THE TART: Simone Lava, the voluptuous Miss Little Egg Harbor Township. Rebound keeps her hidden away in Atlantic City's seedy Celebrity Motel where she practices waving like a First Lady -- a title she's been promised, if she'll just lay low during election season.

THE REPORTER: Barri “Barium Enema” Embrey, the ruthless investigative reporter for the South Jersey Probe, who knows Rothman’s hiding something if only she can find it. What no one knows is that she’s also got a secret – and is personally invested in his downfall.

THE FIXER: Chief Willie Thundercloud, an ex-wrestler who runs the Jersey shore's most esoteric damage-control firm. Chief Willie digs up the macabre truth about the governor.

THE POLLSTER: Jonah Eastman, maverick political strategist raised by his mobster grandfather, who gave Rebound his start. Jonah knows only one thing can save the congenitally deceitful governor: A whopping, heartfelt lie.

In his novel, SHAKEDOWN BEACH (Thomas Dunne Books/Minotaur, 24.95), author, damage-control guru and South Jersey native Eric Dezenhall (MONEY WANDERS; JACKIE DISASTER) returns to the scene of his previous crimes and completes his South Jersey trilogy with a new take on political propaganda and the ugly truths that lurk behind a curtain of spin.

With the return of the main character of his debut novel Money Wanders, failed political pollster Jonah Eastman re-emerges front and center – this time to help spin the re-election campaign of New Jersey’s poster-boy Governor, Gardner “Rebound” Rothman, whom he put into the Governor’s mansion by “blaming a hurricane on his opponent.” But Jonah, who’s never been above deploying deceptive spin, begins to smell something rotten in paradise – and it ain’t the Jersey tomatoes.

With Rothman’s Soprano-ites bent on burying him deep in the Pinelands, Jonah enlists the aid of his own gang of miscreant mobsters, led by Chief Willie Thundercloud and Irv the Curve, Jonah’s grandfather’s best bud, to uncover the truth about Rothman and his devilish deeds.

Set in the author’s native South Jersey, SHAKEDOWN BEACH is a smart, suspenseful and ingeniously funny ride through the back alleys of political campaigning – bringing to life a fictional tale that could be ripped from today’s headlines.

From the politician whose primary credential was being the “only tall Jew in professional sports,” hired-gun former pro-wrestlers who quote political philosophers, PR-savvy gangsters who seek public approval in the age of corporate scandal by endorsing “Socially Responsible Racketeering,” and of course, a prominent pollster who has to dig up dirt on his own client in order to protect him (and doesn’t want the world to know about his own gangland origins), SHAKEDOWN BEACH will keep readers on a rollercoaster of laughter and anticipation, while recalling the many related real-life damage-control fiascos of the past few years.

One of the country’s most sought-after media and damage-control experts, Dezenhall knows propaganda -- a former White House aide during the Reagan Administration, who is now the president of Washington, D.C.-based Dezenhall Resources, he regularly appears as a network television commentator on how the news media cover business and political controversies. As a native South Jersey-ite who grew up at the Jersey Shore among the rogues and racketeers who populated Atlantic City’s infamous Boardwalk, he also knows the slick and shady characters who populate the region’s underbelly.




© Copyright 2006 Eric Dezenhall. All Rights Reserved.