12 for 2012
by
Clifford Irving
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD HUGHES
Legendary sums of money . . . corrupt political power . . . outrageous germ phobia . . . sexual kinkiness. The life of Texas oil tycoon Howard Hughes illustrated all that and more. Pioneering inventor, record-breaking aviator, Oscar-winning moviemaker, he bought not only the favors of dozens of Hollywood stars but those of U.S. presidents.
In his twilight years he became a recluse – some suspected that he had died and his business associates had stolen his billions. Enter author and adventurer Clifford Irving. “I’ve known Howard since I was a boy,” he told his publisher, “and he’s alive, and wants me to help him write the story of his life. It’s going to be more shocking than anyone could have foreseen.”
The book was called a hoax, but many believe that President Richard Nixon’s fear of the truth in the manuscript caused him to order the doomed burglary of Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate. For what he had done, Clifford Irving was sentenced to 2 ½ years in federal prison.
Except for a private 1998 edition (selling for $350 and up when a copy surfaces), this is the first publication of the Hughes Autobiography in the United States.
“There’s no doubt about it. This is the authentic voice of Howard Hughes. It’s unique, it can’t be duplicated. This is his autobiography.” — Frank McCulloch, Bureau Chief, Time
“It’s the most exciting and revelatory first-person story that Life will ever have published. It’s fantastic.”— Ralph Graves, Managing Editor, Life
“It’s almost impossible to know where fact leaves off and fiction begins, if indeed that distinction should be made. This is a hypnotizing narrative, a brilliant study of money’s power to corrupt absolutely. It’s a crime not to publish it.” — Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
“The most daring literary caper of all time.” — Newsweek
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JAILING
The Prison Memoirs of 00040
When the Nixon administration dealt Clifford Irving a 2½ year prison sentence for committing the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax, the 41-year-old author was shocked . . . and unprepared to serve time.
In prison, he learned how to jail and prevail. But then he was caught with contraband, moved to a three-star penitentiary, and later accused not only of inciting a riot but of conspiring to kill the warden.
This is the true and penetrating story of how Irving survived and won the battle for his freedom.
After his journal was excerpted in Playboy, he chose not to have the full memoir published until this 2012 eBook edition.
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TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA
Tom Mix, young cowboy, idealist, and future movie star, rides south of the border in 1913 to fight at the side of the charismatic Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary leader, already a legend. In the violent beauty of war-torn Mexico a partnership is formed, and an epic is born.
Portrayed in this fact-based saga are some of the most dynamic characters ever to come to life on a page: Hannah, Tom’s ambitious Jewish fiancée; Rosa, the beautiful Indian child widow who loves him; Elisa, the sophisticated German rancher who becomes Tom’s mistress; Rudolfo Fierro, Villa’s “butcher,” who vows to end Tom’s life; Lieutenant George S. Patton, Jr., ceaseless hunter of both Villa and Fierro; and above all, the tempestuous Pancho Villa, a man of ungovernable emotions, a hero and villain larger than life.
A story of romance and loyalty, revenge, revolution, and gold. Publishers Weekly called it “grand entertainment, full of wit, charm, and zest.” The Los Angeles Times wrote that “Irving spins a fantasy worthy of Mark Twain,” and the Houston Chronicle said, “Irving’s wonderful big new book is a rollicking, ribald tale.”
“Move over, Butch and Sundance, it’s not that I love you both less, just that I’ve come to love Pancho and Tom more . . . a high-stepping, swashbuckling romance inspired by the unassailable historical fact that in his greenhorn youth, before he became a movie-star cowboy, Tom Mix rode in the company of the peasant revolutionary Pancho Villa . . . Who among us has not wished he’d grown up as romantically as Mix does here?” — New York Times Book Review
“With Tom Mix and Pancho Villa, Clifford Irving takes his place among the giants of contemporary literature, dazzling us all with this robust, rousing, riproaring work of art.” — Ernest Lehman, author of North by Northwest
“Fabulous, big, rawboned wild-blooded adventure tale that gives the sights and sounds and smells of a turn-of-the-century world real enough to touch. Clifford Irving has written a novel to make any writer proud and many readers grateful.” — Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“Intelligently conceived, rapidly paced, attitudinally wry, earthy – a well-written, cannily contemporary tale about the past.” — Dallas Times Herald
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FAKE !
The Story of Elmyr de Hory,
the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time
This is an incredible tale of three rogues who swindled oil tycoons, movie stars, top art galleries and great museums, and almost caused the collapse of the international art world. It was the inspiration for filmmaker Orson Welles’ last major movie, “F For Fake,” now a cult classic.
Where? – London, Paris, New York, Texas, Tokyo, and the decadent, sunny Mediterranean island of Ibiza, now the disco capital of Europe.
Who? — Elmyr de Hory: an elegant Jewish aristocrat whom World War II had stripped of everything but his genius at imitating Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Renoir, and other great painters of the 20th century.
