The Pitfall

THE PITFALL

Jon Forbes is a happily married screenwriter in Hollywood when his cop friend Mac tells him about a gal named Mona he’s interested in. Her husband is in jail, and she knows that Mac is the cop who put him there. So Mac asks Forbes to set her up for him. Take her out, introduce her to him as a friend.

But that’s where Forbes’s troubles begin. Because happily married or not, Mona gets into his blood immediately. And he into hers. And now he’s not only lying to his wife, but trying to avoid Mac as well. He and Mona have no idea where this will lead, but they both know it can’t end well. But neither of them figure just how far Mac will go to get Forbes out of the way once he discovers his friend’s betrayal. Nor what Forbes will do to protect his own.

Joseph Jay Dratler was born September 14, 1911 in New York City. He attended the University of North Carolina in the late 1920s, then studied at the Sorbonne in France and the University of Vienna. After his return to the U.S. in 1932, he worked as an editor for a New York publisher. Dratler then moved to Hollywood, where he became a successful novelist and screenwriter during the classic film noir era of the 1940s. He wrote six novels and many screenplays, winning both an Academy Award and an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Call Northside 777, and an Oscar nomination for the 1944 film, Laura. Dratler moved to Mexico with his wife and two children in the 1960s. He died in Mexico City of a heart attack on September 25, 1968.