Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller
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Clifford Irving’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD HUGHES
“It’s almost impossible to know where fact leaves off and fiction begins, if indeed that distinction should be made. This is a hypnotizing narrative, a brilliant study of money’s power to corrupt absolutely.” — Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
THE ANGEL OF ZIN – A Holocaust Mystery
“Exciting, dynamic, and marvelously written.”— Publishers Weekly
FAKE! – the Life of the Master Art Faker of the 20th Century
“The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world . . . one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time . . . fantastic.” — Chicago Tribune
THE SPRING – A Legal Thriller
“An extraordinarily entertaining and thoughtful combination of Lost Horizons and Presumed Innocent. Not only is it a mystery--on at least two levels--but it poses troubling questions concerning prolonged life and its ultimate value.”— Booklist
STRANGER TO THE KINGDOM (formerly THE VALLEY) – a mythic novel of the Old West
"A superb novel that grips the reader from start to thrilling finish. Its solidity is that of a Greek myth." — Times Literary Supplement
PROJECT OCTAVIO – the Rise and Fall of the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax
“Brilliant.” – Newsday “A masterpiece.” – CBS Radio
THE DEATH FREAK – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)
“A suavely persuasive, anti-Establishment thriller with the bitter aftertaste of Campari and vodka. A clever, cynical, and compelling novel.” — Time Magazine
THE SLEEPING SPY – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)
"A dazzling combination of high suspense and hijinks, and some most unusual killings." — Los Angeles Times
THE 38TH FLOOR – A Thriller of International Politics
“Some smashing skullduggery, with shadowings, chases, and a marvelous climax.” — Sunday Telegraph
THE LOSERS – A New York Thriller
"A serious book built out of thriller elements." — London Sunday Times
CLASH BY NIGHT (formerly ON A DARKLING PLAIN) – A first novel
“A fine debut.” — New York Times
THE BATTLE OF JERUSALEM – A Personal History of the Six-Day War, 1967
“Clifford [Irving] was there, he saw what happened, and he tells it the way it happened.” – Irwin Shaw
BOY ON TRIAL – A Legal Thriller
not yet reviewed
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Author’s Bio:
(at the request of some readers)
Hello. I’m Clifford Irving, a man who’s had an eventful time on the planet. I was once on the cover of Time Magazine, and Hollywood made a movie about part of my life. Richard Gere played me.
I traveled twice around the world before most people living in it today were born; I stood guard in an Israeli kibbutz, crewed on a 56' three-masted schooner that sailed the Atlantic from Mexico to France, smuggled whisky from Tangier to Spain, and one spring I lived on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir from where I rode horseback intoTibet.
Growing up in Manhattan, I studied painting at the High School of Music & Art. At Cornell University I chased beautiful but unconquerable Ivy League coeds, rowed on the crew, and dreamed of becoming a great writer. I sailed to Europe, settled on the decadent Mediterranean island of Ibiza, and wrote my first novel. I sent it to a literary agent in New York. G. P. Putnam’s Sons published it.
Was it really as easy and as quick as that? Of course not. I was lucky. And determined.
I taught at UCLA graduate extension school, with Betsy Drake and Cary Grant among my pupils. I became a correspondent to the Middle East for NBC. And I kept writing books.
In 1970, I created a writing event which became the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax. Many believe that the threat of the book’s publication, with its revelations of the Hughes-Nixon bribes, caused Nixon to approve the Watergate break-in.
My reward in 1972 for these accusations (and lunacy) was 16 months in three federal prisons.
Over time I wrote write 20 books that were published to varying degrees of success in the USA by Putnam, McGraw-Hill, and Simon & Schuster, as well as translated into many languages.
All of my books are on Nook and Kindle at affordable prices: $2.99 to $5.99. That’s less expensive than a paperback and half the price of a movie. A good read is one of the amazing pleasures offered to us by civilization.
“Move over, Butch and Sundance, it’s not that I love you both less, just that I’ve come to love Pancho and Tom more”– said the New York Times Book Review about Tom Mix and Pancho Villa, which I believe is my best book. Trial, followed by Daddy’s Girl, and Final Argument – all legal thrillers – are the top sellers.
My manuscripts, notes, journals and correspondence are stored permanently at the Center for American History at the University of Texas (Austin), which acquired the archive in 2013.
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Further descriptions and reviews:
TRIAL
A Legal Thriller
“Terrific! Don’t begin this book at bedtime or you’ll be up all night . . . Trial is like a birchbark canoe or a seven-layer cake. You can go crazy trying to figure out how it’s made, and it’s made by a master.” — Caroline See, Los Angeles Times
“Riveting legal edge-of-the-seater, has Texas and American justice systems by the tail.” — Daily Telegraph (London)
“Jet-propelled . . . colorful, down-and-dirty characters . . . most readers will want to read this at one sitting.” — Library Journal
A thrilling adventure into the real world of criminal law, a powerful novel that deals with murder, the morality of justice and the perils of love, Clifford Irving’s book sets a new standard for courtroom fiction.
