 First edition cover with quote from Irving Wallace | |
| Author | Sidney Sheldon |
|---|---|
| Genre | Thriller |
| Publisher | William Morrow (US) Hodder & Stoughton (UK) |
Publication date | 1970 |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 0-446-34191-6 |
| OCLC | 10358523 |
The Naked Face is the first novel (1970) written by Sidney Sheldon. It was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American author.
Dr. Judd Stevens, M.D., is a caring and successful Manhattan psychoanalyst who must face a horrific prospect; someone is trying to kill him. First, John Hanson, a patient trying to overcome his homosexuality, is murdered. Not long after, Carol Roberts, Stevens' secretary, is found tortured to death. Two police officers, Andrew McGreavy and Frank Angeli, are quick to treat Stevens as the prime suspect, partly due to McGreavy's anger over Stevens' testimony in a previous case. Stevens is later run down by a car, and following his recovery, two men in dark try to kill him in his office.
To prove his innocence and track down the real killer, Stevens hires a private investigator by the name of Norman Z. Moody. He also suspects some of his patients: Harrison Burke (a homicidal paranoiac), Anne Blake (a mysterious patient with whom Stevens is in love) and Teri Washburn (a sex addict and former Hollywood actress). Influenced by Angeli (the one who is somewhat friendly and helpful to him), Stevens begins to consider Moody as a suspect.
However, Moody dies but not before giving a hint on the killer: Don Vinton. Another murder is attempted on Stevens, but he outsmarts the attackers. McGreavy, along with his police force tries to catch Stevens but he escapes and eventually realises that Don Vinton, in Italian, means the Big Man, a title given to the leader of a criminal syndicate: La Cosa Nostra.
He contacts Angeli, who lures him to Anthony DeMarco (a capo of La Cosa Nostra and a megalomaniac), who is revealed to be Anne's husband. He tries to extract information about Anne's sessions with Stevens and forces him to convince Anne to go with her husband (DeMarco) to Europe. It is revealed that he killed Hanson (mistaking him for Stevens) and Carol (to extract information about Anne).
After a struggle at a factory, Stevens manages to kill DeMarco and is rescued by McGreavy.
In 1984 the novel was adapted as a film directed by Bryan Forbes, starring Roger Moore and Rod Steiger. The second adaptation is the Ukrainian feature-length film Sheriff's Star (Zirka Sheryfa) in 1992, directed by Mykola Litus and starring Irina Alfyorova, Arnis Līcītis and Sergei Martynov. [1]
In 2007, Sunil Kumar Desai directed Kannada film Kshana Kshana which was based on this novel.
The Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra, also referred to as simply Mafia, is a criminal society originating on the island of Sicily and dates back to the mid-19th century. It is an association of gangs which sell their protection and arbitration services under a common brand. The Mafia's core activities are protection racketeering, the arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions.
Nevada Smith is a 1966 American Western film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Steve McQueen, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Arthur Kennedy and Suzanne Pleshette. The film was made by Solar Productions in association with and released by Paramount Pictures. It was McQueen's first theatrical Western, five years after his TV series, Wanted Dead or Alive, ended.
Luciano Leggio was an Italian criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone. He is universally known by the surname Liggio, a result of a misspelling in court documents in the 1960s.
Annie Wilkes is a character originating from Stephen King's 1987 novel Misery, in which she acts as one of the two central characters and main antagonist. In 2022, King picked her as his personal favorite character among all those he created in his literary career.
Master of the Game is a novel by Sidney Sheldon, first published in hardback format in 1982. Spanning four generations in the lives of the fictional McGregor/Blackwell family, the critically acclaimed novel spent four weeks at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, and was later adapted into a 1984 television miniseries.
Murder Most Foul is the third of four Miss Marple films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Loosely based on the 1952 novel Mrs McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie, it stars Margaret Rutherford as Miss Jane Marple, Charles Tingwell as Inspector Craddock, and Stringer Davis as Mr Stringer. The story is ostensibly based on Christie's novel, but notably changes the action and the characters. Hercule Poirot is replaced by Miss Marple and most of the other characters are not in the novel.
