Synopsis
Synopsis Ben Hawthorne, self-exiled to an absent friend's crumbling Greenwich Village apartment, attempts to write down the events of his last month in Los Angeles. He is desperate to understand why he pushed Mark Victor off the balustrade of his Wilshire Corridor penthouse terrace. What, in God's name, possessed an easy-going, ethical WASP to murder his oldest friend, who happened to be a Jew? While Ben's claim that Mark accidentally fell-they were both drunk-is readily accepted by the police and public, he knows otherwise. Ben and Mark met at college. During the ensuing thirty years, they stayed in touch, but had gone dramatically different ways. They were each other's oldest, not best, friend. That is, until the past year, 1992, when Mark chose to enter Ben's world. By now, Mark had become one of the country's foremost financier/entrepreneurs, with a Time Magazine cover to his credit for effecting the major mergers of the Eighties. Ben, by now, was considered a 'world class' motion picture director, with hit films and an Oscar nomination attesting to his success. Four years prior to killing Mark, however, Ben suffered two shattering setbacks: His agent of two decades, who had shielded him from most of the harsh truths of the business, died from a stroke. Only weeks later, an IRS agent informed Ben that his business manager, also of twenty years, was a compulsive gambler who had disappeared, leaving his clientele be reft of all assets, including pension investments. Suddenly, at forty-eight, Ben had to cope alone in a hostile environment, with no production prospects and his several million, gone. Does Mark know any of this when he offers to finance The Cry of Sirens, from a controversial script Ben owns? What part does Martha, Mark's assistant and Ben's eventual wife, play in the final encounter on the penthouse roof-garden? How do ego, guilt and envy bear on the impulse of one American high-achiever to destroy another? During his intense odyssey to uncover his
About the Author
William Kronick has written, directed and/or produced both documentaries and theatrical films. In the former arena his credits range from National Geographic and Plimpton! Network Specials to To The Ends Of The Earth, a feature-length chronicle of the British Antarctica-Arctic Transglobe Expedition. It received an Academy Award Special Certificate of Merit. He also produced many episodes for the Series, Mysteries of the Bible. In the theatrical field, he directed A Bowl of Cherries, The 500 Pound Jerk, Horowitz in Dublin and the Second Unit on The Bridge at Remagen, King Kong, Flash Gordon and others. Mr. Kronick resides in Los Angeles. The Cry of Sirens is the first of atrilogy of novels to explore the dynamics of authentic artistic talent, celebrity and commerce in contemporary America.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
