NEW RELEASES

LEWIS B. FRUMKES RADIO SHOW

Listen to the irrepressible Professor Frumkes interview Heywood Gould about writing novels & screenplays

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2008 Hammett Prize
and Foreword Magazine Finalist for Crime Writing, and Bronze Medal winner of the Independent Publishing Award for Mystery/Thriller of the Year.

LEADING LADY (Book)

An escaped con out for revenge. A super spy on a secret mission. A mafia captain who has to kill or be killed. And a young actress who has to give the performance of her life- just to stay alive. Their lives collide on a cold winter’s day in New York in Heywood Gould’s new thriller.

Read an Excerpt...

LEADING LADY (Audiobook)

Tolmitch Productions presents “Leading Lady,” as a dramatized audiobook with a full cast and original music. Written and directed by Heywood Gould, author of Fort Apache, the Bronx, Cocktail and Double Bang, Starring Richard Portnow, Beege Barkette.

Listen to an Excerpt...

BLOG : Latest From The Daily Event...

AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 12

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE/PART6

THE SECRET OF THE CRYPTIC MATCHBOOK

Chapels are filling. Mourners are milling. Rabbis are chafing. Patience is waning. Thoughts turn to the lox and bagels, the chopped liver and pickled herring--the rugelach and Russian coffee cake that await the bereaved at the end of this long day. But the caskets stay in the service elevator. The lockstep march of funerals has abruptly halted. Every employee of Riverside Memorial Chapels is jammed in the back room watching my interrogation.
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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 11

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE/PART 5

I TAKE MARILYN TO THE SECRET PLACE

She's Marilyn Monroe. But she has to go. We have twenty funerals today. The Miller mourners have departed, leaving wisps of smoke, gum wrappers and crushed dixie cups. Now the reposing room has to be turned over. Porters are poised in the doorway with dustpans, vacuum cleaners and air fresheners.
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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 10

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE

I GIVE MARILYN THE GRAND TOUR
PART FOUR

I have a guilty secret: I'm not attracted to Marilyn Monroe. I'm a serial self-abuser when it comes to her earthy imitators--Mamie Van Doren and Jayne Mansfield. I can sit through seven cartoons, a newsreel and a Randolph Scott western just to get a second look at Jane Russell in The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown. After I see Janet Leigh in Psycho, I lock myself in my room for days, only coming out for meals.
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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 9

I BUY A TOE TAG FOR MARILYN
PART THREE

Hollywood has names for them. The "double-takers" --the ones who look familiar so you look again and still can't remember their names. The "isn't that," or "wasn't he in" celebrities. I'll learn those categories in a life to come. Now it's 1961 in the Riverside Memorial Chapel across from Prospect Park, and we get plenty of double-takers. Comedians, supporting actors, politicians--a slight thrill of recognition and they melt into the crowd.
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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 8

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE

PART TWO
THAT ARTHUR MILLER? WHO KNEW?

It's 1961. I'm only 18, but my black deeds are mounting. I win an $800 scholarship for high scores on the State Board of Regents exams. I tell my parents I'll use it for text books and a new typewriter, but my secret plan is to cash the check and run off to Europe where I intend to sport a beret, seduce French girls and write the Great American Novel. I see myself, standing alone on a windswept deck, while my sobbing mother reads my terse note of farewell.

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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 7

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE

PART ONE
THE HORNY AND THE DEAD

It's 1961 and Brooklyn isn't cool yet. It's still a tributary, sending stenographers and piece workers across the bridge to mother Manhattan. Where colorful locals "tawk like dis" and mourn their departed Dodgers. No war movie is complete without a "dese and dose" Flatbusher getting a salami from his mommy while he wisecracks in the Army. No B-musical can be filmed without a gum-popping Coney Island chorine who "knows the score."

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ARE TERRRORIST TRIALS A PLOT AGAINST AMERICA?

Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, editor-in-chief of paranoiaisfact.com,
answers readers' questions.

Dear Igor,

When the upcoming terrorist trials were announced my husband Todd rented a back hoe and started digging an underground bunker in our front yard. He's down there now, about sixty feet underground, and won't even come up for cuddles. Todd says the trials are the first step in the terrorist takeover of our country. That Obama is a sleeper agent of Al Qaeda, charged with sowing discord and confusion and leading to the dismantling of democratic institutions in the name of security, forced conversion to Islam and imposition of Sharia on the US. Is this paranoia or fact?

Sara P.
Anchorage, Alaska.

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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 6

STEALING FROM THE DEAD

It's 1961 and the CIA has decided to ruin my life. It wasn't enough that they created Islamic fundamentalism to overthrow the Government of Iran, provoked, funded and then ignored insurrections in Eastern Europe, slipped LSD to unsuspecting dissidents, destroyed democracy in Guatemala to save United Fruit, masterminded a disastrous invasion of Cuba to prevent it from falling into the Soviet orbit half a planet away, etc.

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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 5

I MEET THE FIXER

It's 1960. The US is beginning its longest period of economic expansion in history. But as business booms disillusion gnaws at the national psyche. The Russians shoot down the U2, an American spy plane. President Eisenhower disavows its mission, then backs off and becomes the first American president to admit he has lied.

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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 4

RECRUITED BY THE MOB

It's Brooklyn 1958 and nobody has ever heard of the "Mafia." The word is never mentioned in the black and white B movies (later reborn as noir masterpieces) which we see on rainy Saturdays. There it's the "Syndicate," usually located in a luxurious office with a view of downtown LA, the San Gabriel mountains super-imposed in the distance.

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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 3

FALSELY ACCUSED, FOR A CHANGE

It's 1958 and America needs workers. The New York City high school school system offers vocational training for those students who plan to skip college and go right into the work force. Girls can learn secretarial and bookkeeping skills at Washington Irving and Eastern District High Schools.

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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 2

I GET CAUGHT STEALING

It’s September 1957 and World War II hasn’t ended. Every man I know is still reliving his time in the “service.” My Uncle Sammy was drafted at age 38 and spent four years ” talkin’ to the god damn goats” in the Galapagos Islands and running a laundry for the troops. My Uncle Willie flew sixty-seven missions as a tail gunner, way above the maximum twenty-five and was court martialed when he refused to go on the sixty-eighth. Now he can’t get a good job because of his dishonorable discharge.

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AutoBARography 8: MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART 1

It's the summer of '57. America has never been more prosperous--or more paranoid. The serpent of Communism lurks in our post war Eden, threatening to tempt us, corrupt us, brainwash us, conquer us by force or subversion. Thousands have been fired, blacklisted, even imprisoned on the mere suspicion of Communist association. John Wayne rules the Box Office battling Commie spies.

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