Getting Garbo

Set in the glamorous, cruel and often bizarre Hollywood era of the 1950s, Getting Garbo is a hilarious and suspenseful novel of the cinema's Golden Age, when autograph hounds were relentless as they sought the names of stars who became legends in their own lifetime. Nineteen-year-old Reva Hess is a charming autograph collector and the number one fan of Roy Darnell, star of the hit TV series Jack Havoc. Reva follows him everywhere, while keeping tabs on the private lives of film celebrities with her group of expert autograph collectors called The Secret Six. Soon, the slight confusion between Roy's own personality and the dashingly dangerous Jack Havoc becomes an ominous obsession and the novel turns to murder. Along the way, Jerry Ludwig brings the old Hollywood to life, evoking the giant screen figures of Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and dozens more, as well as the off-screen ruthlessness of Jack Warner. This is a world where "getting Garbo," the elusive Greta who never signs autographs, is synonymous with the yearning for the impossible, the longing for fame and romance and the blurring of fiction and reality.