Roger Garrison

Created by Jeff Rovin
(1951–)

No doubt hoping to cash in on the nostalgia for the twenties, thirties and forties of the early seventies (Chinatown, The Sting, Paper Moon, etc.), Jeff Rovin put out a now forgotten paperback original series featuring Los Angeles private eye ROGER GARRISON, who has an office on Melrose Avenue and a long list of Movieland’s rich and powerful on his client list who don’t mind paying his extravagant fees.

Supposedly an accomplished composer, Roger is also supposedly “one of the world’s most brutal men. The lawless feared his name with the same passion that patrons of the arts applauded it.”

Uh-huh…

In his debut, Hollywood Detective: Garrison in 1975, Garrison’s investigating the murder of a studio boss, just as the talkies are about to change the film industry forever. There are tons of  references and shout-outs film buffs will just eat up but, as one critic put it, “the whole enterprise comes up short in comparison to Stuart Kaminsky’s popular Toby Peters series, which came along just a couple of years later.” There was a sequel, Hollywood Detective: The Wolf, released (or possibly dumped) simultaneously, intended, no doubt, as a bold marketing tactic.

It didn’t work — there were no further books in the series. Not that it stopped the author.

Author, magazine editor, freelance writer and columnist Jeff Rovin seems to be a utility man/jobber in the publishing industry, with a long and varied string of books to his credit, not just standalone thrillers and numerous TV and movie tie-ins, but also co-writes with Tom Clancy, The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson and William Shatner. Among his many non-fictions works are The Essential Jackie Chan Sourcebook, 500 Great Lawyer Jokes, The Films of Charlton Heston, How to Win at Nintendo, Joan Collins: The Unauthorized Biography, The Enclopedia of Monsters, Angel Cats and Back to the Batcave, a memoir co-written with Adam West. He has also worked for Weekly World News, DC Comics, Warren Publishing and Seaboard Periodicals, and as science and media columnist for such magazines as Analog, Omni and Famous Monsters.

UNDER OATH

• “Very clumsily written with far too much needless exposition about the period.”
  –John Conquest (1990, Trouble is Their Business)

NOVELS

• Hollywood Detective: Garrison (1975) | Buy this book
• Hollywood Detective: The Wolf (1975) | Buy this book

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith, with a big Merci to Jeff Shofield for the nudge.