Someone to Watch Over Me

by Dan Bronson

Overview

"If Raymond Chandler had turned a steely eye to the notorious Hollywood casting couch, the result might well be called Someone To Watch Over Me."
-Malcolm Brooks, author of Painted Horses and Cloudmaker

Hollywood, 1947. Jack Shannon, a former actor whose promising career was interrupted by the war and ended by a facial scar sustained in combat, is now a studio publicist. He jokes that the only thing he knows about publicity is how to suppress it, but that, in fact, is his real job. He's a fixer who babysits the studio's stars and covers up their bad behavior.Everything changes for Jack when Savannah Stevens enters his life.

A sexpot star in the mold of Jean Harlow and the studio's biggest box-office draw, she's a deeply troubled young woman given to emotional breakdowns, unexplained absences from the set, and time-devouring delays occasioned by her paralyzing insecurities and her insistence on dozens of takes. Jack's job is to stay with her 24/7, deliver her to the set on time each day, and make sure she completes her current picture, a picture on which the future of the studio depends. All goes well until Savannah disappears, and Jack is assigned the task of finding her...without revealing to anyone, including the police, that she is missing.

"There was Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Travis McGee. Now there is Jack Shannon."
-Jameson Parker, Recovering Actor (Simon and Simon), Working Writer (Dancing with the Dead)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629336503
Publisher:	BearManor Media
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dan Bronson has had many careers: Associate Professor of English at DePauw University, Senior Story Analyst at Universal, Associate Story Editor at Filmways, Executive Story Editor at Paramount, Writer-Producer of HBO's Ed Harris thriller The Last Innocent Man and NBC's cult classic Death of a Cheerleader, and author of the memoir Confessions of a Hollywood Nobody.

Editorial Reviews

"Jack Shannon recalls Raymond Chandler's description of Phillip Marlowe: 'Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.' Streets don't come any meaner than those of 1947 Hollywood, where corruption is systemic, where no one is who he or she seems to be, where life is a series of traps, and no man is better prepared to navigate those streets than Shannon, whose voice is as distinctive as Marlowe's."-Stephen Galloway, former Executive Editor of The Hollywood Reporter, current Dean of Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, author of Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker

"I cut my teeth on Dashiell Hammett and John D. MacDonald. Unfortunately, I had read all those works before I was thirty and have been enduring a long dry spell. The drought is over. Someone To Watch Over Me is an inside look at how the 'dream factory' of the forties produced some blockbuster nightmares, and reminds the reader that noir is much more than gobo shadows dancing on a wall."-Gerald McRaney, actor (Major Dad)

"If Raymond Chandler had turned a steely eye to the notorious Hollywood casting couch, the result might well be called Someone To Watch Over Me. Dan Bronson gloriously re-animates the tones and textures of the noir novel in its classic era, while zeroing the thematic crosshairs onto subject matter directly relevant to the present day. From the dark allure of Tinseltown to the yacht slips of Catalina Island, and featuring a jaded-yet-resilient lead who knows more than he should about people with both secrets and power, this novel roars along like a Rocket 88, pinning the reader to the seat and never letting off the accelerator. It's a pulse-pounding, pitch-perfect ride in one of the great genres of American literature, and Dan Bronson drives like a master of the form."-Malcolm Brooks, author of Painted Horses and Cloudmaker.

"Reading Someone To Watch Over Me is like watching a classic 1940s black and white noir detective movie like The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon. There are murders, kidnappings, payoffs, mobsters and coverups in this gritty, inside look at the sleazy side of the post-World War Two motion picture industry. Too bad Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum won't be available if they make a movie out of this excellent tough guy detective novel.-Phillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author of A Reasonable Doubt.

"There was Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Travis McGee. Now there is Jack Shannon, intelligent, tough, unafraid, uniquely real, and all too humanly fallible. But Jack Shannon's beat is completely unlike any you have ever read, and it provides a glimpse into the dark and ugly side of Hollywood's glamorous Golden Age. This is noir at its best."-Jameson Parker, recovering actor (Simon and Simon), working writer (Dancing with the Dead)

"A film noir reeling off not on the screen but on the page. The writing is first-rate, full of movie-savvy observation and more than a few dollops of laugh-out-loud humor. A joy to read."-Douglas Soesbe, screenwriter (Robin Williams' Boulevard), former Story Editor at Tri-Star and Universal.

"A perfect film noir filled with scoundrels, scandals and skullduggery against the backdrop of the land of make-believe. Someone to Watch Over Me travels the boulevard of broken dreams with plenty of wit, vigor and shocking surprises, delivering one of the best reads I've had in a long time."-Ray Schilaci, The Movie Guys.

From the Publisher