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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR A RHUMBA IN WALTZ TIME “More fun than peeking through keyholes in the Golden Age of Hollywood before World War II...a nostalgic, wisecracking, action-packed romp filled with an insider’s knowledge of show business and the movie star gossip mill." --JOSEPH WAMBAUGH, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master * “Levinson has done it again—concocted a lethal crime cocktail that mixes Hollywood fact and fiction with a master storyteller’s magic wand.” —WILLIAM LINK, five-time Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award winner * I have just read a book that I enjoyed so very much I am singing its praises 4 months before pub date. Bob Levinson’s A RHUMBA IN WALTZ TIME is a book to look for. —RUTH JORDAN. editor-in-chief, Crimespree Magazine * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STARRED REVIEW Depression-era Hollywood forms the backdrop for this sharp-edged noir from Levinson (The Traitor in Us All). In 1933, Chris Blanchard's career as an LAPD detective comes to an abrupt end after he refuses to look the other way when his colleagues victimize a prostitute. Five years later, Blanchard undertakes "special problems" for the MGM studio. One such problem involves actress Marie MacDaniels, who comes to his apartment drunk late one night, distraught over having shot her actor husband, Day Covington, and hands over the murder weapon. When Blanchard visits the scene of the crime, he quickly finds evidence clearing MacDaniels and sends her into hiding while he looks into the matter. That crime proves to be but the tip of a very violent iceberg. Photographer to the stars Otto Rothman also ends up dead, and mobster Bugsy Siegel and some American Nazi sympathizers appear to be behind some of the untimely deaths. Blanchard, a character Chandler would recognize, deserves a series of his own. "...a superb Depression Era Hollywood Noir. (Chris) Blanchard is a tough protagonist who does not take prisoners. ... Readers will enjoy this 1930s thriller as the MGM major and minor leagues star system comes across in living color (even if the movies were mostly black and white)."--THE THRILLING DETECTIVE OF RECENT NOTE... Bob's Derringer Award-winning short story, "The Quick Brown Fox," which first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, is included in the new anthology, Between the Dark and The Daylight and 27 More of the Year's Finest Crime & Mystery Stories from Tyrus Books (ISBN 10: 0982520956 and ISBN 13: 978-0982520956), joining work by Joyce Carol Oates, T. Jefferson Parker, Michael Connelly, Peter Robinson, Doug Allyn, Charlaine Harris and others
Bob’s short story is the title
piece in the anthology A Prisoner of Memory and 24 of the Year’s
Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and
Ed Gorman; Pegasus Books
An original short, "And the Winner is...," appears in
Hollywood and Crime: An Anthology of Hollywood Crime Stories,"
edited by Robert Randisi; Pegasus Books;
AN ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE
READERS AWARD WINNER
THREE CONSECUTIVE YEARS
"Death Conquers All"
"The Man in the Van"
and
"Take My Word for It and
You Don't Have to Answer"
MURDER TIMES TWO Comprising two one-act stage plays by Bob and nominated for an “Angie” award of the International Mystery Writers Festival was performed during the annual IMWF fest in June, 2008, at RiverPark Center in Owensboro, KY
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