Lowell Cauffiel
New York Times bestselling author Lowell Cauffiel will read and sign copies of his latest hardcover, Below the Line: A Hollywood Crime Novel, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 24, at Collections Antiques and Books. The event is free and scheduled from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the store at 15326 Antioch Street.
Cauffiel, a 22-year resident of Pacific Palisades, was born in Michigan. He was a journalism major at Wayne Street University and after graduation began his writing career as a contributor to music magazines, such as Rolling Stone and Guitar Player.
He became an award-winning reporter with the Detroit News and Detroit Monthly Magazine in the 1970s and 1980s before he began his book writing career in 1995 with Eye of the Beholder.
His books Masquerade: A True Story of Seduction, Compulsion and Murder (1998) and House of Secrets (1997), which was a New York Times bestseller, have appeared on critics’ lists as the best works in American true crime.
Cauffiel’s books often explore how people embrace popular trends and exalt American values to hide their own dark intentions and destructive acts.
In 2003, he moved to Los Angeles to write for film and television and has worked with Billy Crystal, David Schwimmer, Michael Medavoy, Kiefer Sutherland, Kathryn Morris and Michael Douglas.
The author of 10 books, Cauffiel summed up his new book in an online interview with Fresh Fiction:
“Former Detroit homicide detective turned film consultant, Edwin Blake, finds hard times and clinical depression in Los Angeles. He hopes to end both when he takes a job from a quirky movie producer to find a woman and her child on the promise of future writing gig. But hidden agendas are in play and Blake soon finds himself in a deadly contest to find the truth in the underbelly of a business that specializes in narcissism, illusions and well-told lies.”
Cauffiel is an impeccable researcher and his fact finding has taken him everywhere from the president’s private living quarter in the White House to the confines of dangerous urban dope dens. Locations in this book that might be familiar to residents include the Malibu pier and the Hindu Temple on Las Virgenes Canyon Road.
This is his first book in two decades, and Cauffiel said in the online interview that it was an example of writing “what you know.” He combines the superficiality and passive aggressiveness of the show business world with the no-nonsense former Detroit homicide detective Eddie Blake.
Cauffiel is an avid surfer and motorcyclist. He’s also worked in alcohol drug rehabilitation circles as a volunteer and headed a research grant about alcohol problems among young people for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for the National Institute of Health.
The event is free. Questions? Call Collections Antiques and Books (310) 459-9692.