Welcome to my selected works

Operation White Rabbit traces the rise and fall—and rise and fall again—of the psychedelic community through the life of the man known as the “Acid King:” William Leonard Pickard. Pickard was a legitimate genius, a follower of Timothy Leary, a con artist, a womanizer, and a believer that LSD would save lives. He was a foreign diplomat, a Harvard fellow, and the biggest producer of LSD on the planet—if you believe the DEA.

Bob Dylan is a music hero to generations. He’s also an international bestselling artist, a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, and an Oscar winner for “Things Have Changed.” His career is stronger and more influential than ever. How did this happen, given the road to oblivion he seemed to choose more than two decades ago?

A riveting best seller that chronicles how a second-rate newspaper rose to greatness over a century, helping to shape a sleepy Southern California pueblo into the second largest metropolis in America, only to become a casualty of greed and civil war within the family that owned the Los Angeles Times.

"I run all the studios," 38-year-old Lew Wasserman boasted in 1951 when turning down an offer to run MGM. Indeed, he did. As president of MCA, the most powerful talent agency of its time, Wasserman gained unprecedented artistic and financial clout for Hollywood's top stars, hastening the end of the studio system. Not that he did it out of the goodness of his heart. The canny, ruthless Wasserman was famous for inventing new ways to increase MCA's percentage, most notably by bundling clients into packages the agency produced for the burgeoning television market--a glaring conflict of interest that finally prompted a Justice Department investigation. Veteran movie journalist Dennis McDougal uses Wasserman's career as a case study in how the entertainment industry has changed over the course of the 20th century. He chronicles MCA's evolution from a band-booking business in wide-open Jazz Age Chicago (where persistent rumors about the company's Mob ties began) to a postwar movie and TV powerhouse to a Japanese-owned subsidiary in the 1990s. Seamlessly blending biography, business reporting, and juicy celebrity anecdotes, this is first-rate showbiz muckraking.
--Wendy Smith, Amazon.Com

Digging up as many roles offstage as on—hardheaded businessman, softhearted friend, master of rude rejoinders, fanatical sports fan and poetic philosopher—McDougal makes Nicholson’s everyday life just as fascinating as his films, which also get considerable, thoughtful attention; in fact, McDougal’s research is so deep and detailed, his extensive chapter notes could make a fine book of their own. -- Publishers Weekly

Aboard the spy ship U.S.S. Argosy in the war-tossed waters off the coast of Vietnam, three young American sailors form an unlikely bond. Each has fled an America they were raised to love but somehow no longer understand. When forced to choose whether to face combat or stay and fight the war in the streets, they sign up for a war that reflected the conflict that raged inside each of them. The one thing of which they were certain was that the only people in the world that they could depend on were each other.

Dr. Lyle Fields is having a bad day.  A once-renowned Hemingway scholar desperate for recognition, he’s lost his wife, his reputation and teeters on losing his livelihood as a Stanford professor when a former star pupil waltzes through his office door. Clarissa Daugherty is more than a vision of loveliness. She has found the holy grail of his years of research: a long lost, possibly apocryphal suitcase containing the young Hemingway's unpublished first novel. One tiny problem: her sometimes boyfriend passed the suitcase on to a greedy Beverly Hills literary agent who promised to turn the novel into a movie … and now he’s gone missing.

Former child actor, acclaimed star of In Cold Blood and iconic ‘70s TV detective in Baretta, Robert Blake met Bonny Lee Bakley at a party and slept with her the same night. A Hollywood parasite and con artist known for elaborate Internet sex scams and a shameless pursuit of money and fame, Bonny wanted to marry a star and by the late ‘90s, Blake was her target: a troubled has-been coasting on the fumes of past success. Six months after their quickie wedding, Bonny was shot to death in a parked car on a dark Hollywood side street, and the No. 1 suspect was Baretta.

The cult classic about Southern California serial murderer Randy Kraft, the mild-mannered computer whiz by day and lust killer at night, who holds the dubious distinction of being one of the most prolific murderers (approximately 67 victims) in modern U.S. history. (Warner Books)

In Yosemite National Park, Cary Stayner commits murder after murder as law enforcement scrambles to decipher anything that will save hapless vacationers.

The best-selling saga of a Sacramento mother of six who enticed two of her sons into a monstrous plot to torture and murder her own two daughters. (Ballantine)

Co-authored with famed Hollywood trial lawyer Pierce O'Donnell. It's the definitive inside look at Hollywood's landmark Art Buchwald v. Paramount trial the "Coming To America" lawsuit that unveiled Hollywood's sleazy accounting practices and changed forever the way studios conduct business. 

Edgar-nominated. This is a recount of the descent into murderous madness of the family of Roy Miller, Ronald Reagan's personal attorney.