fiction. So the streak ends at 17 years, and while I might have preferred an even number (yes, I am a little OCD), I’m absolutely fine with that. I wrote approximately 900,000 words this year. That’s plenty. I think 750,000 would be a good total for 2023. I wrote at that level for many years before I started hitting a million, and I think I can continue producing at that level for a while yet. My plan for next year is to keep up with my regular ghost-writing job (I’m committed to approximately half a million words there) and devote the rest of the wordage to a few books of my own. We’ll see.

On the reading front, it was a good year, not at all rotten. I read 138 books. Here are my top ten favorites, in the order in which I read them:

A GUIDE TO THE GOOD LIFE: THE ANCIENT ART OF STOIC JOY, William B. Irvine

GUNS OF THE DAMNED, Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount)

IN THE PULP FICTION TRENCHES, Len Levinson

STAND UP AND DIE!: THE LOST THRILLERS OF MICKEY SPILLANE, Mickey Spillane

THE SPIDER: SCOURGE OF THE SCORPION, Will Murray

GHOST OF THE HARDY BOYS, Leslie McFarlane

FROM THE FILES OF . . . MIKE HAMMER, Mickey Spillane

THE RANCH CAT (apa STRAIGHT FROM BOOT HILL), Willliam Hopson

JANE FURY, James Robert Daniels

CALICO, Lee Goldberg

I’m aware that’s a pretty odd mix. Two of them I edited (the Levinson memoir and the Spillane prose collection; the other Spillane book is a collection of the Mike Hammer comic strip I had nothing to do with). Two of them aren’t out yet because I read them in manuscript, JANE FURY and CALICO, but they’ll be out next year and you should remember those titles because they’re great. The pulp influence is there in GUNS OF THE DAMNED, the first novel in the Silver Trent series originally published in THE WESTERN RAIDER and STAR WESTERN, and in the Hopson novel because he got his start in the Western pulps, and in the new Spider novel by Will Murray since the Spider is one of the iconic pulp hero characters. My study of Stoic philosophy kind of petered out as the year went on, but the lessons I learned from it came in handy more than once and I still plan to get back to it.

There were at least two dozen other books right on the verge of making this list, including quite a few I edited, starting with Jamie Mason’s Father Barrett series and Ryan Fowler’s Father Tag Nolan series. Both of those feature priests/detectives and both are absolutely excellent, but beyond that, they couldn’t be more different. You should check them out if you haven’t already. Chuck Dixon’s Levon Cade series continued this year with several great entries. Brent Towns added another top-notch action/adventure series to his tireless output with TALON and also gave us some fine hardboiled private eye novels set in Australia. Nik Morton’s Leon Cazador books are fast-paced international thrillers with a great protagonist. Stephen Mertz’s latest Cody’s War novel demonstrates that he hasn’t lost a step and is still a legend in the action/adventure field. And these are just Rough Edges Press books. I also read some great pulp reprints from Altus Press/Steeger Books and several superb hardboiled/noir novels from Stark House/Black Gat Books/Staccato Crime. I swear, if you can’t find plenty of great books to read these days, you’re just not looking hard enough!

Finally, this blog suffered a bit in 2022 because I just didn’t have enough time to devote to it. As a result, there were fewer posts than any year since I started it in 2004—and since I started it in July, that was only half a year. I hope to post more in 2023, including more book reviews, the return of movie reviews, and maybe an occasional post about what else is going on in my life, although generally, that stuff is pretty boring. My thanks to all of you reading this, whether you’ve been a regular reader since 2004 or just found the blog. Like the WesternPulps email group (which will celebrate its 24^th anniversary this spring), I intend to keep this going for a good long while yet.

Classic Noir Novels: I'll Find You - Richard Himmel

I’LL FIND YOU by Richard Himmel was one of the earliest Gold Medal novels and also one of the most successful, going through several reprintings after it was published originally in 1950. It’s the first of a series featuring Chicago lawyer Johnny Maguire, although I’m not sure Himmel (also a very successful interior decorator) had any plans to make Maguire a continuing character when he wrote this book.

