Thank you for inviting me to the Tyrus Books Guest House. It’s a great place for reading and writing and I intend to return often.
I’m the author of three humorous mysteries published by Tor Books: “Boca Knights”, 2009, “Boca Mournings”, 2010 and Boca Daze, being released January 31, 2012. I’m also excited to announce my first e-book novella, “Eddie the Kid” will be released November 22, 2011, by Tor.
Each book features protagonist Eddie Perlmutter, a secular Jew and Boston’s most promoted, demoted, fearless, ferocious police detective. He is an undersized, undefeated super hero with a huge talent for solving crimes and righting wrongs. The Boca series begins in 2004 with fifty nine year old Eddie retiring to Boca Raton, Florida because he feels he can no longer physically perform to his own demanding standards. Within hours of arriving in Boca, however, Eddie begins fighting crime all over again. He battles the Russian Mafia, investigates murders, and goes to war with a gang of white supremacists infiltrating the area. A newspaper reporter nick- named him the Boca Knight for his constant crusades against crime and his legend began. With more sharks on land than in the sea, Boca Raton’s gated communities and senior citizens is a perfect venue for Eddie’s unique style, irreverent perspective and wry sense of humor.
“Eddie the Kid,” the e-book prequel to the three Boca novels, features a twenty nine year old Eddie Perlmutter in all his young, brash, tough, crime fighting glory. The novella begins in 1974 six years after Eddie graduated number two from the police academy. He was number one in marksmanship, crowd control and crime analysis but last in police procedures and discipline. He could control a large hostile crowd far better than he could control himself.
The Boston crime scene in the seventies was dominated by the Italian Mafia in the North End and the Irish gangs from Somerville. The turf battles between the two factions had ended after the protracted wars of the sixties. The neighborhoods were relatively peaceful until a beautiful September afternoon in the North End when an assassin, dressed in an ankle length overcoat, a full face mask and a floppy wide brimmed hat stepped out of a puff of smoke on busy Hanover Street brandishing a shotgun. Without warning, the Shotgun Man blew apart a popular Mafia figure and his two body guards before disappearing in another puff of smoke. Eddie Perlmutter was assigned the mysterious case and discovers an Old World Vendetta originating in Sicily fifty years earlier. While tracing down the Shotgun Man, Eddie also becomes involved with the violence of Boston’s forced school busing program, the ugliness of racism and anti Semitism, domestic violence and personal attacks on his best friend and his Irish Catholic wife. All this takes place in one week within the confines of a fast paced novella where the action never stops.
I always thought of myself as a writer but I spent forty five years globe-trotting, building an international food business, pioneering new industries and dealing with some of the largest food companies in the world. I remember signing a joint venture contract with a giant Japanese conglomerate in the boardroom of a Tokyo skyscraper overlooking Emperor Hirohito’s palace. It was a great adventure and seems like yesterday. But it was nineteen eighty when I was a young man and thought I had all the time in the world to write the “Great American Novel. When I reached my sixties, however, I realized that time was of the essence and got busy writing.
My current career as a writer is another great adventure for me and entirely different from the first. I feel extremely fortunate to have a second opportunity to approach each day with passion.
Hope to see you in the Guest House!
Steve Forman