Thomas Fitzsimmons - The Extrodinary Life of an Ordinary Man

by Thomas Fitzsimmons

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man offers a full-throttle look at New York city's fascinating cast of the wiseguys, rogues' gallery celebrities and settings that range from the mean streets of the South Bronx to Manhattan's plushest penthouses. And when Fitzsimmons - a born-and-bred Gothamite, NYPD officer, model, actor, WNBC television personality, and celebrity bodyguard - plunges into the frenetic, fabled New York singles scene, his life takes a turn that he never anticipated. Told with large dollops of humor, jaw-dropping details, and not a little poignance, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man takes readers on an extraordinary journey that's anything but ordinary.

364 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2024

About the author

Thomas Fitzsimmons doesn’t write crime fiction from imagination—he writes it from memory. A real-life private investigator, celebrity bodyguard, and former NYPD officer, Fitzsimmons has lived the kind of gritty, high-stakes New York stories most authors research from behind a desk. His background reads like a pulp novel with a twist of Hollywood: Navy veteran, Ford model, soap-opera actor, NBC television personality, and trusted confidant to the rich and infamous. Raised in a tight-knit Irish Bronx neighborhood and born into a family of career cops, Fitzsimmons enlisted in the Navy after high school, serving aboard a guided missile cruiser during the Vietnam War. The experience sparked a lifelong commitment to public service, leading him to the NYPD, where he spent a decade patrolling the notorious precinct immortalized in Fort Apache, The Bronx. His arrest record included armed robbers, drug lords, and arsonists—his off-duty hours, meanwhile, were spent in front of cameras.
Discovered by Ford Modeling Agency legend Joey Hunter, Fitzsimmons transitioned from street patrol to studio lights, landing modeling gigs and eventually co-hosting NBC’s magazine-format show Now. When the entertainment world came calling, he traded his badge for a SAG card and never looked back. He went on to star in over 150 commercials, appear in soap operas like One Life to Live and Texas, and become a fixture in the fashion and television industries.
But Fitzsimmons never strayed far from his roots. Drawing on his NYPD experience and global law enforcement connections, he became a top-tier security consultant to A-list celebrities, earning recognition as a trusted expert on shows like Good Morning America. His writing—three noir crime novels, a slew of short stories, and a blisteringly candid memoir—channels the raw tension, dark humor, and moral ambiguity of a life lived on both sides of the velvet rope.
His latest work, Thomas Fitzsimmons – The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, is already stirring controversy and buzz. If you’re looking for fiction with bite, memoir with muscle, and storytelling that walks the beat between grit and glamour—Fitzsimmons delivers.