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Home
Back
About Bob
Excerpts
Reviews
In Site Column
Where the Lies Begin
Hot Paint
John Lennon
James Dean
Elvis & Marilyn
Links of Note

Robert S. Levinson has worked as a show business reporter; as the proprietor of one of the world’s largest independent PR companies focused on the music industry; and as a writer-producer of comedy, music, variety, and awards specials for television. He has drawn on his extensive entertainment experience for his series of mysteries featuring Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner, most recently Hot Paint (Forge, 2002). He has also published short stories that are tied to his series (such as the one in this issue), as well as a stand-alone thriller, Ask a Dead Man (Five Star, 2004).


AHMM: Your mystery series is set in the entertainment worlds of film and music where you yourself have professional experience. What has been your connection to these worlds?

RSL: I spent a number of years writing about show business for newspapers and magazines; more years in entertainment public relations, creating and running what at one time was the world's largest independent PR company focused on the music industry; and several more years writing and producing about 40 comedy, music, variety and awards specials for television.


AHMM: How has your experience informed your novels? What are the challenges of setting a novel in a high-glamour milieu?

RSL: My novels built around the adventures of newspaper columnist Neil Gulliver and his ex-wife, soap opera sex queen Stevie Marriner, are an extension of those former lives and have given me greater personal satisfaction. What I observed and experienced firsthand makes it possible for me to juice up the reality in my fiction, creating a world that in many ways is more honest, revealing, and believable than what’s presented as the truth in non-fiction works, where the author relies on publicity-generated drivel of past decades that time has remade as truth or on facts spoon-fed them by ego-driven celebrities out to dress up their images and reinvent themselves for history.


AHMM: Your mysteries have revolved around the legacies of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, John Lennon, James Dean, and Andy Warhol. What are the challenges of building plots around such iconic figures?

RSL: There’s always the risk of alienating readers, who approach the series with a preconceived notion of these legendary figures, their iconic images set in stone. That I knew Elvis, John, and Andy, had friends in common with Monroe and Dean, and can present a unique kind of verisimilitude isn’t necessarily acceptable to their most die-hard fans, who are quick to condemn me in e-mails to my Web site (www.robertslevinson.com).

Building these novels on foundations of truth–working in and around legitimate events, dates, and places–presents another challenge. With Elvis and Marilyn, it was off the reality that both worked on the 20th Century Fox movie lot at the same time. With Dean, the truth that so many of his co-stars and friends died under strange circumstances. With John, the tragedy of his assassination. With Andy, art and celebrity world connections we shared.


AHMM: What sorts of expectations do you find readers bring to books about such figures?

RSL: I suspect they want reassurance about their beliefs as much as they hope to learn something new that will underscore their allegiance to the icons. I’ve always written to this notion, maybe ex-posing some warts and pimples along the way, but never with any intent to knock their heroes off their pedestals. However, the simple notion of Elvis and Marilyn sharing the sack was enough to turn one El fan ballistic on me, while a Monroe buff e-mailed me his appreciation for confirming something he always knew in his heart. Go figure . . .


AHMM: Augie Fowler, a character in the story in this issue, has a special role in the series. Can you explain him and talk about what appeals to you about him?

RSL: Augie is an imperfect septuagenarian, whose intelligence, compassion, loyalty, and late-in-life decision to seek a higher spirituality more than make up for his myriad character flaws. He’s one of those rare "been-there-done-that" types who, in fact, has been there and done that. He left a moderately successful life in show business to become an award-winning crime reporter before personal tragedy led him to found an unconventional religious order. He knows and has access to almost everyone, which regularly proves of great value to Gulliver, with whom he shares a dysfunctional father-son relationship.

If I hadn’t fathered Augie I’d be envious of the author who did, which is one reason I used him in "The Eleven O’Clock Number," will probably bring him back in new short stories, and hope to one day yank Augie away from Neil and Stevie and into a novel or two of his own.


AHMM: You've been writing and producing the MWA Edgar Awards ceremony for the past couple of years. How has your career in entertainment public relations prepared you for that?

RSL: In my earliest PR years, I had the amazing good fortune to be involved with the Motion Picture Academy and the annual Oscar presentation, the Grammy Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards, and various television shows that cumulatively gave me a free education in how these programs are made. Later, I jumped at the opportunity to put this knowledge to the test with my own TV specials. When the decision was made a couple years ago to change the Edgars from a modest, informal "family" ceremony into more of a structured, scripted event with a bit of show biz glitz, my fellow MWA board members invited me to get involved.


AHMM: What are you working on right now?

RSL: I’m putting the finishing touches on another stand-alone thriller, and then may turn to a new Affair for Neil and Stevie. I’m also making time for short stories with themes that let me stretch as a writer, hoping that one day there’ll be enough of them to inspire publishing interest in a collection. Meanwhile, I’ve put on permanent hold my next attempt to conquer Everest.

Copyright © 2004, Dell Publications. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the December 2004 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.