Boulevard by Stephen Jay Schwartz
In filmmaker, film developer and screenwriter Stephen Jay Schwartz' debut novel, Boulevard, we meet LAPD homicide detective Hayden Glass. Hayden is haunted by painful childhood events including the early death of his father. Meanwhile Glass is hiding private struggles about his sex addiction while investigating a series of murders that began with the killing of a politician's daughter by a sexual predator, a case for which he taps the resources of his support groups. His world crashes down around him when he discovers that the killer has his sights set on an ultimate victim: Glass himself.
"Boulevard is the world in which Hayden Glass lives," says Schwartz. "It's a metaphor for the addiction itself. The first chapter of the book is called 'Cruising,' which could mean that he's a police officer on duty, in a 'cruiser,' on the job. But it's also what he's doing at the moment; cruising for prostitutes on Sunset Boulevard. Boulevard is the world of addiction."
It's this duality and complex way of looking at simple things that bring Boulevard its sharply gritty texture. "Schwartz does a fine job of blurring the lines between sexuality and violence, the criminal world and the police world," said Publishers Weekly in an early review. "Schwartz hasn't missed a trick in this gripping first novel," echoed Booklist.
If Boulevard feels eerily real - sometimes too real - Schwartz has a simple explanation: it is. "I struggled with sex addiction for many years," says Schwartz. "I didn't know it was an addiction, I just thought I was a bad person. I lived a duplicitous life and it was slowly killing me. If I had read a book like Boulevard when I was in the thick of it I would have recognized myself between the covers. I would have found the 12-Step meetings years earlier."
That sharp touch of reality affects readers in different ways. Says Schwartz: "I have a good friend who read an early draft of the book and told me that when he finished it he had to take a shower and go to the beach to meditate."
Not all of the research for Boulevard came right out of life. Schwartz spent some time in the trenches, putting in the miles that ended up giving the book the sheen of believability it carries so easily. For example, Schwartz says he took "an amazing tour of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office and witnessed six simultaneous autopsies. The descriptions of the Coroner's Office in the novel reflect what I saw."
Considering the warm reception that Boulevard has already received, it won't surprise anyone that Forge will publish a second Hayden Glass novel next summer. In the sequel to Boulevard, Hayden ends up in San Francisco "on a personal matter tied to his addiction," says Schwartz. "While he's there something goes wrong and he gets caught up in an investigation that's bigger than he imagined. He's also a fish-out-of-water; the SFPD doesn't want a rogue LAPD detective meddling in their affairs. There's a lot of action and Hayden ends up having to slay personal and real demons from beginning to end."
Schwartz lives in Southern California with his wife and two young sons. His household includes "one very frumpy looking labradoodle and a rat."
Linda L. Richards is the editor of January Magazine and a contributor to The Rap Sheet. Her fifth novel, DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE, will be published St. Martin's Minotaur/Thomas Dunne January 2009.
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