"Guy Walks into a Psychiatrist's Office..." is the 14th episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos and the first of the show's second season. Written by Jason Cahill and directed by Allen Coulter, it originally aired on January 16, 2000.
Bloodline is a 1979 thriller film directed by Terence Young from a screenplay by Laird Koenig, based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Sidney Sheldon. It was the only R-rated film ever made by its star, Audrey Hepburn.
Michele Cavataio, also known as Il cobra was an Italian mobster and powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Acquasanta mandamento in Palermo and was a member of the first Sicilian Mafia Commission. Some sources spell his surname as Cavatajo.
Antonino "Nino" Rotolo is a Sicilian Mafia boss from the Pagliarelli area in Palermo that traditionally was under the control of the Motisi Mafia family. Rotolo was the underboss of Matteo Motisi, but according to some pentiti he was the de facto leader representing the mandamento on the Sicilian Mafia Commission. In 2006, the police deduced that Rotolo — Number 25 in the numbered code of Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano — had become a key figure in Cosa Nostra's hierarchy.
The Torment of Others is a crime novel by Scottish author Val McDermid, and is the fourth entry in her popular Carol Jordan and Dr. Tony Hill series, which has been successfully adapted into the television series Wire in the Blood. The novel was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger, and won the 2006 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. As with her other novels in the Tony Hill series, the title is an extract from a poem by T. S. Eliot.
Giovanni "Gianni" Nicchi is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. Despite his young age – he is nicknamed 'u picciutteddu – he is considered to be one of the leading mafiosi of Cosa Nostra in Palermo. He was on the "most wanted list" of the Italian ministry of the Interior since 2006, until his arrest on 5 December 2009.
Night School is a 1981 American slasher film directed by Ken Hughes and starring Rachel Ward, in her film debut, Leonard Mann, and Drew Snyder. The plot revolves around a series of brutal murders in Boston, Massachusetts. Alfred Sole was the film's original director, but he passed on the project. Hughes was ultimately brought in to direct, and Night School was his final film.
Francesco Paolo Augusto "Frank" Cali, also known as "Franky Boy", was an American mobster and the eventual acting boss of the Gambino crime family of New York City. Law enforcement considered Cali to have been the Gambinos' "ambassador to Sicilian mobsters" and had linked him to the Inzerillo Mafia family from Palermo. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Lipton, he was "seen as a man of influence and power by organized crime members in Italy". Cali was shot and killed outside his home in Staten Island on March 13, 2019. At the time of his death, a number of media organizations described him as the "reputed" acting boss of the Gambino crime family.
The Naked Face is a 1984 American thriller film written and directed by Bryan Forbes, based on the book of the same name by Sidney Sheldon. It stars Roger Moore, Rod Steiger and Elliott Gould.
The Girl in the News is a 1940 British thriller film directed by Carol Reed and starring Margaret Lockwood, Barry K. Barnes and Emlyn Williams. It was based on the eponymous novel by Roy Vickers, released the same year.
"I Am Anne Frank" is a two-part episode, consisting of the fourth and fifth episodes of the second season of the FX anthology television series American Horror Story. The first part aired on November 7, 2012, and the second aired on November 14, 2012. The first part is written by Jessica Sharzer and directed by Michael Uppendahl, and the second part is written by Brad Falchuk and directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. Both episodes are rated TV-MA (LSV).
David Anthony McGreavy, also known as The Monster of Worcester or The Real Friday the 13th Killer, is an English convicted triple murderer who killed and dismembered his friend's three children in 1973. He was in the news in 2013 when an anonymity order imposed in 2009 was lifted based on findings that there was a public interest in his application for parole and that there was no immediate danger to his life. He was held in a vulnerable prisoners' unit, where he spent most of his 40 years in prison until he was released on parole in December 2018.
Kshana Kshana is a 2007 Indian Kannada language crime thriller film directed by Sunil Kumar Desai and produced by B. S. Thirumalai. The film stars Aditya, Prema, Kiran Rathod and Ashutosh Rana in the lead roles with actor Vishnuvardhan appearing in a special role.
 | This article about a 1970s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |