I was born, raised and educated in New Jersey, I’ve always been proud of the sobriquet Jersey Guy. Polish on my mother’s side and Montenegrin on my father’s, with grandparents who spoke little or no English, my early outlook was ethnic and suspicious. As a natural iconoclast, I joined the dwindling number of itinerant newsmen roaming the countryside in search of, well just about everything.
Newspapers in New Jersey, Illinois, and the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah began to connect the dots. Then came the Associated Press. My series for the AP in Phoenix uncovered the widespread abuses in the Government’s Barcero program for Mexican contract workers. Exposed were working and housing conditions that transformed workers into virtual slave laborers. Next a promotion to the San Francisco bureau where as an Urban Affairs investigative reporter I covered the Black Panthers, anti-war protests, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Then came CBS TV news in Los Angeles, where I produced KNXT’s Evening News, the highest rated late-night news program in the nation’s second-largest media market. After a 4-year stint with the CBS station in San Diego, I returned to Los Angeles as the Executive Producer of Metromedia’s KNXT’s award winning news program, Metro News.
AWARDS: 3 Emmy Awards for investigative documentaries; The prestigious Medallion Award presented by the California Bar Association for “Distinguished Reporting on the Administration of Justice.”
One of my Emmy-winners, The Abused Woman, caught the eye of Ashley Books, leading to my first non-fiction book, The Battered Rich, exposing seldom discussed but widespread marital abuse among the affluent.
Golden Ghetto: How the Americans and French Fell In and Out of Love During the Cold War, published by Red Hen Press, traces the 16-year history of what was then the largest U.S. Air Force base in Europe. It pieces together a love affair that defines trust, hope, renewal, prosperity, and finally the discovery that it was all a Cold War delusion.
“Your book is one of a kind. There have been many books written by French authors about the Americans in France during the Cold War, but never one by an American writer. I know the books that have been written and have read many of them myself. There has been nothing to match what you offer.” Mme. Lydie Gerbaud, press secretary for Jacques Chirac during his tenures as French President and Prime Minister.
My first book of the Passaic River Trilogy, Father Divine’s Bikes, is a 2020 Elite Choice Award Winner-Noir Fiction, Finalist 2020 Book Excellence Award Book in a Series; Solo Medalist Winner in the E-Book General Fiction category of New Apple Fifth Annual Indie Book Awards; Finalist International Book Awards in Genre Fiction; Finalist Best Book Awards in General Fiction. A historical, noir crime novel set in 1945 Newark. A gangster war, murders, a gun-toting paperboy, and the numbers racket punctuate a tragic story.
My second book of the Trilogy, Payback–Tales of Love, Hate and Revenge, is winner of the 2020 Reader Views Literary Award, First Place Mystery/Thriller, 2020 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner Fiction-Crime, 2020 Notable 100 Book Shelf Unbound Best Indie Books, 2020 Elite Choice Award Winner Noir Fiction, 2020 American Fiction Award Winner General Fiction. Adultery, three murders, a revenge driven madman, rogue cops and politicians intertwine in this noir thriller that defines urban corruption in 1946 Newark.
The third book of the trilogy, currently a work in progress, is set in 1947 Newark, also an historical noir crime thriller. Arising from its dark international recesses is what can only be described as “muscular feminism,” and how traditional male dominance disappeared forever. Launch date expected in 2022.
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A gangster war, three murders, a gun-toting paperboy, and the numbers racket punctuate the tragic story of two altar boys adrift in a world of crime with no hope of escape.
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Traces the 16-year history of what was then the largest U.S. Air Force base in Europe. It pieces together a love affair that defines trust, hope, renewal, prosperity, and finally the discovery that it was all a Cold War delusion.
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The final book of the Passaic River Trilogy takes the reader from 1947 Newark through the dark shadows where mindless brutes of all classes preyed on the helpless.
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Nazi-loving American fascists, a revenge driven madman haunted by what he saw at Dachau, three murders and rogue cops intertwine in this noir thriller.
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