Read Henry Rex Greene’s Newest Novel:
Teenager Marlene Vaughan’s mother Gertrude was murdered in 1953. They lived in Baldwin Park, in the central San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County. Gertrude was abducted from a bar in El Monte and found dead in Azusa. The case was never solved.
Four years later, Marlene obtains a lead on the killers, learning that they have returned to Los Angeles. She reconnects with her old friend Robby, and asks him to help her solve the crime because “he’s the smartest boy she ever knew.”
Robby recruits a team to work on the crime, including his stepmother, Clara, and his youngest uncle, Melvin. They form a picture of two itinerant salesmen who periodically visit L.A. and frequent the Silver Dollar Saloon in El Monte, where Gertrude disappeared.
The amateur detectives put the clues together and suspect that there are two killers, both World War II veterans, one with anger issues caused by a war injury, and the other a passive sidekick.
This complex murder mystery is a sequel to the author’s book Life Could Be a Dream, and provides an intimate glimpse into life in Southern California in the 1950s.
Books of nostalgia, of remembrances past, and of an era many of us wish we could return to
Life Could Be a Dream
The summer of 1954 begins a pivotal year in 9-year-old Robby Barnaby's life. On the last day of school, he breaks his arm sliding into home plate.
On their annual vacation on Balboa Island, he and his three brothers learn his family is moving to a city across L.A. Before the move, his mother dies from surgery, leaving him in the care of his abusive father.
His new home is a town with no baseball and a brutal junior high. Robby and his brothers are miserable, are lost without their mom. What will happen to these boys?
Camelot Lost
In 1961, Max enters junior college where he meets Jan in his zoology class, and it's love at "fifth" sight. One thing leads to another and the two transfer to UCLA in 1963. where max is a pre-med zoology major.
On November 22, 1963, they hear of JFK's assassination. They connected their youthful idealism to Kennedy's promising Camelot presidency but move on with their studies. The next year they are both accepted to medical school at UC-CCM in downtown L.A.
The Bookmen
The summer of 1965 is a pivotal time in American history. As the Vietnam War expands toward its ultimate heavy American involvement, the Watts Riots presage the urban unrest of the late 1960s.
This insightful novel Continues the story of newlyweds Max and Jan King, who have just graduated college and are both preparing to start med school at MCLA, a former osteopathic college in East Los Angeles. Max returns to his summer job selling encyclopedias door-to-door, while Jan works in the school’s lab.
Max is also exposed to the enticement of drug use and the free love era. This story is truly A Requiem for the Sixties.
Praise for Dr. Greene’s medical fiction:
I can not recommend this read high enough to any health care professional or friend who lived in the 1970s and remembers the turbulence in society (Richard Nixon was our president for part of that time) For all of us in the healing arts it was a time for sober reflection on why we chose medicine as a profession. Dr. Greene captures the tone of the times. And presents the contrasts we faced through his characters. His writing style is consistently good and his characters believable. You can almost feel the difficulties they felt in a challenging time of our society. Especially in a time of change in the delivery of health care and reassessment of those less fortunate than us. Not only in their professional but also personal lives. A fantastic read!
- Verified Amazon Reader
Awesome documentation of the changing of healthcare in our nation. This author did a great job telling this story... Amazing. Thank you for making sense of this era in our lives!
- Verified Amazon Reader
Greene continues his accounts of the medical profession. He has moved beyond the medical school, internship, residency, accounts to follow a practicing physician in Southern California--plenty of material trappings, secure in his practice, secure in his marriage. In reality, not so secure at all. Though it is a novel, Greene hits the mark describing the all too frequent officious and arrogant "leaders" within any medical community--less concerned with healthcare than turning a buck.
Rex Greene, a retired oncologist, is an excellent story teller and, clearly, he knows the field of medicine quite well. The events are well drawn, the pacing is fast and until the last pages, the outcome uncertain. The novel is an insightful look into the medical profession but also fun. It is well worth the read.
- Verified Amazon Reader
The Class of 1969
It is 1965, and the Watts Riots have just ended when newlyweds Max and Jan King enter medical school. As Max and Jan converge with other students in the Los Angeles County medical complex, neither has any idea that their foray into the world of medicine is about to test their inner strength, perseverance, and activist views in more ways than they ever could have imagined.
Thirteen Months a Year
In Thirteen Months a Year, the second book of his fictional Medical trilogy, real-life doctor Henry Rex Greene revisits two married physicians, Max and Jan King, as they start their internship at L.A. County Hospital in 1969.
Stone Mother
The final installment of a medical trilogy, Stone Mother refers to the old Los Angeles County Hospital.
On entering residency training, a married couple carry their 1960s activism into the ‘70s. They struggle to balance overwhelming responsibilities with their ideals, attempting to reform the “system,” but ultimately it is their personal lives that suffer.
Executive Committee
At age 52, Dr. Cal Boyd is the ‘go to’ gastroenterologist in the West San Fernando Valley. At the top of his game, he discovers that his friend Sheldon Weinberger’s pain clinic is a pill mill that diverts prescription medications to the drug trade. Sheldon’s falsified complaints to the hospital executive committee cost him his practice and his marriage. It is a story of deceit, greed, jealousy and spite. Can Cal restore his life?
Executive Vengeance
In this mystery series sequel, Dr. Cal Boyd has recovered from his conflicts at North Valley Hospital, having won a large settlement for damages. His enemies are dead or in jail, and his career with Encuentro Medical Group is burgeoning.
Cal embarks on an odyssey up and down California, pursuing a story of human trafficking, drugs, the Peoples Temple, and murder. His life is under constant treat as he unearths thirty years of corruption.
Executive Justice
In 2025, the red states of America secede, dividing the former United States into three countries: the Confederation. the Coalition, and the neutral states.
now Retired Cal and his wife Carol travel to Florida within the Confederation, looking for her son, a CIA officer tracking the extortion racket created by the Russian partners of the Confederation.
The couple’s quest gets them imprisoned for espionage.
Cal and Carol’s friends succeed in rescuing Carol, but can’t liberate Cal, sentenced to be shot as a traitor.
As events unfold, the invasion of the white states by the Confederation leads to a United Nations intervention.
Pasadena 1984
New Year’s 1984 brings big changes for 40-year-old Jerry O’Donnell. After a messy divorce, he quits his job as a teacher at Muir High School in Pasadena, California, to become a stockbroker and then he meets Kate..
The remaking of Los Angeles for the Summer Olympics is a high point of the year. Jerry’s favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, comes painfully close to making the World Series. At the same time, President Ronald Reagan remains silent in the face of the AIDS epidemic. He cuts taxes on the rich, causing the federal debt to soar. Kate worries about the collapse of the savings and loan industry.
