Charlie Willis Books

When Beverly Hills Police Officer Charlie Willis pulls over a speeding Rolls Royce hell-bent for Neiman Marcus, he’s surprised to see Esther Radcliffe, the geriatric star of the TV series Miss Agatha , behind the wheel. He’s even more surprised when she guns him down and keeps on driving. A few hours later, he wakes up in the intensive care unit…to find a William Morris agent, a network president, and the head of Pinnacle Studios standing at the foot of his bed. They have a proposal for him: in exchange for conveniently forgetting who shot him, they’ll make him the star of his own series, My Gun Has Bullets . So Charlie trades in his real badge for a fake one…and so begins an uproarious but deadly romp through the wonderful world of TV make-believe…with real bullets. To make it to sweeps week, Charlie will have to survive two homicidal stuntmen, a rabid celebrity dog, a hit man-turned-producer, a psychotic old lady, a sex-crazed blackmailer, and vicious ratings…with only a stunning, leather-clad Baywatch beauty to help him. “It will make you cackle like a sitcom laugh track. Goldberg keeps the gags coming right up to the end.”— Entertainment Weekly “A very funny novel…a pinch of Carl Hiaasen, a dash of Donald Westlake, and a heaping portion of avarice and inanity Hollywood Style. It’s boffo!”—Thomas Gaughan, Booklist “A rousing send-up of everything and everyone in the world of show-biz.”—Judith Kreiner, The Washington Times

The raunchy, outrageous, laugh-out-loud thriller from Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author of True Fiction and Lost Hills . Ex-cop Charlie Willis handles "special security" at Pinnacle Pictures. His job: to protect the studio and its stars, to stop scandals before they explode, to keep the peace in the land of make-believe. When Pinnacle revives the cult, 1960s TV series Beyond the Beyond as the cornerstone of a fourth network, two powerful forces fight for control of the show—a talent agency that uses blackmail, torture, and murder to keep its clients on the A-list, and a homicidal legion of rabid fans led by an insane actor who thinks he's in outer space. This book, the sequel to My Gun Has Bullets , was originally entitled Beyond the Beyond when it was published by St. Martin's Press in 1997 CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR DEAD SPACE “Goldberg uses just about everything he can think of to send up the studio system, fandom, Star Trek , Trekkies, agents, actors… you name it, he’ll make you laugh about it.” Analog "An outrageously entertaining take on the loathsome folkways of contemporary showbiz," Kirkus Reviews “Mr. Goldberg has an observant eye and a wicked pen!” Washington Times “[It] reads like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland set against the venal world of the TV industry. It’s wonderfully revealing and uncannily accurate,” Vancouver Sun (Canada) "Some of the easily recognizable actors, agents and producers who are mercilessly ribbed may find it hard to crack a smile at the author's gag-strewn prose, likewise those seekers after politically correct entertainment. But the rest of us should have no trouble….the novel's satiric slant is strong enough to have an effigy of Goldberg beamed into outer space at the next Star Trek convention," Los Angeles Times "Pinnacle Pictures has decided to revive a 25-year-old cult sci-fi TV show called Beyond the Beyond , but somebody keeps killing off the new cast. Is it the Hollywood agent who eats human flesh? The aging actor who still thinks he's a starship captain? The fans who live only to attend conventions? This sharp roman a clef goes where no Hollywood satire has gone before—altering just enough facts to avoid the libel courts but still smacking of a certain je ne sais Trek. It probably won't make Goldberg, a television writer and producer ( Baywatch, Spenser: For Hire, seaQuest ), the most popular boy on the Paramount lot, but it's a stingingly funny novel just the same." Entertainment Weekly "The hilarious follow-up to Goldberg's witty debut, My Gun Has Bullets...[this book] skewers the entertainment business, which Goldberg knows well," Oline Codgill, Knight-Ridder Newspapers . "As in his riotous novel My Gun Has Bullets, TV writer/producer Goldberg once again bites the hand that feeds him, laughing all the while. Inspired silliness," Publishers Weekly