Fernand Legros: a ruthless Egyptian who decreed that museums, art galleries and millionaire collectors should finance his love of luxury and pretty boys.
Reál Lessard: an Adonis-like Canadian youth who began as Fernand’s protegé and in the end out-dueled the master in cunning.
When? – 1946 to 1976.
The Chicago Tribune called Fake! “The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world . . . one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time.”
“A delightfully vicious book, a joy to read and contemplate.” — Pablo Picasso
“A story to remember and revel in.” — St. Louis Globe-Democrat
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T R I A L
A thrilling adventure into the real world of criminal law, a rich and powerful contemporary tale that deals with murder, the morality of justice and the perils of love, Clifford Irving’s novel sets a new standard for courtroom fiction.
A twisting, relentless thriller, Trial follows Texas lawyer Warren Blackburn as he defends two accused murderers in two separate cases. One of his clients, a former beauty queen and brazen owner of a topless nightclub, shot her multimillionaire gynecologist lover – she claims – in self-defense. The other is a homeless illegal alien accused of killing a man for a few dollars in his wallet.
When the two cases merge and become one, Warren’s entire life and career are threatened. William Safire in The New York Times called this “the novel of the year.”
“Don’t begin this book at bedtime or you’ll be up all night. Trial is like a birchbark canoe or a seven-layer cake. You can go crazy trying to figure out how it’s made, and it’s made by a master.” — Caroline See, Los Angeles Times
“The courtroom scenes are breathtaking . . . gripping suspense . . . riveting!”
— Publishers Weekly
“Jet-propelled . . . colorful, down-and-dirty characters . . . most readers will want to read this at one sitting.” — Library Journal
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FINAL ARGUMENT
The startling novel of a district attorney who, twelve years after sending a convicted murderer to Death Row, returns to the same courtroom to try to save that same man’s life. A masterly tale of murder, guilt, and infidelity, set in Florida and featuring that rarest of heroes: a criminal lawyer with a conscience.
Can Ted Jaffe represent a murderer he once prosecuted? The legal establishment insists he can’t. Final Argument is about Jaffe’s war – risking his career, his marriage, and his personal safety – to free a man he believes he has grievously wronged. The London Daily Express hailed it as “a spellbinding courtroom drama.”
“A courtroom thriller, a mean streets thriller, a Florida cracker thriller, a gritty prison thriller, and an Everyman study of good and evil all rolled into one. And every part of it is terrific. What a wonderful piece of storytelling!”— Donald Westlake, The New York Times
“Only a handful of American authors have ever been able to transform murder and infidelity into poetry, and Irving is one of those writers. Not to be missed, this book has best-seller stamped on every page.”— Donald Porter, Mystery News
“Two cliffhanger trials, a moral crisis, violence, love — it’s all here.” — Mail on Sunday (London)
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THE ANGEL OF ZIN
At Zin, a Nazi death camp in Poland, the Jewish mistress of the camp commandant stumbles upon the strangled body of an informer. Soon an SS lieutenant is found, throat cut ear to ear.
An irate Gestapo colonel orders the Berlin Criminal Police to solve these crimes in the name of justice.
The hunter is Paul Bach, Berlin’s Chief Homicide Inspector, a widower and wounded combat veteran of the Russian Front, a man at odds with war and evil. And the hunted is a killer who always leaves a clue in the form of a cryptic note signed “the Angel of Zin.”
As hunter closes in on hunted, this daring novel offers an answer to the question all decent men and women at some time must ask themselves: “If I had been a German then, and realized what was happening, what would I have done?”
“Absolutely compelling. A totally engrossing thriller.”— Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s List
“Exciting, dynamic, marvelously written.”— Bestsellers
“Masterfully done. A powerful novel.”— Publishers Weekly
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i remember amnesia
Clifford Irving’s new novel, not yet published in print, tells the tale of Billy Braverman, a young genius, TV star, and passionate rock climber – and he’s in trouble. Billy is indicted in a New York juvenile court for the killing of his teen-aged girlfriend’s father, Carter Bedford, a garbage collector who believes he may be a descendant of Shakespeare.
Son of a criminal defense attorney and an eminent mutual fund founder, Billy has a heart of gold and the canny mind of an old soul. Can he possibly be guilty of murder? – and, if he’s guilty, what drove him to do it?
I Remember Amnesia follows this extraordinary gifted boy – accompanied by Amy, a beautiful girl with a dangerous secret, and Iphigenia, a pgymy green monkey with a remarkable talent – on a unique literary journey that we want never to end.
Please feel free to review the eBook edition.
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DADDY’S GIRL
The Campbell Murder Case
James Campbell, well-liked Texas lawyer, successful although reputedly unscrupulous, and Virginia, his paralegal wife of 40 years, are found brutally shot to death in the bedroom of their Houston home. With no witnesses and only allegations of family greed, incest, and sexual abuse, the murder remains unsolved for years. The most likely suspects, the victims’ youngest daughter Cindy, and her ex-Marine boyfriend, David West, have an alibi the police can’t crack.
