Clea's Moon --Signed-- - Softcover

WRIGHT, EDWARD

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752852906 ISBN 13: 9780752852904

Publisher: London: Orion, 2003., 2003

Synopsis

(Winner of Britain's Debut Dagger Award)
Once he was Sierra Lane, hero to countless youngsters in a series of B-movie westerns. Now, after two years in prison, John Ray Horn lives on the margins of post-World War II Los Angeles. His wife has left him, and, blacklisted by the studios, he makes ends meet by collecting debts for his old Indian co-star, Joseph Mad Crow. Then an old friend, Scotty, contacts Horn. He has come across some obscene photos, including one, several years old, of Horn's stepdaughter, Clea. Within days, Scotty is dead, and Clea has run away. Horn's search takes him from neon-lit ocean-front piers to wooded canyons, from rich homes in the Hollywood Hills to Central Avenue, the Harlem of LA, a street rich in jazz and corruption. But will the on-screen tough-guy hero be able to sustain his role off-screen?

About this title

From the Author

JOHN RAY HORN'S LOS ANGELES

John Ray Horn, the character I've developed over the course of three novels, is an ex-cowboy actor who must deal with matters of life and death against the backdrop of Los Angeles in the 1940s. Several things drew me to him and his locale:

As a youngster growing up in Arkansas, I went to the Saturday afternoon matinees and was thrilled by the simple, unsophisticated heroism of the cowboy movies. Today I'm intrigued by the idea of a man who once portrayed a hero on the screen but who is now an outcast and is forced to compare himself every day with his old image.

Although I've chosen to live in the City of Angels, I'm sometimes overwhelmed by its size and pace. I look back with affection at the Los Angeles I never knew -- the young city with few tall buildings, its wide-open spaces occupied only by citrus and nut groves and bean fields, a city only dimly aware of its coming greatness.

Part of this nostalgia, of course, is fed by Hollywood itself. Many old black-and-white B-movies -- made by studios that couldn't afford expensive sets -- contain scenes shot on the streets of the real Los Angeles. Look at that city, with its great open stretches, streets running alongside endless rows of fruit trees, and you'll know that L.A. will never again look so young and raw or have so much room to breathe.

Then there's the artificial L.A., also served up by the movies. Anyone who's watched Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep, with that scene of the cottage up in Laurel Canyon and a torrential rain drenching Bogart, his car, and his trench coat, might be forgiven for thinking that it rains a lot in L.A. I thought so -- until I moved here. But this interplay between myth and reality is part of what's compelling about this town. And somewhere near that intersection, I've tried to create my own L.A., with sunshine and shadow, lemon groves and road houses, hustlers and decent people, attempts at human contact amid loneliness.

About the Author

 Edward Wright grew up in Arkansas and went to school in Tennessee and Illinois. He has been an officer in the U.S. Navy and an editor at the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. His noir-flavored mysteries featuring John Ray Horn -- "Clea's Moon," "While I Disappear" (U.K. title: "The Silver Face"), and "Red Sky Lament" -- set in Los Angeles during the 1940s, have won the Shamus Award in the U.S. and the Debut Dagger and Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award in the U.K. His first non-series book, "Damnation Falls," a contemporary mystery-thriller set in small-town Tennessee, won the Barry Award. His latest novel, "From Blood," was named one of the best mysteries of the year by the Financial Times of London, and a U.S. edition is due in 2012. Although now a Californian, he retains a Southerner's love of barbecue and bluegrass music. He and his wife, Cathy, live in the Los Angeles area. edwardwrightbooks.com

Edition details

• Publisher: London: Orion, 2003.
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0752852906
• ISBN 13: 9780752852904
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288