Corbett, David 1953-

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CORBETT, David 1953-

PERSONAL: Born June 22, 1953, in Columbus, OH; married Cesidia Therese Tessicini (deceased January, 2001). Ethnicity: "American Mutt." Education: Ohio State University, B.S. (cum laude), 1976; University of California—Berkeley, 1977. Religion: "Lapsed Catholic."

ADDRESSES: Offıce—P.O. Box 4249, Vallejo, CA 94590. Agent—Laurie Fox, Linda Chester and Assoc., 1678 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 331, Berkeley, CA 94709. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Novelist. Palladino & Sutherland, San Francisco, CA, private investigator, 1983-96; worked in wife's law office, 1996-2001.

MEMBER: Mystery Writers of America, IACW.

WRITINGS:

The Devil's Redhead, Ballantine (New York, NY), 2002.

Done for a Dime, Ballantine (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: David Corbett told CA: "I was a private investigator with a prominent San Francisco-based firm for nearly fifteen years, then served as my wife's Man Friday in her solo law practice until her death in January, 2001. My stories begin in those real-life experiences, but then explore issues such as the limits of loyalty, the devastating impact of survivor guilt on murder witnesses, the victim's family—and even the police—and the difficulty of meaningful action, justice, or even love in world in which the forces of conformity and corruption betray, overwhelm, or stifle us at every turn."

In his first novel, The Devil's Redhead, Corbett tells the story of good-hearted if not exactly upstanding Dan Abatangelo. Abatangelo is a drug smuggler based in Las Vegas, which he records in photographs as a sideline. When he meets Shel Beaudry, a dealer at Caesar's Palace, the two hit it off and before long are working together in Dan's smuggling business, until a big deal goes awry and all involved are arrested. Dan takes a fall in order to get Shel a lighter prison sentence, and by the time he gets out ten years later, she has hooked up with another drug dealer, unfortunately one immersed in a much more dangerous world. Despite his better judgment, Dan decides to track her down and see if she is doing okay. Before long he finds himself confronted by the brutality and bloodiness of the modern world of drug dealing, a world light years away from the relatively peaceful world he left behind ten years earlier. "Corbett thunders out of the gate with this gritty, moving debut about an ex con's readjustment to freedom and his efforts to reunite with his former lover," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer. "Without compromising the stark realism of his bruising style, Corbett has written an astonishingly tender love story," concluded Marilyn Stasio in theNew York Times Book Review. A contributor to Deadly Pleasures remarked that "the writing is strong and engrossing, the characters are richly developed, the storytelling is surprisingly self-assured, the story itself is a grand and tragic one, and there is every reason to both praise this debut and eagerly await what will come from this new author's pen."