A Texas lawyer, Warren Blackburn, defends two accused murderers in two separate cases. One of his clients is a former beauty queen and brazen owner of a topless nightclub, who shot her multimillionaire doctor lover – she claims – in self-defense; the other is a homeless illegal alien accused of killing a man for his wallet.
Without warning, the two cases become one, and Warren’s entire life and career are threatened.
William Safire in The New York Times called Trial “the novel of the year.”
FINAL ARGUMENT
A Legal Thriller
“A courtroom thriller, a mean streets thriller, a Florida cracker thriller, a gritty prison thriller, and an Everyman study of good and evil all rolled into one. And every part of it is terrific. What a wonderful piece of storytelling!”— Donald Westlake, The New York Times
“Only a handful of American authors have ever been able to transform murder and infidelity into poetry, and Irving is one of those writers . . . Not to be missed.”— Donald Porter, Mystery News
“Two cliffhanger trials, a moral crisis, violence, love . . . it’s all here.” — Mail on Sunday (London)
The startling story of a district attorney who, twelve years after sending a convicted murderer to Death Row, returns to the same courtroom to try to save that same man’s life. A masterly tale of murder, guilt, and infidelity, set in Florida and featuring that rarest of heroes – a lawyer with a conscience.
Can a lawyer represent a murderer he once prosecuted? The legal establishment insists he can’t.
Final Argument is the story of Ted Jaffe’s war – at the risk of his career, his marriage, his personal safety – to free a man he believes he has grievously wronged.
The London Daily Express hailed it as “a spellbinding courtroom drama.”
FAKE!
The Life of the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time
“The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world . . . one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time . . . fantastic.” — Chicago Tribune
“Fake! is a delightfully vicious book, a joy to read and contemplate.” — Pablo Picasso
Elmyr de Hory w
as an elegant Jewish-Hungarian aristocrat whom World War II had stripped of everything but his genius at imitating Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Renoir, and other great painters of the 20th century.
Fernand Legros was a ruthless Egyptian homosexual who decreed that museums, art galleries and millionaire collectors should finance his love of luxury and pretty boys. And Real Lessard was an Adonis-like Canadian youth who began as Fernand’s protege and in the end out-dueled even the master in cunning.
Set in Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Texas, and the chic Mediterranean island of Ibiza, this is the tale of three rogues who bilked oil millionaires and movie stars, and turned the international art world upside down. It was the basis for filmmaker Orson Welles’ last major movie, “F For Fake,” which has become a cult classic.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat called Fake! “a story to remember and revel in.”
TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA
“Fabulous, big, rawboned wild-blooded adventure tale that gives the sights and sounds and smells of a turn-of-the-century world real enough to touch. Clifford Irving has written a novel to make any writer proud and many readers grateful.” — Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“Move over, Butch and Sundance, it’s not that I love you both less, just that I’ve come to love Pancho and Tom more . . . a high-stepping, swashbuckling romance inspired by the unassailable historical fact that in his greenhorn youth, before he became a movie-star cowboy, Tom Mix rode in the company of the peasant revolutionary Pancho Villa . . . Who among us has not wished he’d grown up as romantically as Mix does here?” — New York Times Book Review
“Raucous, galloping fiction.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Intelligently conceived, rapidly paced, attitudinally wry, earthy – a well-written, cannily contemporary tale about the past.” —Dallas Times Herald
It’s 1913, and Tom Mix, cowboy and future movie star, rides south of the border to fight for the charismatic Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary leader. Amid the violent beauty of war-torn Mexico a partnership is formed, and an epic is born.
Caught up in this sumptuous and panoramic novel are some of the most dynamic characters ever to come to life on a page: Hannah, Tom’s voluptuous Jewish fiancée; Rosa, the beautiful Indian child widow who loves Tom; Elisa, the sophisticated German who becomes Tom’s mistress; Rudolfo Fierro, “the butcher,” who lives to kill his enemies; Lieutenant George S. Patton, Jr., ceaseless hunter of both Villa and Fierro; and above all, the tempestuous Pancho Villa, a man of vast, ungovernable emotions.
Tom Mix and Pancho Villa is a story of romance and friendship, loyalty and revenge, politics and gold. Publishers Weekly called it “grand entertainment, full of wit, charm, and zest.” The Los Angeles Times wrote that “Irving spins a fantasy worthy of Mark Twain,” and the Houston Chronicle said, “Irving’s wonderful big new book is a rollicking, ribald tale.” The Chicago Tribune concluded that “[Tom Mix’s] exploits – on the battlefield, behind the lines, in bed – are told with riveting skill.”
THE SPRING
A Legal Thriller
“A parable about aging and euthanasia that's spare of prose and thoroughly creepy; book discussion groups will love it. Recommended for all libraries.”— Library Journal
“Irving drives his narrative from the fantastic to the realistic and back again, playing a game that's sure and steady.” —Publishers Weekly
Set in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, this is the tale of a snowbound mountain town with a remarkable secret to protect from outsiders – a secret worth dying for, perhaps worth killing for.
