As
Martha Stewart emerges fresh from the clink, blue-chip
corporations collapse from deceit, and politicians bob
and weave though minefields of scandal, they’ve
all got one thing in common: They want a guy like Jackie
Disaster to make their problems go away. Any way he
can.
In
a fresh take on the mystery genre, the treacherous and
comic “inside game” of damage-control in
the era of media witch hunts is the subject of Eric
Dezenhall’s new novel, JACKIE DISASTER (St. Martin’s
Minotaur; June 2003). Set in the author’s native
South Jersey, for this tale of schadenfreude at its
nastiest, Dezenhall draws on his own experience as one
of the country's top media and damage-control experts,
as well as his boyhood growing up among the rogues and
racketeers who populated Atlantic City’s infamous
Boardwalk.
“Every
way of life has its enforcers,” Jackie tells Sally
Naturale, after she’s accused of allegedly taking
the life of the woman's unborn baby. “It sounds
brutal,” admits Dezenhall, “But as our culture’s
desire to tear down the successful has gotten more vicious,
spin-doctors have been forced to add new tricks to their
conventional arsenal of press releases and photo opportunities.”
As
Sally Naturale battles media-hungry trial lawyers, cyber-rumors
and protests of “baby killer,” her stock
tanks. Claiming that despite the rumors, she’s
as wholesome as her milk, she hires Jackie to vindicate
her. Although he doubts the truth of both the accuser
and his own client, he nevertheless embarks on a Machiavellian
damage-control campaign -- conducting a team of Jersey
Shore con-artists (a.k.a. “The Imps”), rogue
cops, stock manipulators, avaricious clergymen, ratings-obsessed
reporters and Sopranos wannabes (Jackie calls them “Falsettos”)
to clear Sally’s good name and catch the folks
who are trying to drag him down with her. As Jackie
puts it, he spends his life in pursuit of “a lower
truth.”
Says
Dezenhall, “Nowadays, any attack on a successful
person or enterprise is considered noble. Any defense
of the successful is considered sleazy. Even though
Jackie’s one rough customer, attackers who hide
behind the mantle of public interest have been given
a free pass to pillage since the 1960s. Jackie is the
fictional symbol of a very real phenomenon – the
orchestrated counter-offensive by the successful.”
During
the stressful campaign, forty year-old Jackie has to
balance his profession with a cantankerous aging father
who wields guilt like a revolver, a strong-willed girlfriend
(the Ivy League-educated daughter of the local crime
boss), and his deeply-adored ten-year-old niece whom
he raised from birth after her parents died.
In
JACKIE DISASTER, Eric Dezenhall takes readers on a nail-biting
tour of modern-day damage-control, providing a clear-eyed,
behind-the-headlines view of what our caught-in-the-headlights
celebrities deal with on a daily basis. One of its leading
practitioners, he examines hot-button issues including
the role of reality television programming, the Internet
and spread of disinformation, the role of consumer illusion
in the popular culture, and the less-than-holy motives
of those who would justify attacks on celebrities in
moral terms.
Suspenseful,
insightful and hilariously funny, JACKIE DISASTER is
a spin-til-you're-dizzy dance through the dark alleys
of media manipulation and, of course, the “star”
of the novel, the author’s beloved South Jersey.
Click here for Jackie's Choice Rants!
© Copyright 2006 Eric Dezenhall. All Rights Reserved.
