Beyond the Book
Although Tropic of Night was his first
book in his own name, Gruber has ghost-written 14 books for his cousin Robert
Tanenbaum (his mother and Tanenbaum's mother are
sisters). According to Publishers Weekly, in 1984 Tanenbaum, a successful trial lawyer, called him
from his offices in Los Angeles asking him to look at the first hundred
pages of a book he had written at the request of a publishing
house. Gruber says "I called him, and I said, 'This is
unsalvageable. It's not a novel, it has no characters, no plot,
nothing.'"
In return for half the advance, Gruber rewrote the novel, they renegotiated the contract and went into business. This...
