A Mystery Based Partly on Forbes

The high-powered, filthy rich business magazine publisher in Stephen Robinett’s new paperback mystery, “Final Option,” bears a striking resemblance to another high-powered, filthy rich business magazine publisher.

The Corona del Mar author acknowledges he based his fictional publisher, who has a penchant for hot-air balloons, just “a little bit” on the late multimillionaire Malcolm Forbes, “but he’s a little bit of several other people, too. One editor in particular, who’s been dead eight or nine years, probably contributed more to the character.”

But that didn’t stop Robinett from having Avon Books send a galley of his book to Forbes in hopes he would write a book-cover blurb for Robinett’s mystery about a magazine financial reporter whose investigation into the disappearance of a Wall Street “whiz kid” causes him to become personally involved in the dangerous events he is supposed to be writing about.

Forbes’ mini-review of “Final Option” (Avon; $3.50) arrived too late to make it on the book cover, but it proves that the high-profile publisher, who died last weekend, had a sense of humor.

In praising Robinett’s “exciting mystery” for being “a fast-paced read about the fringe world of financial journalism,” Forbes noted, with tongue in cheek, that “the balloonist owner-publisher of this business magazine bears no resemblance to anyone I’ve ever known.”

Robinett said it took him six months to get through to Forbes.

“I can’t tell you the hoops one has to jump through,” Robinett said. “But he was extremely helpful and gracious, and it was quite a good review.”

Robinett, 48, who has written magazine short stories and science fiction novels, tapped his experience as a magazine free-lancer for business and financial magazines in creating his character, journalist Jerry Jeeter, who writes for Global Capitalism, a third-rate business and financial magazine based in Los Angeles. Much of the mystery’s action occurs in Newport Beach.

“One of the things that interested me in using this kind of character is he’s much more like everybody else out in the world,” Robinett said. “He’s not someone who grew up with a Beretta between his teeth. He’s just a guy doing his job.”

“Final Option” is the first in a series of paperback “Jeeter mystery novels.” Robinett just completed the second, “Unfinished Business,” which is set in Orange County and Palm Springs and picks up about six months after the end of “Final Option.”

Although “Final Option” recently arrived in bookstores, don’t expect Robinett to do the requisite local author book signings.

“I decline to do it,” he said. “It’s a matter of personal taste, I suppose. I really think that books should stand on their own merit one way or the other. And they do, as a matter of fact, no matter what you do.”