‘Dead Man’s’ Dance Card Is Filling Up : Author: Robert Ferrigno is in demand as his latest Orange County-set suspense thriller gets attention. Although the novelist now lives in Washington, he’ll return to the Southland on his book tour.

Novelist Robert Ferrigno was channel surfing Wednesday morning when he landed on “Good Morning America” and, he said, he almost spilled his coffee in his lap.

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In a segment on the best books of the summer, book reviewer Digby Diehl held up a copy of “Dead Man’s Dance,” Ferrigno’s latest Orange County-set suspense thriller.

For Ferrigno, it was the kind of day most authors can only dream of having.

Before he flipped on “Good Morning America,” he had seen the first 15-second national commercial for “Dead Man’s Dance” (Putnam; $23.95), which will be broadcast next week during “The Today Show” and on CNN.

And a few hours later he was on his rooftop deck having his picture taken by a photographer for Entertainment Weekly. (The last time he had his picture taken for the magazine--for his second novel, “The Cheshire Moon,” in 1993--Ferrigno was given the lead review.)

“It’s like every year and a half I’m almost important for a month, and then I get back to being me,” said Ferrigno, 47, speaking by phone during a break in the photo shoot at his lakefront home in Kirkland, Wash.

Ferrigno, who lived and worked in Southern California until moving with his family to Washington three years ago, said he visits two or three times a year to keep in touch and will be back next week for a series of Orange County book signings.

“For whatever reason,” he said, “my heart remains in Orange County.

“It’s the perfect setting for the kinds of books I’m interested in. Orange County is sort of a caldron of ambition and greed and beautiful people and hustlers. And you’ve got the amalgam of people: Any kind of a neighborhood you want to write about, you can find it in Orange County, whether Vietnamese or Mexican American community or upscale white-bread community or bikers.”

The energy level of Orange County, he said, is more “intensely jacked up” than just about anywhere else.

It’s why all three of his books have been set here, he said.

Ferrigno’s first novel, “The Horse Latitudes,” was hailed as the “fiction debut of the season” by Time magazine in 1990. The New York Times called his second book, “The Cheshire Moon,” a “gripping, fast-paced thriller.” And “Dead Man’s Dance,” stylishly written in Ferrigno’s trademark noir blend of sex and violence, is generating equally glowing reviews.

In his book review column for Playboy, Diehl praised Ferrigno for writing “power-packed thrillers that exist on some plane of Southern California hyperreality” and said “Dead Man’s Dance” is “filled with sharp-edged scenes of violence, confrontation and sensuality.”

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This time around, Ferrigno’s characters play out those themes against local backdrops that range from a ritzy house in Newport Beach to a seedy apartment near John Wayne Airport.

In the novel, Ferrigno’s tenacious, investigative magazine journalist Quinn (last seen in “The Cheshire Moon”) is dealing with the murder of his estranged stepfather, a respected Orange County Superior Court judge.

The judge, “a fleshy autocrat with three chins and a full slope of gut” is contentedly preparing chocolate truffles in his Balboa Peninsula home when he is dispatched by two hit men--the kind of exotic sociopathic villains that have become Ferrigno’s trademark: Rick, a pretty-boy hairdresser wanna-be, and Hugo, a tough-as-barbed-wire kind of guy who “when he cut himself shaving, he did not bleed.”

At the same time, a supposedly deceased family friend and father figure to Quinn--the suavely flamboyant ex-ballroom dance champion Joe Steps--turns up after 28 years in prison on a double-homicide rap for which he was framed.

And to complicate matters further, Quinn’s ex-wife and 8-year-old daughter are planning a move to Paris, and Quinn is considering following suit. Which doesn’t sit well with his girlfriend, a tough and smart magazine photographer.

Ferrigno said he particularly enjoyed writing the characters of the two hit men.

“Part of what characterizes a lot of my stuff is the ambiguity of good and evil,” he said. “In other words: The good characters have a real darkness to them, and with the terrible characters there is a side to them you can relate to--whether Rick’s ambitions and fantasies or Hugo’s incredible sadness and disconnection with life.”

In fact, Ferrigno said, it was the idea of the two hit men driving in their car that got the novel rolling. “I imagined that scene in the car, and I knew they were on their way to kill someone, and I didn’t know whether they were good guys or bad guys. . . . We all have both of those kinds of characters in our heads.”

For Ferrigno, his new novel has been a winner from the start.

He left William Morrow and Co. after his second book and his agent, Mary Evans, sent the first 50 pages of “Dead Man’s Dance” to a dozen major New York publishing houses. The result: An auction with nine publishers involved in the bidding. Putnam won out, signing Ferrigno to a two-book deal for what the author says is in the “high six figures.”

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“Dead Man’s Dance,” the first of the two books, has been given a 150,000-copy first printing. Ferrigno said his previous high first printing had been 30,000 copies.

The novel already has been sold to eight foreign countries and to Random House for an audio tape version, and negotiations also are underway for sale of film rights.

Ferrigno has danced with Hollywood before: Tri-Star optioned “Horse Latitudes” in 1990. “It went through two screenwriters, three screenplays, and they could not come up with anything that looked like a movie,” he said. “I was happy I got to buy my house with the option money.”

Ferrigno described the writing of “Dead Man’s Dance” as the “easiest and most fluid and experience of my writing life.”

Part of the reason writing the novel came so easily to Ferrigno may be because the story is somewhat personal. One of the subtexts of this book, he said, is the relationship between fathers and sons.

“My own father and I had a very tempestuous relationship,” said Ferrigno, who named the stepfather in the book after his own father, Teddy.

“We were estranged for long periods. We didn’t talk for about seven years and only really got close after he had a run-in [with the law] that I was able to help him out with.”

It was no ordinary run-in with the law.

His father, who died last year at 69, was arrested in Florida in 1992 and charged with assault with attempt to commit murder: He owned a condo, and, when the tenant was far behind in rent, he drove over and shot him.

“The men in my family have always had violent tempers, and my father clearly fit that bill,” Ferrigno said. “There was that side to him. He was [an] extremely responsible family man, who took pride in never missing a day’s work in 24 years--a certified public accountant whose whole life was, everything was supposed to add up, to balance, and yet he had this incredible violent temper.”

Although convicted, Ferrigno’s father avoided prison time. Ferrigno said he was placed on probation with the promise to leave the state and sign over the deed to the condo to the tenant, who, Ferrigno said, had major medical bills.

“This most unpleasant of experiences helped bring us closer together. When we’d talk the last few years of his life, he’d bring up that I came through for him in his hour of need. Which I thought a strange thing--I couldn’t imagine anybody turning your back on a parent. We learned a lot about each other.

“In the same way, my main character [Quinn] gets glimpses of himself in trying to find out facts about his father.”

Ferrigno is halfway through writing his fourth novel.

Once again, his characters will play out their dramas on familiar Orange County turf.

“In Orange County it seems the sun glares off the blacktop and the sand and everyone is at full throttle all the time. So you’ve got the kind of people I’m interested in. My stuff is about ambition and betrayal and honor, so Orange County’s perfect.”

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Ferrigno will sign copies of his book at three Orange County locations: Book Carnival in Orange at 3 p.m. July 15; The Green Door mystery bookstore in San Juan Capistrano at 5 p.m. July 15; and Coffee, Tea & Mystery in Westminster at 1 p.m. July 16.