Entertainment journalist and longtime Variety contributor Scott Huver takes a racy look at celebrity vice in his first book, “ Beverly Hills Noir : Crime, Sin and Scandal in 90210.” Published by Simon and Schuster on Oct. 1, the true crime exposé serves as both a deep dive into the fledgling years of the 90210 and a guide to Hollywood’s most extraordinary criminal cases.
Huver, who has worked in journalism for over three decades, inherited his love of procedural dramas from his mother and stepfather, who raised him on a diet of “Adam-12,” “Hill Street Blues” and “Dragnet.” His love of writing was intrinsic from a young age and led him from the newsroom at Central Michigan University to running a crime beat at a Beverly Hills newspaper. Coincidentally, Huver’s first week in Los Angeles brought him face-to-face with one of the city’s most infamous crimes in recent memory.
“I literally witnessed the OJ Simpson Bronco chase within days of moving to L.A. and two weeks after that I got that job at the newspaper,” Huver said.
“I’d only written commentary on pop culture, movie reviews and theater reviews. Getting a crime beat was freaking me out, so I was careful about how I went about it. Fortunately, that worked out well in proving me to the police department because there was a little bit of that schism.
” Although Huver moved on to covering entertainment full-time, he began to amass an “elaborate personal library” dedicated to the early days o.
