In love with Cleveland

We'll Always Have Cleveland, the 2006 memoir by mystery author Les Roberts, is a book with limited appeal, which is why it came and went very quickly while making little splash. But for anyone with an interest in Cleveland or the Milan Jacovich mysteries written by Roberts, this slim volume is a must read. If you fit into both categories, it's a gold mine.

Roberts doesn't ignore Cleveland's problems — he devotes an entire chapter to them — yet mostly this is an ode to Cleveland, expressed with all the enthusiasm of a new convert. Raised in Chicago, he  spent most of his early career in Los Angeles. He was briefly an actor, then moved into writing for television (The Andy Griffith Show, The Lucy Show, etc.) and producing such shows as Hollywood Squares. Then he began writing murder mysteries set in L.A. featuring a hero named Saxon.

He discovered Cleveland in the 1980s when he went there to produce the Ohio Lottery television show. It was apparently love at first sight. It was a city with the midwestern values and weather that were familiar to him from his Chicago youth. He also saw it as an ideal place to set a new series of mystery novels.

He began the Milan Jacovich novels while still living in California, but he moved to the Cleveland area in 1990 and has never regretted the move. His book celebrates the people, sports teams, restaurants, bars, bookstores, etc., not just in Cleveland but within an hour's drive of Cleveland. His comments on Holmes County Amish country will make anyone want to spend a day there.

Roberts says his Slovenian private investigator was named after an actual dentist in Parma. The names, appearances and personalities of many people he has known in Cleveland show up in his novels, even if in slightly disguised form, and much of the action takes place in actual places in the area, often in businesses Roberts himself frequents. Clevelanders often ask to have characters, even villains, given their names.

Wherever he goes, Roberts says, he takes with him both a notebook and a tape recorder. His impressions of people and places usually show up eventually in his novels. He says he never creates a character who isn't based in some way on a real person.

The memoir is instructive about how a mystery writer works, as well as an excellent travel guide to northeastern Ohio. Unfortunately the book is a bit dated, for many of the businesses Roberts raves about are now closed for good.