We’ll Always Have Cleveland: A Memoir of a Novelist and a City

A warm, loving portrait of a city and the surrounding area–smoothly and sincerely written. – Ohioana Quarterly

In this memoir, novelist Les Roberts tells how he discovered the heart and soul of a city while fictionalizing it for a series of mysteries.

When Roberts, a TV producer at the time, arrived in Cleveland from L.A. for a short-term consulting job in 1986, he never dreamed that, just months later, he’d find himself so completely won over by the place that he’d give up the glitz of Hollywood and put down roots in this rustbelt city. It took only a few weeks in Cleveland to convince Roberts that the city was a ripe setting for his next private-eye novel. Then, a chance meeting on an airplane led him to the inspiration for his new character: Milan Jacovich. The combination proved very successful. Thirteen Milan Jacovich novels resulted, and with each book Roberts drew more heavily on real Cleveland places and people.

Roberts writes about his favorite locations and his favorite people (and at least one person who was not happy to find himself in a novel). It will appeal to fans of the series, fans of the city, and aspiring novelists who want to learn how one writer took a city and made it his own through fiction.