Maguire is an interesting character, a scuffler and a scrounger, a low-rent type who has ambition to be something more, a womanizer and kind of a heel. But then he falls in love with the widow of a rich client, only to have her commit suicide by walking into Lake Michigan with a fortune in cash.

Ah, but you’ve read Gold Medal novels before. Johnny doesn’t believe she’s actually dead. He thinks she staged the suicide for some reason unknown to him, but he’s determined to find her and discover the truth.

Well, it’s no surprise that he does, and fairly quickly, too, and the whole thing plunges him into a conflict between two mobsters (one of them another of his clients), some romance, and a murder which everybody, cops and crooks alike, assumes Johnny committed. Can he get out of this mess and win the girl? That’s what the rest of the book is for, isn’t it?

I’d never read anything by Himmel before. He has a really appealing style in this book, fast-paced, funny, almost breezy at times, with lots of excellent dialogue, but he also manages to work in some poetic bits from time to time and some angst and tragedy. I’m not sure I’ve read anything exactly like it before, and I can see why I’LL FIND YOU was a big success. It really had me flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen.

This book, along with the other four Johnny Maguire novels and all the stand-alone novels by Himmel, has been reprinted by Lee Goldberg’s Cutting Edge Books. You can even get the complete collection for a very reasonable price. I really enjoyed I’LL FIND YOU and plan on reading the other books by Richard Himmel.

Forgotten Books: Three Television Books by Lee Goldberg

UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS, 1955 - 1989, THE BEST TV SHOWS THAT NEVER WERE, and TELEVISION FAST FORWARD: SEQUELS AND REMAKES OF CANCELLED SERIES are new e-book editions of three classic TV reference volumes from Lee Goldberg. Labors of love each and every one, and some of them years in the writing, as he explains in the excellent introductions, these books contain a wealth of information about TV pilots that didn't make it, stealth pilots, new versions of old shows, feature film versions of old shows, and a ton of other entertaining and informative material. Many of the pilots that didn't make the cut for the networks sound a lot better than some of the shows that did! If you're like me and have watched a lot of television over the years, you'll find a great deal to enjoy in these books. They're not the sort of thing you'll sit down and read all the way through, but they're perfect for dipping into any time you want a few minutes of entertainment. I love 'em. Highly recommended.

King City - Lee Goldberg

Tom Wade, the hero of Lee Goldberg's new novel KING CITY, is an honest cop, and that's what causes him huge problems and may cost him his life. It's already cost him his marriage and caused him to be transferred to an isolated substation in the very worst part of King City, the fictional town in Washington that's the setting of this book. You see, Wade testified against the other members of the Major Crimes Unit, all of whom are crooked and corrupt, and now the rest of the department, from the chief on down, hates him and wants to see him dead. Putting him in charge of the Darwin Gardens substation and giving him just two rookie cops to help him is the department's way of accomplishing that end.

Wade has other ideas, though, which include standing up to the thugs and the drug kingpin who rule the neighborhood and winning over the honest citizens of the neighborhood. And if he solves several murders and uncovers a serial killer along the way, so much the better.

As usual, Goldberg gives the reader a fast-moving story, some fine characters, great action scenes, and nice touches of humor, all conveyed in some of the smoothest prose you're going to encounter. The setting is very well realized, and I love the fact that Goldberg named several of the neighborhoods in King City after various TV writers, most of whom are probably pretty obscure by now.

KING CITY is the first book in an ongoing series, and I'm glad. I'm ready to read the next one right now. This one gets a high recommendation. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Dead Man #1 Free for Kindle!

Want to get started on the Dead Man series but haven't gotten around to it yet? Well, now's the perfect time because the first book is absolutely free on Amazon. Don't miss out on this deal.

McGrave - Lee Goldberg

If you travel in the same blog circles I do, you've probably read quite a bit about Lee Goldberg's new e-book McGRAVE in the past twenty-four hours. Well, I just finished it, and I'm here to tell you it's the best thing I've read so far this year. LA cop John "Tidal Wave" McGrave is straight out of an Eighties action-adventure movie, and in this yarn about McGrave's international pursuit of a thief and killer, Goldberg pulls off a very neat trick, producing a yarn that's part serious, part satire, and all action. It seemed like I had a grin on my face the whole time I was reading it. McGRAVE comes out tomorrow, and it gets a high recommendation from me. I loved it.

