THE HOMEFRONT (available 2012) is a Second World War mystery thriller about Dave Levitan, a police detective unable to serve in the Army because of injuries sustained in the Spanish Civil War. His girlfriend is a jazz pianist who refuses to marry him. His mentor, a souvenir photographer on an entertainment pier, manages local politics while The Boss is in jail for tax evasion. Other characters include a gangster in charge of the dockworkers’ union, a PhD so opinionated no one will hire him, a family doctor pressed into service as a wartime M.E., a thuggish detective partner, an FBI agent with a secret that could cost him his job, and members of a family worried about the fate of their Central European relatives.
In THE HOMEFRONT, Levitan discovers that the last of the dreadnought battleships is the target of sabotage in a manner that could change the course of the war.
Chapter 1
Atlantic City reeked of war that summer. By then, five years into the U-Boat campaign against British and American shipping, ruptured vessels far at sea had spewed millions of sticky globs of bunker fuel and raw petroleum into the waters, tar balls that rolled onto beaches along thousands of miles of coastline and gave off a stink that everywhere masked the tang of low tide. Shortly after dawn on July 5th, 1944, a bright morning, Levitan and Canterbury locked up their radio car at a parking lot at the end of the boardwalk. Because the sea breeze would not start to blow until the sun rose higher, the smell lay on the parking lot like a blanket.
The ACPD Detectives were the bottom of the Police Chief’s manpower barrel, paired out of wartime necessity after the other detectives quit to join the Armed Forces. On that particular morning, Henry Canterbury was annoyed to have been sent out on a call before his morning coffee finished percolating. Dave Levitan was reminiscing about the delights he’d experienced the night before in his girlfriend’s bed, trying to think of yet another argument that would persuade her to marry him. Neither man had any idea as they approached the scene that so much would change in so short a time, that this was to be their last investigation as partners, that this case would be Levitan’s last.
Private Gary Pedersen’s body was discovered by a man who heard fish feeding on the surface under Starn’s sightseeing pier early in the morning after the 4th of July holiday. The object he saw when he peered into the morning shadows was half out of the water, left wedged in a truss of pier construction by the receding tide, and so thoroughly covered by feeding crabs that he did not initially recognize what he saw as human remains. The patrolmen who hauled the dripping body onto the dock of Captain Starn’s Inlet were kicking crabs into the flat waters when Levitan and Canterbury arrived.
Although scavengers had torn ribbons of khaki fabric from the summer uniform, it was clear that he had been an enlisted man, a Private with a single stripe on his sleeve. The teeth of little fish and the pincers of blue claw crabs had removed too much of his face for the detectives to get a sense of what he might have looked like in life, but he’d been fair-haired – that much they could tell.
They could also tell that he’d been murdered; a bullet had gone through his head, entering at the base of his skull and exiting just above the hairline.
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In THE HOMEFRONT, Levitan discovers that the last of the dreadnought battleships is the target of sabotage in a manner that could change the course of the war.
Chapter 1
Atlantic City reeked of war that summer. By then, five years into the U-Boat campaign against British and American shipping, ruptured vessels far at sea had spewed millions of sticky globs of bunker fuel and raw petroleum into the waters, tar balls that rolled onto beaches along thousands of miles of coastline and gave off a stink that everywhere masked the tang of low tide. Shortly after dawn on July 5th, 1944, a bright morning, Levitan and Canterbury locked up their radio car at a parking lot at the end of the boardwalk. Because the sea breeze would not start to blow until the sun rose higher, the smell lay on the parking lot like a blanket.
The ACPD Detectives were the bottom of the Police Chief’s manpower barrel, paired out of wartime necessity after the other detectives quit to join the Armed Forces. On that particular morning, Henry Canterbury was annoyed to have been sent out on a call before his morning coffee finished percolating. Dave Levitan was reminiscing about the delights he’d experienced the night before in his girlfriend’s bed, trying to think of yet another argument that would persuade her to marry him. Neither man had any idea as they approached the scene that so much would change in so short a time, that this was to be their last investigation as partners, that this case would be Levitan’s last.
Private Gary Pedersen’s body was discovered by a man who heard fish feeding on the surface under Starn’s sightseeing pier early in the morning after the 4th of July holiday. The object he saw when he peered into the morning shadows was half out of the water, left wedged in a truss of pier construction by the receding tide, and so thoroughly covered by feeding crabs that he did not initially recognize what he saw as human remains. The patrolmen who hauled the dripping body onto the dock of Captain Starn’s Inlet were kicking crabs into the flat waters when Levitan and Canterbury arrived.
Although scavengers had torn ribbons of khaki fabric from the summer uniform, it was clear that he had been an enlisted man, a Private with a single stripe on his sleeve. The teeth of little fish and the pincers of blue claw crabs had removed too much of his face for the detectives to get a sense of what he might have looked like in life, but he’d been fair-haired – that much they could tell.
They could also tell that he’d been murdered; a bullet had gone through his head, entering at the base of his skull and exiting just above the hairline.
********************
Low Light
Why did J. Edgar Hoover deny that there was a national crime syndicate operating in America? He claimed that criminals were too dumb to be organized. LOW LIGHT is a novel that suggests that the FBI Director might have been the victim of blackmail. The story is narrated by Al Rubin, a man seduced into taking the blackmail pictures by promises too tempting for him to refuse. Hoover pays a visit to Atlantic City during the summer of 1929, unaware that Al waits on the other side of his hotel room wall with a pair of 1929-style, high tech cameras. When the photo shoot goes awry, Al escapes into the world of bootleggers, IRA gunmen, big time gamblers, anti-Semitic sea captains, African American race jockeys, flappers, gun molls, G Men, and powerful politicians.
Readers who like the HBO miniseries “Boardwalk Empire” will find much to enjoy.
Click here to buy or download the book
Click here to send me an email
Click here to read why Stan writes
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Hardly a Pulse, takes place in the 1950s.
The old Atlantic City is in its death throes. Efforts at revival are stymied by the effects of television, airplanes, and air conditioning. Politicians, if they can be persuaded to legalize gambling, hold the key to saving the city. The Rubins find themselves involved in a plot to change the balance of political power by murder, extortion and blackmail.
Why did J. Edgar Hoover deny that there was a national crime syndicate operating in America? He claimed that criminals were too dumb to be organized. LOW LIGHT is a novel that suggests that the FBI Director might have been the victim of blackmail. The story is narrated by Al Rubin, a man seduced into taking the blackmail pictures by promises too tempting for him to refuse. Hoover pays a visit to Atlantic City during the summer of 1929, unaware that Al waits on the other side of his hotel room wall with a pair of 1929-style, high tech cameras. When the photo shoot goes awry, Al escapes into the world of bootleggers, IRA gunmen, big time gamblers, anti-Semitic sea captains, African American race jockeys, flappers, gun molls, G Men, and powerful politicians.
Readers who like the HBO miniseries “Boardwalk Empire” will find much to enjoy.
Click here to buy or download the book
Click here to send me an email
Click here to read why Stan writes
********************
Hardly a Pulse, takes place in the 1950s.
The old Atlantic City is in its death throes. Efforts at revival are stymied by the effects of television, airplanes, and air conditioning. Politicians, if they can be persuaded to legalize gambling, hold the key to saving the city. The Rubins find themselves involved in a plot to change the balance of political power by murder, extortion and blackmail.