Joseph E Charles

Degrees of Separation Joseph E Charles

Publisher Marketing: Shelby Hill, columnist for the Mpls. Herald, travels to L. A. to profile porn king Richard Haybrook, who recently made a two million dollar donation to a local battered women's shelter. A childhood acquaintance of Shelby's, Haybrook--a notorious man in a notorious industry--has big plans for expanding his porn empire into every home in America, and he's halfway there. Shelby's assignment is an uphill battle all the way. Like most newspapers, the Herald is losing money, and his editor wants to ratchet up the titillation factor on his columns while Haybrook wants Shelby to massage his legacy. Shelby increasingly finds himself torn between protecting his job and assauging his subject's massive ego, all the while sinking deeper into the bizarre and seamy world of the L. A. porn industry. Two other P. O. V. characters inhabit this novel. One, a chemical dependancy treatement psychologist named Diane Atkins, is preoccupied with the many challenges her job provides. To further complicate her life, she has a daughter who seems intent upon making her life a living hell -- refusing to grow up, surrounded by perpetual adolescents in the upholstered play-pen of S. California. How much trouble can she stir up? Plenty, in a word. Then there's Jim. A colossal of a man driven by a purpose beyond his understanding. Where did he come from and where is he going? Even Jim can't answer those questions, because he is not his own master. Yet his presence in this novel gives reason for the novel's title, as the aforementioned characters story's begin to merge, and the concept of six degrees of separation gets whittled down, bit by bit, to two degrees, then one, and in the end... well, you be the judge.