"Rock 'n' Roll Radical by Chuck Laszewski

When East German police pulled American Dean Reed’s body out of a lake behind the Iron Curtain in 1986, his fans and government officials around the world speculated wildly about who caused his death. The handsome singing and acting superstar starred in movies with some of the biggest names of the 1960s and ‘70s, and women on three continents were happy to share his bed. But Reed was driven to fight injustice, braving gunfire and torture to vocally oppose oppressive governments throughout South America, touching off an international incident with his arrest in the United States and angering his own government with protests against its foreign policies. His knack for showing up wherever history was being written brought money and acclaim around the world but failed to translate into Hollywood fame.

This is the uniquely American tale of Reed’s meteoric rise from a Colorado cowboy to a beloved international star, and of the hand that finally silenced him. For those who remember seeing Reed profiled on 60 Minutes and in the pages of People magazine, or for anyone intrigued by the early years of rock ’n’ roll or the liberal activism of the 1960s and 1970s this is the dramatic investigation of a rebel’s life.

April 14, 2006
REVIEW BY JON BREAM and CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER - Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Rock 'n' Roll Radical: The Life and Mysterious Death of Dean Reed" (Beaver Bond): Chuck Laszewski, a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, tells this fascinating story of a small-time 1960s U.S. rocker with a rebellious Marxist bent who found stardom in South America and Europe and then turned up mysteriously dead in a lake in East Germany in 1986. With painstaking reporting, Laszewski raises questions of conspiracy and murder that drag longtime Minnesota activist Marv Davidov into the story along with the FBI, the Contras and Chile's Salvador Allende. The right screenwriter could transform this into a gripping movie. (J.B.)