As a journalist,
novelist, private spy, undercover operative and director of an
intelligence service, it can certainly be said that Robert Eringer has enjoyed
a wide-ranging career.
He began his writing
career as a London-based foreign correspondent for The Toronto Star and The
Blade (Toledo, Ohio), filing feature stories and high-profile interviews
from around Europe. As an investigative
reporter for British large-circulation Sunday newspapers, Eringer raked the
gutter, exposing sleaze-balls and scumbags.
His specialty was infiltrating extremist groups, including violent
anarchists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
(He still possesses a red robe and hood the KKK tailored for him.)
Eringer evolved from
journalism to private intelligence before embarking on a ten-year career
operating undercover for FBI Counterintelligence. Some of his missions are included in Ruse (Potomac Books) published in 2008.
Using his intelligence
experience as grist, Eringer merged two skills (writing and spying) to author a
cluster of humorous espionage novels that combine intrigue and lunacy. As a novelist, Eringer inhabits a world of
master spies, billionaires, royalty and delusional lunatics. In reality, he keeps the same company, with
battle scars to prove it, documented, although inaccurately, throughout
cyberspace.
Two decades ago, a
petition to the U.S. Supreme Court (Liberty Lobby v. Jack Anderson) called
Eringer “mysterious” and questioned his “actual existence.” Eringer, himself, continues to question
actual existence.
Commencing June 16th,
2002 until December 31st, 2007, Eringer was spymaster to Prince
Albert II of Monaco. After Prince
Rainier’s death in April 2005, and Albert’s ascension to the throne, Eringer
created the principality’s first (unofficial) intelligence agency, the Monaco
Intelligence Service. It was killed off
by a person who feared what it had uncovered.
Resettling in Santa
Barbara, Eringer became “The Investigator” (a weekly column) for the Santa Barbara News-Press.
In 2016, Eringer
returned to fiction with the publication of Motional Blur (Skyhorse), acclaimed by T.C. Boyle as “A nonpareil road novel that
winds up packing a real emotional punch,” and the forthcoming Last Flight Out (Bartleby Press), a
novel about traveling in time through photographs.
He is currently on a
mystical journey that he chronicles on his blog Clubhouse on Wheels, which attracts 60,000 visitors each week.
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| With T.C. Boyle Tecolote Bookstore, Montecito October 2016 |