And I'm ready for the next McGrave book right now.

More About The Dead Man #5: The Blood Mesa

Here's my post on the Dead Man blog about writing THE BLOOD MESA.

The Dead Man #5: The Blood Mesa

Today is the official launch of THE BLOOD MESA, my entry is Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin's series THE DEAD MAN.  This was something of a departure for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  And I love that cover!

Watch Me Die - Lee Goldberg

(I read this book back when it first came out, under its original title THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE.  Lee has just reissued it as an e-book with a new title and new cover, so if you haven't read it yet, you definitely need to.  Here's what I had to say about it back in August 2005.)


Lee Goldberg is best known, of course, as a television writer and producer, as well as the author of the very active blog A Writer’s Life. But he’s also a novelist, and his latest, THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, is well worth your attention.


It’s the story of Harvey Mapes, a security guard at an exclusive, gated Southern California housing development. Harvey is also a fan of mystery fiction and spends most of his hours in the guard shack reading old paperbacks and wishing he could be more like Travis McGee. Harvey’s life changes when he is hired by one of the residents of the development to do some amateur private detective work and finds himself involved in something that at first glance would be right at home in one of the old Gold Medal novels he’s read.


This book starts out as a fine example of the humorous “lovable schmoe” school of detective fiction, and Goldberg does a good job with that part of it, but then it takes a sudden turn into darker and more dangerous territory and becomes even better. The plot becomes more complex and so do the characters, and while Goldberg plays scrupulously fair with his clues, nothing and nobody turns out be exactly that they seemed at first. Add to that some very smooth prose and a sense of compassion for the people he’s writing about, and you’ve got one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. Highly recommended.

A Deal You Absolutely Cannot Beat

From Lee Goldberg:

It was two years ago today that, at Joe Konrath's urging, I began my "Kindle Experiment" by making my out-of-print book THE WALK available as an ebook. I've sold close to 20,000 copies of THE WALK since then...and to celebrate, and in a blatant to attempt to propel THE WALK into the top 100 on Amazon for the first time, I am selling the book for just 99 cents for the next week.

But to make the offer even sweeter, and to promote my original ebook series THE DEAD MAN, anyone who emails me proof of purchase (at lee@leegoldberg.com) will get a free copy of FACE OF EVIL. That's two books for just 99 cents.

And those are two mighty fine books, too.  THE WALK is my favorite novel of Lee's and one of the best books I've read in recent years, and of course I think FACE OF EVIL is a hugely entertaining yarn.  If you haven't started the Dead Man series yet, this is the perfect chance.  And if you haven't read THE WALK, don't wait.  Get these books now.

The Jury Series #1: Judgment - Lee Goldberg

Back in the mid-Eighties, I was working in a used bookstore, and I used to see copies of a book called .357 VIGILANTE, by an author I’d never heard of named Ian Ludlow. I could tell it was a men’s adventure novel, a genre that wasn’t nearly as robust then as it had been ten years earlier. I read a lot of those books, but for some reason I don’t think I ever even picked up a copy of .357 VIGILANTE and flipped through it, let alone read it.


This is a classic case of not knowing what I was missing.


Now, of course, we know that “Ian Ludlow” was actually a college student named Lee Goldberg, who went on to become a top-notch novelist, screenwriter, and producer. He’s also a friend of mine and co-creator of THE DEAD MAN e-book series, for which I’ve written one of the books. So this isn’t exactly an unbiased review, but you know I don’t tell you something is good unless I really think it is.


The .357 VIGILANTE series ran for three books, all published by Pinnacle (in its original incarnation, not the Pinnacle line that’s now published by Kensington). There was a fourth book in the series that was never published at the time. However, Lee has brought back all four novels as e-books, which can be fought separately or all together under the title THE JURY SERIES. I just read the first one, now titled JUDGMENT, and it’s a fine novel.


