The Ascension of Jerry: Murder, Hitmen, and the Making of L.A. Muckraker Jerry Schneiderman

by Chip Jacobs

Bumbling hitmen. Burning corpses. Life in hiding. A threatened son. Jerry Schneiderman's orderly world evaporated when his business partner was executed by an assassin in 1979 Los Angeles, and the buzzard-eyed ringleader soon came for him.

Though the killers behind this murder-for-hire corporation were nabbed, the trauma annihilated Jerry's family and stripped his trust. Recovery only came years later with Jerry's improbable rebirth as a prank-loving activist who defended the weak and made enemies with the rich and powerful.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

230 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 2011

About the author

Chip Jacobs is an acclaimed author and prize-winning journalist, praised by Publisher Weekly as "an exceptional storyteller." His forthcoming novel, "Later Days," the follow-up to his Los Angeles Times bestselling "Arroyo," will be published in 2025. On the narrative, nonfiction side, Jacobs wrote the riveting, true-crime book, "The Darkest Glare," and the biography "Strange As It Seems," an Indies Book of the Year finalist. He is also the co-author, with William J. Kelly, of two environmental social histories: the international bestselling "Smogtown" and its sequel, "The People's Republic of Chemicals." He has contributed pieces to anthologies, as well, among them "Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine." Jacobs' reporting, meantime, has appeared in the L.A. Times, the L.A. Daily News, CNN, The New York Times, the Southern California News Group, L.A Weekly, and elsewhere. He has won seven Los Angeles Press Club Awards and multiple literary honors, including from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature, Booklist and Foreword magazine's best books in genre, and the Shanghai Book Awards. He is currently at work on the story of the Long Beach Freeway (710) fight, the longest, fiercest highway battle in US history, and several Hollywood projects. Jacobs, a graduate of the University of Southern California, garage-band guitarist, and Beatles fanatic, lives in the L.A. area.

Reviews

[noorthebookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The engrossingly bizarre tale of a murder plot within Los Angeles real estate circles… An entertaining true-crime period piece built around a chillingly odd sociopathic villain.” —Kirkus Reviews.
_______
The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles 
by Chip Jacobs. (Chip Jacobs is an award-winning author and journalist.)

350 pgs, 23 chapters.
Rare Bird Books
9th March. 2021

🩸“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
—William Shakespeare.

Have you ever been chased to your wit's end by some bully while driving?
or
Do you pop up with some strange words while writing & wonder where it came from & then remember, reading it earlier in some book?

✌The prologue, itself gave me an almost anxiety attack, such is the impact of the boisterous writing style!

In 1979 the City of Angels had its fair share of devils.
Howard Garrett was one of them. His contractor’s license bought him an entrée into a Space Matters, a real estate development company run out of a hip mansion on the edge of LA’s Miracle Mile district. The company’s owners, debonair, slick-talking Richard Kasparov and self-conscious, nerdy Jerry Schneiderman, were L.A.’s Young Turks of interior architecture.
When Richard interviewed the quiet, buzzard-faced Howard, he figured he’d found the perfect supervisor to oversee construction for a firm hungry to expand. What neither he nor his partner Jerry knew was that by hiring Howard, they’d unloosed a monster into their midst.
Whether its stumblebum killers or a mass murder averted by a kid watching Laverne & Shirley, you’ll never read about bloodlust like this. Or see Southern California the same way.
Chip Jacobs conducted hundreds of hours of interviews and reviewed thousands of pages in Howard Garrett’s case to connect the dots.
The resulting book is a feast for true crime lovers as well as for lovers of Los Angeles noir. The Darkest Glare is vintage true crime at its finest.

P.s.
The Darkest Glare was previously released in significantly different form as
"The Ascension of Jerry", March 2012.
________
“This is not just another Hollywood Whodunit. In the end we find it is really about one man's search and struggle to find his own personal truths and redemption. Well written and highly recommended.”--

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I worked with Jerry Schneiderman as his Construction Superintendent for Creative Environments of Hollywood (CEH) from 2002 - 2005. We became close, however, there was always some mystery surrounding him. Jerry is one of the few people I've met who I felt I could trust unconditionally. I recieved this book only recently and have only begun to read. The first few pages have opened my eyes. I'll follow up on this review when I finish reading.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of Jerry is filled with characters that seemed to have stepped out of a James Elroy novel. Ruthless hitmen who can never find their quarry at home at night. A co-worker whose soul is corroded by hate and greed. A beautiful, helpless woman abandoned by a handsome swindler. And then Jerry, a clueless guy just trying to work hard for his family who is caught in a whirlpool of lies, betrayal and murder.

It's a classic LA story. Raymond Chandler would've been jealous.