It is real. It Happened. And it mattered.

There used to be something called JOURNALISM. It was a noble “Fourth Estate”. There was no concept of anything called “fake news”. Cronkite was the “most trusted man in America” and the Times & Post were paragons of integrity. Newspapers were actually “a thing”.

Add to that landscape: axe murders; international monetary manipulation; a small-town police department; Congressional corruption; insane religious cults; cover ups; con men; assassinations; and the ugly zeitgeist of Southern racism.

In a city with the highest per-capita murder rate in the country, Gary Green often arrived on the scene before the cops. Known for unorthodox hands-on reporting that took readers into and behind the scenes, his life was filled with shoot-outs, drug raids, high-speed chases, and every manner of blood and gore. His colorful exploits led to an international mystery of entanglements that made Moriarty look like a piker.

A roman à clef novelization is a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The technique is in the spirit of Sylvia Plath, John Banville, Truman Capote, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Jack Kerouac, Victor Hugo, Blaise Cendrars, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerny, Naguib Mahfouz, Charles Bukowski, Malachi Martin, Saul Bellow, Hunter S. Thompson, James Joyce, and others writing autobiographical experiences about controversial topics, reporting inside information, or detailing crimes.

This audiobook, 4th and 30, in that spirit brings us one of the many over-the-top life adventures of Gary Green.