You know right away that this is a little different from the usual men’s adventure novel because of the protagonist, Brett Macklin. Most of the men’s adventure heroes had military or law enforcement backgrounds. Brett is an aeronautical engineer who has become a pilot and owns a flying service that does a lot of work with movie companies, providing helicopters for aerial filming. Brett’s father is a beat cop in Los Angeles, though, and it’s his brutal murder in an apparently senseless thrill killing that starts Brett on the road to becoming a vigilante. The killers, members of a gang called the Bounty Hunters, escape justice in the courts, so Brett sets out to deliver some justice of his own, calling himself Mr. Jury.


Again, though, Brett is no superhuman men’s adventure hero. He screws up, he gets hurt, he’s lucky not to get killed several times, but eventually he uncovers an even bigger plot that puts a lot of people in danger.


This is a really entertaining thrill ride of a story with plenty of sex, violence, humor, social commentary, and great action scenes. When I think about what I was writing when I was in college . . . well, there’s really no comparison. JUDGMENT is the work of someone who was a solid pro, right from the first page.


I have the other three books in the series and will be getting to them soon. If you’ve been reading and enjoying the DEAD MAN books or Lee’s other novels and haven’t tried THE JURY SERIES yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. Highly recommended.

The Dead Man: Hell in Heaven - Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin

In a few short days, you'll be able to pick up this new e-book at Amazon, and if you have a Nook, you can already get it at Barnes & Noble.  I've already read it, and it's as creepy, funny, fast-moving, and exciting as the first two books in the series.  Don't miss it!

Great Deal on a Dead Man

To celebrate the release of THE DEAD MAN #2: RING OF KNIVES by James Daniels, the first book in the series, FACE OF EVIL by series creators Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, is now available for a limited time only at the fantastic price of 99 cents.  If you haven't yet jumped on this series, this is a great chance for you to do so.  And if you've already read the first book, you'll definitely want to pick up RING OF KNIVES, which is excellent and highly recommended by me.

The Dead Man Comes to Life

FACE OF EVIL, the first adventure of THE DEAD MAN is now available for the Kindle on Amazon and for the Nook on Barnes & Noble.  This is the debut of the new adventure/horror series created by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, and it's one of the most entertaining, fastest-paced yarns I've read in a long time . . . and I'm not just saying that because I'm going to be writing one of the stories coming up later on in the series.  Lee and Bill have come up with a fine premise -- a man who should have died but didn't (or did he?) trying to make sense out of his return to life and his ongoing battle with a mysterious enemy.  I think this is going to be a lot of fun for the readers and writers alike, and I'm honored to be part of it, as well as looking forward to seeing what adventures the other authors come up with for Matt Cahill.  You definitely want to get in on this one right from the start.

Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out - Lee Goldberg

What’s left to say about Lee Goldberg’s Monk books? You already know they’re some of the very best TV tie-in books being published today. More than that, they’re some of the very best mystery novels being published today, period. MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT is the latest in the series, and it’s excellent, as always. You should read it right away, if you haven’t already.


Oh, I suppose I can say a little more. In this one, Monk again loses his job as a consultant because of severe budget cutbacks by the San Francisco Police Department, and the floundering economy is a big part of the plot. Monk is in even worse shape because he had invested all his money with a financial manager who turns out to be crooked, meaning he’s broke. That leads him and assistant Natalie Teeger to take a series of oddball jobs while Monk is also trying to solve several murders that are part of the same case involving the larcenous financial manager.


The plot is appropriately twisty, but as usual, Goldberg plays fair with the clues. Monk has never been more miserable (or funnier), and Natalie’s narration is as charming and appealing as ever. I was really sad to see the TV series end. For years now, it’s been a summer tradition at our house to watch the previous season of MONK on DVD (along with PSYCH, another great series). Thankfully, the novel series is continuing, so we won’t be completely without visits from Monk, Natalie, Captain Stottlemeyer, and Lt. Disher. For now, MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT comes highly recommended by me, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Lee handles the developments from the TV series finale in future books.

