Friday, May 18, 2007

"Blackmailer"

Coming in June from Hard Case Crime: the re-issue of George Axelrod's Blackmailer.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the Academy Award-Nominated Screenwriter of
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Comes a Breathtaking Story of Murder and Mischief...

IT’S THE STORY of a big-game hunter, fisherman, fighter, visitor to Cuba, drunk, and Nobel Prize-winning author, recently deceased of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, whose final unpublished manuscript could fetch a mint...

IT’S THE STORY of a short, balding man with a high-pitched voice and a vicious wit, whose cocktail parties are the talk of the town, especially when a beautiful woman dies at one of them...

IT’S THE STORY of Hollywood’s sexiest starlet, who manages to conceal things even when she’s wearing nothing but a towel...

...and it's the story of Dick Sherman, intrepid New York publisher, on the trail of the literary find of the century—and the killer who will stop at nothing to keep it from being found.

  • First publication in almost 50 years!
  • George Axelrod is the legendary, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, The Seven-Year Itch, The Manchurian Candidate, and Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol
  • Axelrod also wrote for television and radio, and penned the Broadway plays "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" and "Goodbye Charlie"
  • Booklist on BLACKMAILER: "[A] classic thriller...everyone smokes, ice buckets are always full, a good suit costs $100, and a copy of the Daily News costs a nickel.... Think Thin Man films with Mickey Spillane-ish hard cases standing in for the suave uptown types.