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Robert T. Westbrook

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For the American historian, see Robert B. Westbrook.

Robert T. Westbrook (born 1945) is an American writer. He was born to columnist Sheilah Graham five years after the death of her lover F. Scott Fitzgerald. There is some question as to Robert’s biological father, who Graham claimed was Trevor Cresswell Lawrence Westbrook, a British businessman whom she divorced in 1946.

After Graham’s death in 1988, British philosopher A.J. Ayer came forward to say he was the father of Robert’s older half-sister Wendy and that Robert’s biological father was most likely the Hollywood actor Robert Taylor. Westbrook always wanted to be a writer. Raised in Los Angeles until his teen years, his mother then moved Robert and Wendy to New York City. Robert attended the progressive Putney School in Vermont and Columbia College in New York.

Early career

After a summer trip to the Soviet Union he wrote his first book at age 17, Journey Behind the Iron Curtain, 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 theretofore 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. Westbrook did not write again for 15 years.

In the 1980s, while living with his family in Hawaii, he began a handful of satirical mysteries set in the 1950s Los Angeles where he had grown up. In 1988 he was living in Greece when his mother Sheilah Graham died on November 17 in Palm Beach, Florida of congestive heart failure. In the wake of her death, he was inspired to write the story of 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 Harper Collins in 1995, Westbrook's Intimate Lies is widely considered a valuable contribution to the compendium on Fitzgerald, and Graham.

1990s to present

Robert 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.

The Torch Singer trilogy

After seven years in the creation Robert 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.

Books

The Torch Singer Trilogy

  • Book One: An Overnight Sensation Swan's Nest Canada hardcover, paperback, ebooks (2014)
  • Book Two: An Almost Perfect Ending Swan's Nest Canada hardcover, paperback, ebooks (2014)
  • Book Three: The Saint of Make-Believe Swan's Nest Canada hardcover, paperback, ebooks (tbp 2015)

Non-Fiction

Early Works

Left Handed Police Man Mysteries

  • The Left Handed Police Man Crown(1986) Warner Books paperback (1987)
  • Nostalgia Kills Crown (1988)
  • Lady Left Crown (1990)
  • Rich Kids Birchlane (1992)

Howard Moon Deer Mysteries

Novels based on screenplays

Sources

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