Getting Garbo Book

Set in the glamorous, cruel and often bizarre Hollywood era of the 1950s, Getting Garbo is a hilarious and suspenseful novel of the cinema’s Golden Age, when autograph hounds were relentless as they sought the names of stars who became legends in their own lifetime.

Nineteen-year-old Reva Hess is a charming autograph collector and the number one fan of Roy Darnell, star of the hit TV series Jack Havoc. Reva follows him everywhere, while keeping tabs on the private lives of film celebrities with her group of expert autograph collectors called The Secret Six.

Soon, the slight confusion between Roy’s own personality and the dashingly dangerous Jack Havoc becomes an ominous obsession and the novel turns to murder. Along the way, Jerry Ludwig brings the old Hollywood to life, evoking the giant screen figures of Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and dozens more, as well as the off-screen ruthlessness of Jack Warner. This is a world where “getting Garbo,” the elusive Greta who never signs autographs, is synonymous with the yearning for the impossible, the longing for fame and romance and the blurring of fiction and reality.

Publishers Weekly

Growing up in a "quasi-slum" in 1940s and '50s Brooklyn, Reva Hess thought of the radio as her best friend, so it's no surprise she turned out to be obsessed by stars of the studio and screen. Now living in Santa Monica, Calif., with her difficult, alcoholic mother, 19-year-old Reva hangs around the fringes of premieres scavenging autographs and trying to figure out what to do with her life. Roy Darnell, an old hero of hers from her Brooklyn radio days, is now a Hollywood B-lister who moves among the A-listers (Bogart, Bacall, Burt Lancaster), and his narration alternates with Reva's and also with that of his alter ego, Jack Havoc, the hardboiled detective Roy portrays on TV and, increasingly, in real life. When, after a bad divorce, Roy accidentally kills his ex-wife, Adrienne, "Beverly Hills interior decorator to the stars," and realizes Reva can place him at the crime scene, he knows that he'll need to make sure the girl doesn't talk. But Reva is going through her own emotional battle and she wouldn't betray an old friend, would she? An energetic, if uneven, portrait of the stars and the starstruck, this novel offers a dash of old-time Hollywood glitz and an ending that's cinematic and bittersweet. Agent, Bob Diforio. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.