Robert T. Westbrook

After a summer trip to the Soviet Union, Westbrook wrote his first book at age 17, Journey Behind the Iron Curtain, which was published in 1963 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. The wild years at Columbia University in the 1960s helped inspire his first novel, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, published by Crown in 1970. The novel became an MGM film, with a young, then-unknown actor named Don Johnson in the title role. The film was praised by Andy Warhol for its depiction of the New York counter culture scene of the late 1960s.

In the 1980s, while living with his family in Hawaii, Westbrook began a handful of satirical mysteries set in the 1950s Los Angeles where he had grown up.

In 1988, Westbrook was living in Greece when his mother, Sheilah Graham, died on November 17 in Palm Beach, Florida of congestive heart failure. She left him her papers and directed him to tell her story.[1] He did so, detailing his mother's romance with Fitzgerald. Accessing her notes and letters, he included many details omitted from Graham's best-selling 1958 memoir, Beloved Infidel. Published by HarperCollins in 1995,[2] Westbrook's Intimate Lies is widely considered a valuable contribution to the literature on Fitzgerald and Graham.[3]

Westbrook is probably best known for his Howard Moon Deer mysteries, set in fictional San Geronimo (Taos, New Mexico), which he began writing after he and his wife Gail moved there in 1991. He has also written novels adapted from screenplays, including The Mexican, Insomnia and The Final Cut. He conducts writing workshops in Taos and frequently travels with his wife to teach abroad.

After seven years in the creation, Westbrook released the first two books in The Torch Singer trilogy in August–September 2014. Set in the 1950s Hollywood 'Golden Age,' the books comprise suspense thrillers which follow the 'noir' tradition and detail the life of a young singer who escapes Nazi-occupied Poland to become a Hollywood star - only to die violently in uncertain circumstances at her home in Beverly Hills in 1956.

• Westbrook Author Biography
• Synopses of Intimate Lies with biographical info
• Jewish Women's Archive article on Sheilah Graham by daughter Wendy Fairey

• Westbrook Author Biography
• Robert Westbrook page on Amazon