US Treasury Agents Charlie Carr and Jack Kelly, investigating a counterfeiting ring, are tipped off by Detective Travis Bailey of the L.A. police - a cool, ruthless cop with some strange tastes in sex and women - who warns them of a plot to murder their prime witness. Unwittingly, they are involved in a phony stake-out in which Kelly is seriously wounded.
Deeply suspicious and determined to avenge his partner, Carr puts his life and career on the line in order to build a case against Bailey, and sets out to prove that he is the mastermind behind a series of robberies from the area's wealthy residents. Carr's mission draws him into the depths of moneyed Beverly Hills, as well as into the underworld of have-nots, hungry for a piece of the Rolls-Royce action.
TO DIE IN BEVERLY HILLS is a masterly, original and harrowing thriller. Gerald Petievich once again successfully demonstrates both his talent for convincing characterization and his inside knowledge of the U.S. Secret Service.
"...plotted with ...delicacy: all interlocking events mesh with precision, and the finished product is nearly flawless." -- Miami Herald
"A fine book, gritty and genuine, with many slimy characters and a few admirable ones." -- New York Times Book Review
"Gerald Petievich's protagonist has abundant life, a kind of charm... and is an exceedingly dangerous man to cross." -- The New Yorker
About the Author
Gerald Petievich has made a career in criminal investigation. He served first as a Special Agent in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps, and, as a Special Agent of the U.S. Secret Service of the Treasury Department, he spent some time in the Paris office where he worked with Interpol, chasing counterfeiters of U.S. currency all over Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
He comes from a family of cops - his father and brother are both officers in the Los Angeles Police Department, and he has been working as Secret Service Representative to the Los Angeles Federal Strike Force Against Organised Crime and Racketeering.
Gerald Petievich is as intensely committed to his job - and as free from illusions about it - as is his protagonist, Charles Carr.
The authors' experiences intensify the reality of his numerous, and critically aclaimed works. His best selling novel, "To Live and Die in L.A.," was made into a major motion picture. Some of his other titles are "To Die in Beverly Hills," "Paramour," "Earth Angels," "Money Men," "Shakedown," and "The Quality of the Informant."
Product Details
Paperback: 276 pages
Publisher: Virtual Pub Group Inc (November 15, 2001)
Gerald Petievich belongs to that tiny group of writers who came to crime fiction from careers in law enforcement. He has been an Army counterspy and a U.S. Secret Service agent, using his real life experiences to achieve verisimilitude in his fiction. His novels are known to come as close as any in the mystery- and-thriller genre to a genuine realism. Three of his novels have been produced as major motion pictures.
Gerald grew up in a police family. His father and brother were both members of the Los Angeles Police Department. He attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey and later served in Germany as a US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent. As Chief of the Counterespionage Section, Field Office Nuremberg, he received commendations for his work during the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
In 1970 he joined the United States Secret Service where as a Special Agent he spent fifteen years engaged in duties relating to the protection of the President and the enforcement of Federal counterfeiting laws. It was during a long-term Secret Service assignment in Paris, France that Petievich discovered the works of Per Wahloo & Maj Sjowall, Graham Greene and John le Carre, and decided to become a writer. Later, while serving in Los Angeles as the US Secret Service representative to the Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force, Gerald's schedule consisted of rising at 4 AM to write before going to his government office.
In 1985, Gerald left the Secret Service to pursue his writing career full-time. Gerald's first novel, Money Men, the first of his Charles Carr series of police procedurals, was based on a real-life L.A. case in which an undercover police officer was murdered. This novel and his other police procedural novels belong to the school of inverted detection: that is, the criminals are known to the reader from the beginning, and the suspense lies in how they will be found out and brought to justice. Though some of the detection is of the deductive or scientific types, most of it, just as in real life, involves simple legwork and the use of informants.
Money Men introduces Charles Carr, a 20-year veteran of the Secret Service who is the central character in four Petievich novels. During a stakeout in a Sunset Boulevard motel, Carr and his partner Jack Kelly are listening in as an undercover agent arranges a counterfeit money buy in the next room. But the operation is blown and the agent is killed. After the shooting, Carr swears vengeance on the killer. The villain is Red Diamond, an aging counterfeiter just out of prison who is looking for another score. Carr's girlfriend is court reporter Sally Malone who fails in her every attempt to change Carr into something he isn't. Money Men was adapted into the United Artists motion picture "Boiling Point" starring Wesley Snipes and Dennis Hopper.
Petievich followed up with three other Charles Carr novels, One-Shot Deal, The Quality of the Informant and To Die in Beverly Hills. In One-Shot Deal, Carr is six months from his 25-year retirement when he is assigned to hunt down Larry Phillips, a dangerous psychopath who plans to counterfeit millions of dollars in Treasury securities.