Dennis Conway, a New York criminal lawyer, has moved west to marry Sophie, the beautiful mayor of the 9,000-feet-high hamlet of Springhill. When his in-laws are charged with murdering two of their close friends, Dennis is shocked, and he defends Sophie’s parents at trial in Aspen.
What he learns in the course of his investigation is a stunning story of social contract in the interests of longevity – a love story, a murder story, and a skiing story with what may be the most remarkable avalanche scene ever written.
The Spring is a worthy follow-up to the best-selling Trial and Final Argument.” – San Francisco Chronicle
DADDY’S GIRL
The Campbell Murder Case, a Saga of Texas Justice
“All the elements to satisfy any true crime fan: parricide, incest, sexual enticement.”— Baltimore Sun
“Fascinating . . . Few writers could have pulled together so insightful a work.”— Austin Challenger
In 1982. James Campbell, successful Houston lawyer, and Virginia, his wife of 40 years, were found brutally shot to death in their bed. Despite allegations of family greed and sexual abuse, the murder went unsolved for two years. The most likely suspects were the victims’ youngest daughter Cindy and her ex-Marine boyfriend, David West. But they had an alibi the police couldn’t crack.
And then West fell in love with a sexy ex-stripper turned private investigator. She was paid to coax a confession from him.
Clifford Irving wrote: “I started out in Houston as a writer on assignment – but I became an investigator, a friend to the judge and many of the lawyers, and a trial witness. As a result, to my surprise and discomfort, I helped to determine the outcome of events . . .”
Daddy’s Girl – the story of Cindy, a tortured obese woman, and David, a man determined to do the right thing at all costs – is as exciting a true-crime courtroom drama as you will ever read.
THE ANGEL OF ZIN
A Holocaust Mystery
“Absolutely compelling . . . a totally engrossing thriller.”— Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s List
“Exciting, dynamic, and marvelously written.”— Bestsellers
“Masterfully done . . . a powerful novel.”— Publishers Weekly
At a Nazi death camp in Poland, the mutilated body of an informer is discovered by the Jewish mistress of the camp commandant. Then an SS lieutenant is found, throat cut ear to ear.
The Gestapo orders the Berlin Criminal Police to solve these crimes.
The hunter is Paul Bach, Chief Homicide Inspector, a wounded combat veteran of the Russian Front, a man at odds with evil. And the hunted is the self-styled “Angel,” who always leaves a clue in the form of an enigmatic note.
As hunter closes in on hunted, The Angel of Zin offers an answer to the question all supposedly decent men and women must ask themselves: “If I had been a German then, and realized what was happening, what would I have done?”
Clifford Irving’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD HUGHES
“The most daring literary caper of all time.” — Newsweek
Immense wealth. Corrupt political power. Scientific genius. Sexual kinkiness. Howard Hughes, the legendary Texas billionaire, exemplified all these qualities.
Oscar-winning moviemaker and the shy lover of dozens of Hollywood movie stars, Hughes bought the favors of U.S. presidents and once tried to buy Las Vegas. In his twilight years, he became a recluse, hiding in shadowed hotel suites. By 1970 many believed that he had died and that his business associates had stolen his billions.
“I’ve known Howard Hughes since I was a boy,” Clifford Irving informed his publisher, “and he’s asked me to help him write the story of his life. He’ll name names.”
The book was called “a stunning hoax,” but many believe that Richard Nixon’s fear of the manuscript’s truth caused him to panic and order the doomed burglary of Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate.
For writing the Autobiography of Howard Hughes, Clifford Irving was sentenced to 2 ½ years in federal prison.
Clifford Irving’s PRISON JOURNAL (a/k/a JAILING)
When the Nixon administration dealt Clifford Irving a 2 ½ year prison sentence for committing the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax, the 41-year-old author was unprepared to serve time.
In prison, he learned how to jail and prevail. But then he was caught with contraband, moved to a three-star penitentiary, and accused of inc
iting a riot and conspiring to kill the warden.
This is the true story of how the author survived and won the battle for his freedom.
THE 38TH FLOOR
“High-powered political fiction.” – Times Literary Supplement (London)
A prophetic drama of international politics, The 38th Floor begins with a threat of nuclear war with China and ends with a desperate manhunt through the streets of Manhattan.
The world teeters on the brink when John Burden, an African-American, is elevated unexpectedly to acting Secretary-General of the United Nations. Burden soon finds himself in danger of going down in history as “the great black traitor.”
In the genre of the political novel, The 38th Floor stands out as a masterly blend of action, character, and ideas.
“Compulsive reading.” — Books and Bookmen
BOY ON TRIAL
Clifford Irving’s most recent novel tells the story of Billy Braverman, a TV star and passionate rock climber, indicted in the Family Court on Eastern Long Island for murder. The victim is the father of his girlfriend, Amy.
Billy is the 12-year-old son of a prominent lawyer. Amy is the daughter of a garbage collector who believes he’s a descendant of William Shakespeare.
Set in the lush world of the Hamptons and on the dangerous streets of Manhattan, Boy on Trial is an extraordinary tale of a boy’s battle – against the adult world – to protect the life of the girl he loves.