Book Spotlight: Ride the Tiger by Pat Silver-Lasky

Fame, money and sex, that’s what tinsletown is all about. Madelaine Brent wanted them all and she always got everything she wanted. But sometimes everything is too much and somebody gets murdered. Maddie remembered an ancient Chinese proverb her agent told her as a warning, so long ago: ‘She who rides the tiger better not dismount.’ Was she about to fall off?

This is the deeply penetrating story of a film star who puts her career and her erotic desires above all else. Madelaine Brent is willing to undergo the tortuous beauty treatments that will keep her on top – a survivor in the film world, the Las Vegas showtime scene and a survivor in the art of love. But Maddie does not foresee the consequences her actions will have on the men in her life: her British film director husband Charles who is devoted to her, the one-night stand she thought she could dismiss, the French film star who fathered her child, the young writer-director she seduced and the actor who holds her spellbound. Her beautiful daughter Cathy, alienated from her mother, has taken a dangerous path that leads to prison. Maddie’s path leads her to a place she didn’t expect – and a trail of murders.

Read the reviews!

"What the author manages to do is give us a story that is brittle enough to keep us with it until the end and all the while she is making a lot of statements about the current obsession with youth - every cosmetic correction of time's wages is discussed...It is a story of our times and culture, warped though they are becoming."
- Grady Harp, Top 50 Amazon Reviewer

"This is one of those very rare books that grips you from the start and keeps hooking you in tighter with every page. I think a big part of this is the authentic voice the author, herself a Hollywood insider, brings to it. You can feel and smell the glamor, the jealousy, the hatred and the greed of the movie industry on every page. It is a deeply satisfying story and I absolutely loved it."
--Jim Peterson, Amazon Reviewer

Pat Silver-Lasky wrote as a team with her late husband, the well known Hollywood screen writer and author, Jesse L. Lasky, Jr., son of the film pioneer. Jesse Lasky, Sr.’s company, Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company produced the first full length motion picture in Hollywood, The Squaw Man. Jesse, Jr. wrote 40 films, 8 for C.B. DeMille, including The Ten Commandments, and Samson And Delilah.

With Jesse, Pat wrote 4 books (including the American best seller historical novel, The Offer), 8 produced films, nearly 100 produced TV scripts, (including the award winning ‘Explorers’ series (’Ten Who Dared’ in U.S.A.). Their verse play, ‘Ghost Town’ won several awards in the States. In 1984/6 their TV series, ‘Philip Marlowe’ won three awards in the USA, and in Holland. Jesse Lasky Jr. died in 1988.

Born in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., Pat attended the University of Washington as a Drama Major, Stanford University and Reed College, where she produced and directed their first play.
She produced, wrote, directed, and acted (as Barbara Hayden) in the first live TV drama series from Hollywood: ‘Mabel’s Fables’, for KTLA (Paramount), appeared in feature roles in films (Sammy Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono) and played leading and co-starring roles on television, and directed for the theatre in Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

As an A.S.C.A.P. writer, she wrote lyrics for 14 published and recorded songs, including “While You’re Young” for Johnny Mathis’s album, “Portrait of Johnny”. She wrote the lyrics for two films at Columbia Studios.

Pat has lived in London since the early 1960’s and has duel citizenship. In 1987 she and Jesse wrote the play, ‘Vivien’, based on their book, “Love Scene”, the story of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Pat directed its highly acclaimed first production at the Melrose Theatre, Los Angeles, 1987 and directed the London Rehearsed Reading of ‘VIVIEN’ in 1992.

Pat served as a Story Editor on the second MARLOWE series (see credits), has written articles and interviews, contributed to various British antique journals, written short stories for international magazines including a 1999 series of romantic short stories for the magazine, A World of Romance.
She has lectured on script writing at several American Universities, was Script Consultant and guest lecturer at the London (International) Film School for eight years until 1999.

Her book, SCREENWRITING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY was published for B.T. Batsford Books (Chrysalis Publishing) in March, 2004.

To find out more visit her website at: http://patsilver-lasky.com/