The Walk - Lee Goldberg

We all know Lee Goldberg as the author of the Monk and Diagnosis Murder novels, as well as a prolific and top-notch screenwriter, but this is one of his non-series novels, originally published back in 2004 by Five Star. The ebook version has been very successful for Lee, and it’s now available in print again, this time as a trade paperback. So you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a copy of it to read.


And you should find a copy and read it, just as soon as you possibly can. It’s that good.


THE WALK takes place in the first two days after the Big One, the incredibly devastating earthquake that everybody knows is coming, finally hits Los Angeles. TV executive Marty Slack is on the other side of the city from his wife and his home when everything comes crashing down. Marty survives the actual quake in fairly good shape, but his car is crushed and the streets are too torn up to drive on, anyway. So the only way he can get home and get back to his wife is to walk across the dangerous chaos that is Los Angeles after the earthquake.


Naturally it’s not easy. Marty runs into all sorts of trouble from looters, aftershocks, explosions, and other natural disasters. He nearly gets killed time and again and probably wouldn’t make it if not for the help of Buck Weaver, a very colorful bounty hunter and private detective he runs into along the way. While he’s trying to survive this odyssey, Marty also goes through an emotional journey as well, coming to grips with some of the problems that have plagued him throughout his life.


THE WALK is part adventure novel, part horror novel, part comedy. A lot of terrible, tragic things happen, but Goldberg’s dry, satiric wit crops up often enough to keep things from getting overwhelmingly gloomy. Marty and Buck are fine characters who play off each other wonderfully well, and the pacing really keeps the reader turning the pages. All of it leads up to an absolutely great ending that really put a grin on my face.


As with Cap’n Bob Napier’s THE TOYMAN RIDES AGAIN, this is hardly an unbiased review, since Lee Goldberg and I have been friends for years. However, trust me on this. THE WALK is one of the very best novels you’ll read this year or any other year.

Tied In: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-in Writing - Lee Goldberg, editor

I haven’t done all that much in the way of tie-in writing – three Walker, Texas Ranger novels, a Kolchak the Night Stalker story, an upcoming Green Hornet story – but I’ve been a fan of the genre for decades, going back to those Lone Ranger novels I checked out of the Odessa Public Library and the Man From U.N.C.L.E. paperback I bought brand-new in 1964 off the paperback rack in Buddies Grocery Store. (Notice how smoothly I work in those bits of book nostalgia.) I’ve read many, many TV tie-in novels and movie novelizations over the years and still enjoy them.


Despite my somewhat limited professional experience in the genre, I’ve been a member of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers since it was founded several years ago by Lee Goldberg and Max Allan Collins. The IAMTW has just published a new non-fiction book on the subject of tie-ins, and it’s an excellent work that offers something for just about everybody.


If you’re an author interested in writing tie-ins, TIED IN offers advice from the top names in the business, ranging from the general guidelines of a round table discussion of the business and craft of writing tie-ins to specific subjects such as writing tie-in novels for the YA market (from Aaron Rosenberg), novelizing video games (from William C. Dietz), writing soap opera-based tie-ins (from Alina Adams), and writing movie spin-off novels (from Greg Cox). If you’re a fan of certain TV series, such as STAR TREK, PSYCH, MURDER SHE WROTE, and BURN NOTICE, you can get all the behind-the-scenes stories on how the novels based on those series came to be written.


For someone like me, who’s very interested in the history of popular fiction, the highlight of TIED IN is David Spencer’s “American TV Tie-ins from the 50s Through the Early 70s”, which is almost a book in itself. It’s a fascinating historical discussion of how the TV tie-in novel originated and evolved over the years and touches on many of the books I was buying and reading when they were new. This article really brought back a lot of good memories for me. Along similar lines, also of great interest to me were fine articles by Paul Kupperberg about comic book and comic strip tie-in novels (I read a bunch of those, too) and Robert Greenberger about the connection between pulp magazines and tie-ins.


TIED IN is available as an e-book right now, with a print edition coming out soon. Either way, I don’t think you can go wrong. It’s informative, entertaining, and a must-have if you have any interest in tie-in fiction. Highly recommended.