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Eric Dezenhall wanted someone to publish his novel, so he sent death threats.
"Dear Mr. So and So: It's a nice little literary agency you got there; I wouldn't want to see nothing happen to it," Dezenhall recalls writing for his pitch letters.
It worked, although he was joking. Probably.
Dezenhall is hardly contract killer, but his clients do pay him good money to make their problems go away.
During the day, the square-jawed native of the South Jersey area of New Jersey is president and CEO of Dezenhall Resources, a crisis management firm that helps big companies and celebrities when they're under political fire.
At night, on weekends and every other minute he's not at the office or spending time with his family, Dezenhall is writing novels - but it's not all fiction. Dezenhall's latest, "Shakedown Beach," features protagonist Jonah Eastman, a controversial but effective Republican pollster who uncovers a page from his client's sordid past.
Like Dezenhall, Eastman worked in President Reagan's communications Office, and he has a wife and two young children. Both are runners with rickety knees that prevent them from running as fast or as far as they once could. Both call South Jersey home.
But there are differences, and Dezenhall finds his escape writing about them.
His grandfather, for instance, was not a major figure in the South Jersey mob. Dezenhall also doesn't carry a .357-caliber Magnum under his suit jacket or hire thugs for surveillance and break-ins. And he's never buried a mobster in the New Jersey Pine Barrens because the guy wouldn't leave his family alone.
Dezenhall, for the most part, lives a pretty constrained life, although...