And then David West falls passionately in love with Kim Paris, a sexy ex-stripper turned private investigator. She coaxes a confession from David which leads to a complex capital murder case exploding into national news and prime-time TV talk shows.
Clifford Irving wrote: “I started out in Houston as a writer on assignment . . . but I became an investigator, a friend to many of the dramatis personae, and a trial witness. As a result, to my discomfort, I helped to determine the outcome of events.”
The story of Kim Paris, beautiful and ambitious; Cindy Campbell Ray, a tortured woman moving in and out of obesity; and David West, a man determined to do the right thing even if it requires multiple murder, is as spectacular and thrilling a true-crime courtroom drama as you will ever read.
“Here are all the elements to satisfy any true crime fan: parricide, incest, sexual enticement . . . a fascinatingly sordid story.” — Baltimore Sun
“Irving builds suspense with skill and makes the people come to life . . . a fine book.” — Houston Chronicle
“Few writers could have pulled together so insightful a work.” — Austin Challenger
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DIABLO VALLEY
By brute force and doggedness, Gavin Roy molded an Indian wilderness into the greatest mining and ranching empire in the Old West. He ruled the minds and bodies of every man and woman in Diablo Valley.
This vivid tale of a ruthless man, his rebellious son, and the beautiful woman from post-Civil War New York who becomes wife to one and mistress to the other, was called by the Guardian “an unforgettable novel of swift action and rare psychological power.”
“Admirably written, with splendid set-pieces including a gunfight John Ford would be proud to town.” — Observer
“A superb, powerful novel that grips the reader from start to thrilling finish. Its solidity is that of Greek myth.”— Times Literary Supplement
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THE SPRING
Set in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, this is the tale of a snowbound Rocky Mountain town with a remarkable secret to protect from outsiders – a secret worth dying for, and perhaps worth killing for.
Dennis Conway, New York criminal lawyer, has moved west to marry Sophie, the beautiful mayor of the 9,000-feet-high isolated hamlet of Springhill. When his new in-laws are charged with hunting down and murdering two of their close friends, Dennis is shocked, disbelieving, and he defends Sophie’s parents at trial in nearby Aspen.
What he learns in the course of his investigation is a stunning portrait of social contract in the interests of longevity – a love story, a murder story, and a skiing story with the most remarkable avalanche scene ever written.
“An extraordinarily entertaining and thoughtful combination of Lost Horizons and Presumed Innocent. Not only is it a mystery — on at least two levels — but it poses troubling questions concerning prolonged life and its ultimate value. — Booklist
“Irving delivers a parable about aging and euthanasia that’s spare of prose and thoroughly creepy; book discussion groups will love it. Recommended for all libraries.”— Library Journal
“Irving drives his narrative from the fantastic to the realistic and back again, playing a game that’s sure and steady.” — Publishers Weekly
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BLOOMBERG DISCOVERS AMERICA
The time is 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, and Jack Bloomberg, a Jewish costume jewelry salesman in Philadelphia, is unable to pay the rent. Bidding a tearful farewell lto his beloved wife Sarah, he stuffs his inventory into the backseat of his jalopy and sets out for boom-town Miami Beach.
This is the new, previously unpublished tale of Bloomberg’s unusual adventures as he is swallowed up by the Deep South.
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At the age of 6, Author Clifford Irving published his first short story, Mother Duck Died, in a summer camp magazine. Seventy-five years later he still has a copy of it, but it’s buried deep in archived manuscripts, notes, and correspondence and stored in the garage of his Rocky Mountain home. The University of Texas/Austin wants that archive for its Center for American History, so one day the story may see the light.
Clifford was born and brought up in Manhattan, studied painting at the High School of Music & Art, then went on to Cornell Unversity where, he remembers, “I chased beautiful, unconquerable coeds, rowed on the crew, and wrote poetry. After working as a copyboy for the New York Times, I sailed to Europe in search of adventure. In Cambridge, England, I finished my first novel.”
He traveled twice around the world before most people living in it today were born, sailing the Atlantic on a three-masted schooner, standing guard in an Israeli kibbutz, smuggling whisky from Tangier to Spain, living on a houseboat in Kashmir and in a Hong Kong brothel. After teaching at UCLA grad school, he became a correspondent to the Middle East, kept writing, publishing, and buying houses which wound up with ex-wives, and then in 1970, in the spirit of the times, concocted a writing event which became the Howard Hughes Autobiography hoax.
Living on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, and in the mountains of Mexico and Colorado, he has written and published 20 books, hundreds of articles, and lectured worldwide on cosmology, the art market, and the US justice system. Today, he counts among his blessings three grown sons, one grandson, his devoted wife Julie, his flower garden, and a few close friends.
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