Call from L.A

St Martins Pr, 1987-12-01. Hardcover. Very Good. 1987 signed and inscribed first edition, a presentation copy, St. Martin's Press (NY), 5 5/8 x 8 3/8 inches tall black cloth hardbound in publisher's unclipped dust jacket, [10], 261 pp. plus author's bio. Bump to upper edge of front board. Slight rubbing to covers. Signed by the author and inscribed to his friend and collaborator Ross White on the Acknowledgements page, where White is named. Otherwise, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked - in a like dust jacket which is nicely preserved and displayed in a clear archival Brodart sleeve. ~SP35~ Author Arthur Hansl (1931 - 2013) spent the first half of his working life as an actor, first working in the 1960s in Italy making action movies filmed on exotic locations around Europe, behind the Iron Curtain and in North Africa. In the 70s he made a dozen action movies in Mexico, often shot on the brink of a natural or man-made disaster. After a brief stint in the U.S. on the daytime series General Hospital, Hansl published three suspense novels - including this title - in which he borrowed from an acting career that was never boring. In Call from L.A., lead character Jon Storm is an ex-cop from L.A. who has been living in self-imposed exile on the west coast of Mexico since a bum rap forced him to resign from the force. Upon learning that his longtime best friend and former partner has died in the line of duty while protecting a candidate for the Senate during an assassination attempt, Storm returns to California to investigate. The candidate, another childhood friend, is a '60s radical married to a character who seems modeled after both Linda Ronstadt and Jane Fonda. Storm's undercover search brings to light a series of murders and uncovers a Soviet plot to place an agent in the White House. Hansl depicts an assortment of Southern California habitats, from wealthy movie enclaves to biker camps, with dead-on accuracy.