Steve Bassett is a multiple award winning author. He was born, raised and educated in New Jersey, and, although far removed during a career as an award winning journalist, he has always been proud of the sobriquet Jersey Guy. He has been legally blind for almost a decade but hasn’t let this slow him down. Polish on his mother’s side and Montenegrin on his father’s, with grandparents who spoke little or no English, his early outlook was ethnic and suspicious.
As a natural iconoclast, he joined the dwindling number of itinerant newsmen roaming the countryside in search of, well just about everything. Sadly, their breed has vanished into the digital ether. Bassett’s targets were not selected simply by sticking pins in a map. There had to be a sense of the bizarre.
First there was The Long Branch Daily Record on the New Jersey shore. Mobsters loved the place. It was one of their favorite watering holes. A mafia soldier was gunned down not far from the paper. Great fun for a cub reporter. Curiosity got the better of him with his next choice the Pekin Daily Times located in central Illinois. Now a respected newspaper, it had once been the official voice of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920’s. Pekin had saved its bacon during the Depression by tacitly approving two time-honored money makers, prostitution and gambling, earning an eight-page spread in Life.
Next it was the Salt Lake Tribune. The Pulitzer Prize winner was then, and still is, considered one of the best daily newspapers west of the Rockies. Bassett’s coverage of the invective laden contract talks between the United Mine Workers and the three copper mining giants led to his recruitment by the Associated Press.
His final AP posting was in San Francisco. Bassett’s five-part series on the Wah Ching gained national attention by exposing the Chinese youth gang as the violent instrument of Chinatown’s criminal bosses.
Then came CBS television news in Los Angeles, three Emmy Awards for his investigative documentaries, and the prestigious Medallion Award presented by the California Bar Association for “Distinguished Reporting on the Administration of Justice.” Along the way he found time to author “The Battered Rich” (Ashley Books) exposing seldom discussed but widespread marital abuse among the affluent.
His book, "French Kiss: How the Americans and French Fell In and Out of Love During the Cold War," (formerly “Golden Ghetto: How the Americans and French Fell In and Out of Love During the Cold War,” published in 2013), traces the sixteen-year history of what was then the largest U.S. Air Force base in Europe. It pieces together a love affair that defines trust, hope, renewal, prosperity, and finally the discovery that it was all a Cold War delusion.
His first novel, FATHER DIVINE'S BIKES, has received several awards:
FINALIST 2020 Book Excellence Awards Book in a Series
WINNER 2018 Solo Medalist New Apple Book Award, E-Book General Fiction.
FINALIST 2018 International Book Awards (American Book Fest) Cross-Genre Fiction
FINALIST 2018 Best Book Awards (American Book Fest) General Fiction
4-Star Clarion Foreword Review
It is a historical, noir crime novel set in 1945 Newark. A gangster war, three murders, a gun-toting paperboy, and the numbers racket punctuate the tragic story of two gritty altar boys adrift in a world of poverty, crime and hopelessness. The boys live in a world ripe for grifters like Father Divine and his promise of heaven on earth. It is the first book in his Passaic River Trilogy.
The second book of the trilogy, PAYBACK - TALES OF LOVE, HATE AND REVENGE received:
2019-2020 Reader Views Literary Award, First Place Mystery/Thriller
a 4-Star Clarion Foreword Review.
2020 Elite Choice Award Winner Noir Fiction
2020 American Fiction Award Winner General Fiction
2020 Notable 100 Book Shelf Unbound Best Indie Books
Payback is a drama so intense that it would be improbable anywhere but 1946 Newark. Across the country millions were dealing with the loss of loved ones, and horrible memories were being buried for the greater good. But not in Newark. Two mutilated bodies were pulled from the putrid Passaic River, and the sawed-off arm of a third man was found neatly wrapped and tied at the city dump. The victims were members of the German-American Bund, Hitler lovers who had to pay the price for supporting a murderous madman. Someone was sending a message that only revenge could clear the mind and free the soul. Two homicide cops quickly realize they are in over their heads as they grapple with ambition, greed, racial tension, international intrigue, and a powerful church on the take.
The final book of the trilogy: LOVE IN THE SHADOWS: PASSAIC RIVER TRILOGY ENDS has already received the Silver Literary Titan Book Award 2024, and several 5-star reviews from Readers Favorites.
“LOVE In the Shadows,” the final book of the Passaic River Trilogy, takes the reader from 1947 Newark through the dark shadows where mindless brutes of all classes preyed on the helpless. Women were fighting back and for the first-time muscular feminism was changing the world with Rosie the Riveter pumping her biceps on posters from coast-to-coast. One woman used her fists to fight back, driving her abusive husband from their home. Four physically abused women enlist a mafia gangster in a crazy scheme to payback powerful men who escaped punishment despite years of brutal behavior. Newark’s Police Homicide Chief is astonished to discover there is no difference in the battery and mayhem affecting the rich and poor. A rich and beautiful woman, physically and mentally abused, goes on a three-continent search after her wealthy German aristocrat husband fatally beat a household member she had loved since childhood. Also tracking the husband are two anonymous international killers hired by the mafia because for years he had been embezzling millions of gangster money earned by investing in Nazi companies. Throughout the book it becomes obvious that evil works in the shadows.
Bassett currently resides in Placitas, New Mexico with his wife Darlene Chandler Bassett.
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