Troubled Hero Tackles Fraud in ‘Unfinished Business’

Corona del Mar author Stephen Robinett describes the hero of his paperback Jeeter mystery novels as a business magazine writer who has the bad habit of getting himself involved in the stories he’s writing about.

In his second outing, “Unfinished Business” (Avon; $3.95), Jerry Jeeter is still dealing with the emotional fallout from his involvement in the death of one of the major characters in the first Jeeter mystery, “Final Option.”

This time out, Jeeter’s efforts to put his life back together place him in the middle of a major financial swindle involving an ecology-based telemarketing scam in Newport Beach, which Robinett said is “the telemarketing fraud capital of the Western world.” Robinett, who tapped his experience as a magazine free-lance writer for business and financial magazines in creating Jeeter, said he got the idea for “Unfinished Business” while doing a magazine article on business ethics.

In one energy scam in Northern California, Robinett said, “they took in tens of millions of dollars and never generated one watt and moved to someplace in Latin America.”

The scam in “Unfinished Business”--wind-powered garbage recycling--is a composite of that type of telemarketing scam and other energy and ecology scams.

Robinett said his novel also “raises issues about what we mean by success--whether we define it materially or by the way we live our lives.”

“For Jeeter, it’s not material,” he said. “The kind of success Jeeter is about has to do with getting his emotional life in order.”

Jeeter, whose marriage has come apart, has moved from Los Angeles into a furnished apartment on the Balboa Peninsula. Says Robinett, “We’re just sort of putting Jeeter back together through the course of this book.”

First Novel: Following the advice to would-be novelists to “write about what you know,” Dennis Lee Askew of Costa Mesa has written “A Handful of Dreams,” a first novel about the music industry.

In writing the paperback book (Estlin, Staples & Ernst; $12.95), the former entertainment critic for a Las Vegas newspaper and onetime band member said he wanted to show that people in music and the arts “have higher thoughts than just sex, drugs, rock and roll.”

Askew said he has been approaching independent bookstores in Orange County on his own and is pleased with the receptiveness of shop owners to carry “A Handful of Dreams.”

“Some say, ‘He’s a local author, let’s put him out in the window,’ ” said Askew. “They’ve been giving me good front-line exposure.”

Book Signings: Leith Adams and Keith Burns (“James Dean: Behind the Scene”) will sign from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at Aladdin Books, 122 W. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton. . . . Frank McConnell (“Frog King”) will sign from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at Book Carnival, 870 N. Tustin Ave., Orange. . . . Children’s book author Aliki (“Mummies Made in Heaven,” “Digging Up Dinosaurs”) will sign from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Reading Rhinoceros, 24000 Alicia Parkway, Mission Viejo. . . . Beverly Brown (“I Choose to Live”) will sign from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at B. Dalton Bookseller in South Coast Plaza. . . . Carolyn Hart (“Deadly Valentine”), Joan Hess (“A Diet to Die for”), Diane Mott Davidson (“Catering to Nobody”) and D.R. Meredith (“Murder by Deception”) will sign from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday at Book Carnival in Orange. All four authors are members of the Sisters in Crime professional women’s writers group.

Karcher Book: Margaret Karcher, wife of restaurateur Carl Karcher, will present copies of her recently published book, the “Heinz-Kirsch Family History,” to representatives of Orange County public libraries at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Anaheim Public Library.

The presentation is her contribution to the Centennial Celebration of Orange County. She is the daughter of Anaheim pioneers Joseph and Catherine Kirsch Heinz. The book, the result of six years of research, recounts the early days of the family, including events in pre-World War II Anaheim.

Koontz Talk: Best-selling author Dean R. Koontz (“Watchers,” “Lightning,” “Midnight”) will discuss “Fiction and Imagination” at 8 p.m. tonight in the Crystal Cove Auditorium in the UC Irvine Student Center. General admission: $8. For ticket information call the UCI Bren Center box office, (714) 856-5000.

Crime Talk: Evan Maxwell, half of the A.E. Maxwell husband-and-wife mystery-writing team, will discuss how an author handles criminal investigations in writing a mystery at 7 tonight at the Balboa branch of the Newport Beach Public Library, 100 E. Balboa Blvd. Free. For more information, call (714) 644-3171.

National Writers: Mike Madigan, co-author of “The Twisted Badge,” will speak at the luncheon meeting of the Southern California chapter of National Writers Club at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Irvine Marriott, 18000 Von Karman. Members, $10; nonmembers, $12.

Poets Reading: Poet Henry Morro will read at the Poets Reading meeting at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona, Fullerton. Harmonica virtuoso Bill Barrett will also perform. Admission: $10. For more information, call (714) 441-1820.

Author Reading: Helena Maria Viramontes (“The Moths and Other Stories”) will read at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Fullerton Public Library, 353 W. Commonwealth Ave. Free.