Robert T. Westbrook


Robert T. Westbrook is an American writer. He was born to columnist Sheilah Graham five years after the death of her lover F. Scott Fitzgerald. Graham claimed Robert's biological father was Trevor Cresswell Lawrence Westbrook, a British businessman whom she divorced in 1946.
After Graham's death in 1988, British philosopher A.J. Ayer came forward to say he was the father of Robert's older half-sister Wendy and that Robert's biological father was most likely the Hollywood actor Robert Taylor. Westbrook was raised in Los Angeles until his teen years, when his mother moved Robert and Wendy to New York City. Robert attended the progressive Putney School and Columbia College.

Early career

After a summer trip to the Soviet Union he wrote his first book at age 17, Journey Behind the Iron Curtain, published in 1963 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. The wild years at Columbia University in the 1960s helped inspire his first novel, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, published by Crown in 1970. The novel became an MGM film with a young theretofore unknown actor named Don Johnson in the title role. The film was praised by Andy Warhol for its depiction of the New York counter culture scene of the late 1960s.
In the 1980s, while living with his family in Hawaii, Westbrook began a handful of satirical mysteries set in the 1950s Los Angeles where he had grown up.
In 1988 Westbrook was living in Greece when his mother, Sheilah Graham, died on November 17 in Palm Beach, Florida of congestive heart failure. She left him her papers and directed him to tell her story. He did so, detailing his mother's romance with Fitzgerald. Accessing her notes and letters, he included many details omitted from Graham's best selling 1958 memoir, Beloved Infidel. Published by Harper Collins in 1995, Westbrook's Intimate Lies is widely considered a valuable contribution to the compendium on Fitzgerald and Graham.

1990s to present

Robert Westbrook is probably best known for his Howard Moon Deer mysteries, set in fictional San Geronimo, which he began writing after he and his wife Gail moved there in 1991. He has also written novels adapted from screenplays, including The Mexican, Insomnia and The Final Cut. He conducts writing workshops in Taos and frequently travels with his wife to teach abroad.

''The Torch Singer'' trilogy

After seven years in the creation Robert Westbrook released the first two books in The Torch Singer trilogy in August–September 2014. Set in the 1950s Hollywood 'Golden Age' the books comprise suspense thrillers which follow the 'noir' tradition and detail the life of a young singer who escapes Nazi-occupied Poland to become a Hollywood star - only to die violently in uncertain circumstances at her home in Beverly Hills in 1956.

Books

The Torch Singer Trilogy

"Turquoise Lady" Speaking Volumes, paperback, ebook, 2019
"Blue Moon," Speaking Volumes, paperback, ebook, 2020

Novels based on screenplays