News & Reviews

WORD: New Walter Satterthwait novel ‘Dead Horse’ spins tale of love and a Colt revolver
 
Back in the 1930s, American writer Raoul Whitfield was a pulp fiction star who lived in a villa on the French Riviera, married Emily Davies and soon returned to America where they partied in Vegas and New Mexico. Then the socialite mysteriously died of a gunshot wound. Longtime author Walter Satterthwait’s new novel Dead Horse (Dennis McMillan Publications) just might answer what really happened to Emily Davies.

"I spent a summer in Las Vegas (and) New Mexico, going through all the available records and talking to all the people still alive who knew the two. I think I figured out what actually happened, and that’s what Dead Horse is," Satterthwait told WORD‘N’BASS.com.
 
Raoul and Emily would often host huge parties at a luxurious ranch. Guests flew in from all over the world to enjoy the sex, drugs and jazz, and playing polo on their field. But after a couple of years, Raoul and Emily separated for reasons that no one understood, Satterthwait said.
 
He went to L.A., she filed for divorce. But before the divorce became final, Emily was found dead on her bed, a bullet wound in her lower left side and a Colt revolver in her right hand. A coroner’s jury ruled it suicide and Raoul inherited everything. Interestingly, Raoul married a 19-year-old barmaid named Lois Bell just one week after the will was read.

In about two years Raoul and Lois had burned through everything -- the ranch, Emily’s other property, and the equivalent of about 3 million dollars. The couple went to California and separated. She committed suicide in San Francisco in 1943. In 1941, he went into the Pasadena Veterans Hospital with tuberculosis, where he stayed until dying in 1945.

Dead Horse caps off a prolific 2006 for Satterthwait, and marks the fourteenth novel of his career. Back in March he made quite a splash with his novel Perfection (St. Martin's), about a serial killer who targets clinically obese women.

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