Potboiler
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
An Edgar(R) Award Nominee for Best Novel
Jesse Kellerman—the international bestselling author of The Executor and The Genius—brings his prodigious talent to bear on a topic he knows well in this hilarious and surprising spin on the modern blockbuster thriller novel.
Missing for months after a tragic boating accident, William de Vallée, the superstar thriller writer, is pronounced dead. His oldest friend, Arthur Pfefferkorn, receives the news with an unsettling mix of grief and envy. A middle-aged college professor with long-dead literary aspirations, Pfefferkorn can’t help but feel outshone by his friend’s success—especially since he married the woman Pfefferkorn loved.
But now Bill is gone, and Pfefferkorn is there to comfort Carlotta in her time of grief. Reconnecting with de Vallée’s widow makes more than one of his dreams come true . . . until it plunges him into a shadowy world of intrigue and double crosses, where no one can be trusted—and nothing can be taken seriously.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kellerman's insightful satire on publishing, bestsellers, and series continuing long after an author's demise opens promisingly. Years earlier, Arthur Pfefferkorn's one coming-of-age novel received "mild acclaim but sold poorly." Arthur now ekes out a living as an adjunct professor "at a small college on the Eastern Seaboard." He seethes over the success and wealth of his oldest friend, bestselling thriller writer William de Vall e, who married Arthur's first love, Carlotta. After William is lost at sea, Arthur finds his friend's last manuscript, plagiarizes the story, and becomes a bestselling author. But the price of Arthur's new success unfurls into events that could be lifted from his thriller a series of betrayals and double crosses with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Kellerman (The Executor) makes witty use of thriller clich s, especially at the rousing finale, but the flaccid middle section suggests that this one-note joke might have worked better at novella length.
