Blackmailer (Thorndike Press Large Print Mystery Series) - Hardcover

Axelrod, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786298693 ISBN 13: 9780786298693

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2007

Synopsis

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to Cuba, drunk, and Nobel Prize-winning author, recently deceased of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, whose final unpublished manuscript could fetch a mint...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.

About this title

About the Author:

The son of silent movie actress Betty Carpenter, George Axelrod was the author of The Seven Year Itch, which became the classic film starring Marilyn Monroe, and the screenwriter of The Manchurian Candidate and Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

He also wrote numerous other stage plays, radio plays, films, and TV series episodes, as well as novels.

From Booklist:

Dick Sherman, a principal in a small publishing firm, is startled by the arrival of a beautiful woman who offers to sell him a heretofore unknown manuscript of a deceased Hemingwayesque novelist. Not long after, Sherman is beaten senseless by thugs who trash his apartment. Then he's reunited with a former lover, who has become the hottest star in Hollywood. Welcome to vintage noir, where the women are all beautiful--and deadly--the thugs menacing, the literary agents are former gangsters, the hero is intrepid, and everyone is scamming everyone else. Written by the screenwriter of The Manchurian Candidate, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and The Seven Year Itch, this classic pulp thriller last saw print nearly 50 years ago. Today, it's dated yet charming; everyone smokes, ice buckets are always full, a good suit costs $100, and a copy of the Daily News costs a nickel. But the thugs are menacing, and the literary agent-gangster has a head that resembles a blunt instrument. Think Thin Man films with Mickey Spillane-ish hard cases standing in for the suave uptown types. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0786298693
• ISBN 13: 9780786298693
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 221