In Petievich's third novel, To Die in Beverly Hills, Charles Carr is back in Southern California. At the center of the story is one of the author's most interesting villains, the devious and untrustworthy Beverly Hills detective Travis Bailey. Bailey is at the center of a burglary ring victimizing the stars. Carr goes after Bailey, cop against cop.
In Petievich's novel The Quality of the Informant the story begins in a seedy a Hollywood bar, where villain Paul La Monica is discussing a cocaine deal with a movieland hair stylist known as "the dope pusher to the stars." The informant in the case, cocktail waitress Linda Gleason, provides the information to apprehend La Monica. But he escapes and kills her, setting Agent Carr on a trail of revenge.
In To Live and Die in L.A. Petievich departs from of the Charles Carr series to write a mainstream thriller concerning Secret Service agent Richard Chance and his quest to destroy a vicious killer. In this novel the morals of the "good guys" wind up as much in question as much as those of the villain. To Live and Die in L.A. was the basis for the 1984 MGM motion picture of the same name, starring Willem Dafoe and William Peterson, who currently plays the lead in the number one rated CBS TV show "C.S.I." To Live and Die in L.A, has become a classic Film Noir and is a popular topic in film classes.
Petievich's L.A. crime thriller, Earth Angels, was based on his hands-on research with the Los Angeles Police Department's newly formed specialized gang detail. The novel ironically mirrors the now infamous LAPD Rampart Division scandal, but was written more than ten years earlier.
Petievich's next novel, Shakedown, was based on an idea that came to him while he was a U.S. Secret Service agent working on a long-term undercover operation involving the theft of government bonds. Petievich said: "I ended up in Hollywood being introduced to one of the most fascinating men I have ever met: a professional blackmailer who had spent years impersonating cops in order to extort movie stars. After I returned home, I sat up half the night making notes on what he had told me."
Gerald's novel, Paramour also had a non-fiction background. Written years before the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the novel was loosely grounded on a case Petievich actually investigated involving a mysterious woman who was involved with a high-ranking White House VIP.
Petievich's latest novel, "The Sentinel" is a political thriller that involves a White House Secret Service bodyguard and a beguiling woman with whom he is having a torrid affair: the First Lady. Critics consider sentinel to be Petievich's most compelling novel to date. The motion picture based on it starred Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland and was a 2005 box-office success.
Gerald lives in Los Angeles with his wife Pam, a gourmet cook who trained at Paris' Cordon Bleu Cooking School. They have a daughter, Emma.
There are writers who can make a book flow faster than a flood stream. There are writers who can turn on a dime and introduce an element into the book the reader did not see coming at all. Finally, there are writers who can convey the milieu of their tale and make it look like what they just did was nothing special. However, it is very rare to see a writer display all these traits in one book. Petievich does it masterfully in To Die in Beverly Hills.
This book follows Treasure Agent Charles Carr, a frequent character in Petievich's books. In this one, he and his partner are set up by a crooked Beverly Hills cop on a phony stakeout in which Carr's partner is almost killed. We then follow Carr as he traverses 1980's LA in all its sordid nature teaming with even more sordid characters to determine the truth and punish the guilty. Midway through the book there's a discussion at a singles bar which enables Petievich to make some trenchant observations about the 1980's meat market scene in LA. The cynicism of the author's spot on observations will stay with you long after you finish this book.
One thing I have always loved about Petievich is his ability to draw full pictures of the venality of men without surprise or disgust. And for Petievich, that venality runs on both sides of the law. Making yet another appearance is Carr's gutless boss, 'No Waves' Norman Weaves ("I'm behind you 110% on this" as writes Carr up secretly for insubordination), who is constantly trying to stab all around him in the back. Also present is master hypnotist and full time bunco artist Dr. Emil Kreuzer. Kreuzer is a disgusting piece of work with an incredibly smooth line of patter and no sense of morality at all. Watching both No Waves and Kreuzer do their thing with sparse prose is just amazing. Thelonious Monk once said its the notes he didn't play that were important. Likewise, its the paragraphs that Petievich didn't have to write that make the ones he did so good.
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Gerald Petievich's "To Die in Beverly Hills" is not one of his best works of writing. But it does have some strong points.
As can be expected, it is about the Secret Service. (Mr. Petievich is a former agent and uses this past experience to his advantage).
The problem with the book is that it is a very predictable. It was written almost as if he was rushed to write "something". He is a very detailed orientated writer but it wasn't used to its fullest in this book.
He hasn't written a book since 1991 but I do hope he writes a new book soon!
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