Big Book of the Season?

This is disgusting on so many levels. Our valiant HarperCollins rep had to press all her accounts into buying a "major secret" title earlier this year. Turned out to be Diana's Butler. SMB was able to refuse the package. But, it was a pain to run up the street after the UPS dude... She warned that Regan Books was going to pull the same stunt later this year. yes that Regan Books. As in, when Bernard Kerlick got caught bonking his publisher at the apartment reserved for 9/11 rescue workers to nap at... yeah, that one.

I think I can tell you two bookstores who won't be carrying this one.

Or we'll have one copy that gets well thumbed and never bought.


The Sunday Times - World

The Sunday Times October 22, 2006
Blood money row as OJ 'admits' killings
Tony Allen-Mills, New York

ELEVEN years after O J Simpson walked free from America’s most controversial murder trial, the former star athlete is at the centre of a row over reports that he is being paid $3.5m for an autobiography in which he describes how he “hypothetically” might have murdered his ex-wife and her male friend.
Relatives of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, the two victims of the 1994 double murder that made headlines around the world, expressed disgust and frustration that Simpson might be continuing to profit from a crime that most Americans are convinced he committed, despite his notorious acquittal.

“If this is true, that is blood money and it’s evil and disgusting,” said Denise Brown, the sister of Simpson’s former wife who has become a prominent campaigner against domestic violence. “Any company that actually pays him for this is just as bad as he is.”

The book is reported to have the working title If I Did It. Details were published by the National Enquirer newspaper last week on the same day that Goldman’s father, Fred, launched a new court attempt to seize some of Simpson’s assets in part repayment of a $33.5m judgment against him after he lost a 1997 civil court case.

The former American-football star has never paid a cent of the judgment, despite the civil court’s finding that he was responsible for Brown and Goldman’s deaths.

“It is horribly frustrating and at the same time demoralising for Fred Goldman and his family, especially when they read about things like this,” said Jonathan Polak, a lawyer representing Goldman in an attempt to obtain rights to Simpson’s income from selling autographs and appearing at sports celebrity events.

Polak added: “Simpson appears to be attempting to profit not off his football fame, but off the very thing that was so inhuman and that everyone knows he did.”

The National Enquirer’s account could not be verified this weekend but the newspaper provided extensive details in a four-page report on what it called a “tell-all blockbuster”. Simpson is said to describe how he “grabbed a knife from a man who accompanied him to Nicole’s home — and moments later found himself covered in blood and looking down on the bodies of Nicole and Ron”.

The other man is identified only as “Charlie”. No mention of an accomplice or witness emerged at either of Simpson’s trials, but according to the book, “Charlie” had earlier paid Simpson a late-night visit and passed on gossip about Brown and other men, prompting Simpson to “explode” in rage.

“Simpson prefaces these key pages by almost half-heartedly claiming that this part of the book is ‘hypothetical’,” the Enquirer reported. Simpson is said to have written that he stormed around to Brown’s Los Angeles home to confront her. He grabbed a knife he kept in his Ford Bronco car, but “Charlie” snatched it away from him.

According to the Enquirer, the book describes a series of arguments between Simpson, Goldman and Brown. Simpson snatched his knife back from “Charlie” and launched into a “blur” of violence.

When he saw the couple lying dead on the pavement, “OJ says he was in a daze, asking himself who’d done it,” the Enquirer reported. “He was still trying to work out what happened when a terrified Charlie whispered ‘Jesus Christ, OJ, what have you done?’” Simpson’s lawyers made no comment on the allegations last week. Other legal sources said there was no danger that Simpson could be prosecuted again for the crimes — however “hypothetical” his confession — under America’s double jeopardy laws forbidding retrial after acquittal.

Lawyers for Goldman are trying to confirm the book contract, but Polak said Simpson had a long history of hiding his income and pretending to be broke. After the murders he moved to Florida to take advantage of state laws that protect primary homes and pensions from seizure in a civil lawsuit. He owns a $650,000 home in Miami and has a large pension as an ex-National Football League player.

Unable to touch those assets, Goldman and his lawyers last week made a novel attempt to seize Simpson’s rights to his name and image. A California judge indicated she would dismiss the claim on technical grounds, but the case is likely to be appealed. Goldman claims the initial judgment has since climbed to $38m with interest.

For Denise Brown, reports about the book were another painful reminder that the man she regards as her sister’s killer is not only free, but still finding people to listen to him.

“I hear his name, I cringe,” she said. “I just don’t know why people give him airtime, he’s disgusting, he’s despicable, he’s the devil as far as I’m concerned. He murdered two people and he didn’t get a year of time.”

Brown said the only reason she was still prepared to talk publicly about Simpson was because of her work for the Nicole Brown Foundation, which teaches awareness of domestic violence.

“The only good side to all this is that every time he speaks, we get our word out there as well,” she said