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The Twenty-Three is almost here!
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W
ant to know who's responsible for all the terrible things that have been happening in Promise Falls in the novels Broken Promise and Far From True?
You don't have that much longer to wait.
The conclusion to the Promise Falls trilogy,
The Twenty-Three, will be out 22 September in the UK and (North American readers, you're gonna be mad) 1 November in Canada and the United States. But whichever way you look at it, it's not that far off.
So what do all those 'twenty-three-related' incidents mean? The dead squirrels? The mannequins on the Ferris wheel? The flaming bus? The collapsed drive-in screen?
Well, you're going to find out in
TheTwenty-Three, but not before there's another incident related to that number that is nothing short of devastating.
T
he Twenty-Three
, if I may so, is going to knock your socks off.
If you want to get up to speed before
The Twenty-Three comes out,
Broken Promise is already out in paperback, and the paperback of book two,
Far From True, will be released on 4 October in North America and 8 September in the UK.
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And after The Twenty-Three . . .
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I am planning one more - probably my final - book about Promise Falls, which will come out in 2017. We don't have a title yet, but the book is pretty much finished. It stars Detective Barry Duckworth and Private Detective Cal Weaver, and while the plot is not linked to the trilogy, it does deal with some of the fallout from what happened in those three books.
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My British book tour is imminent
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My latest UK tour is, as they say, just around the corner.
I'm going to be in
Nottingham and
Liverpool and several other places before getting to
Harrogate for the
Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, where I'll be interviewed by one of my favourite writers, Mark Billingham, about my new book,
The Brexit Murders. Okay, maybe that's not the actual title. But we will be discussing equally upsetting things.
Here's where I'll be:
Friday 22 July 9am:
In conversation with Mark Billingham
Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.
Swan Rd, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG1 2SR
Find out more and buy tickets >>
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As regular followers know, I am a bit of a model train nerd. So, in May, our son, Spencer, and I made the ultimate model train nerd's trip: we went to Hamburg, Germany, to see the biggest model railway in the world. A couple of people said to us, 'So, while you were in Hamburg you went to this thing, but that's not WHY you flew across the ocean to Europe'. 'Uh, yes', we said. 'That's exactly what we did.'
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Left: An Aston Martin parked out front of our hotel
Right:
A scene from the model railway
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Miniatur Wunderland employs more than 300 people and is the biggest tourist attraction in Hamburg, one of the biggest in all of Germany, in fact. A similar type of exhibit is in the process of being built in the Toronto area, and Spencer has been hired to make buildings for it, so it was even more important that we get over there and see it.
Spencer made a short film about our trip, which intercuts scenes of the real Hamburg -
a beautiful city, by the way - with the model Hamburg, and other miniature locales. Spot the differences.
You can see the film here:
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Need a prescription filled?
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I am now a doctor. Okay, not THAT kind of doctor. This spring, Trent University, which I attended from 1973-77, presented me with an Honorary Doctor of Letters. I was honoured and flattered. And I was also obliged to give the convocation address. If you have twelve minutes of your life you don't mind losing forever,
you can see it here:
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Talking crime with Peter James
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The amazingly prolific and hugely successful crime writer, Peter James, was in Toronto recently and I had the pleasure of interviewing him at Ben McNally Books.
He told great stories about how his friendships with members of the police have helped make his Roy Grace novels so authentic. And not surprisingly, our talk also turned to Brexit. He is not a fan of how things went.
Image r
ight: With Peter James
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The chase is on - next July
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The really big news is that there will be something very different from me next July. It's a book called
Chase, and it's aimed at younger readers - what's called the middle-grade category, or kids aged 8 to 12, but I wouldn't call those strict guidelines. When I finished the first draft, I gave it to my wife and two close friends, both over the age of 65, to read, and all three said they could not put it down. So I'm hopeful it will appeal to readers of all ages.
They talk about elevator pitches in books and movies. How would you sum up your book in one sentence to an editor or producer as you're heading up an office tower in an elevator? You don't have much time.
Here's how I'd describe
Chase: Think
The Bourne Identity, but the hero is a dog.
Of course, there's much more to it than that.
Chase draws heavily on my teen years, when I was thrust into running a cottage resort/trailer park (that's caravan park, for you UK folks). I actually wrote a book sixteen years ago about that period, called
Last Resort. And you can read about that experience in a
piece I wrote for the Guardian last month.
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| Me at Green Acres in the 1960s |
Anyway, I'm very excited about
Chase
. It's about a dog named Chipper who has been outfitted with all sorts of sophisticated software by an organization called The Institute. They plan to use him for espionage purposes, but Chipper's natural canine instincts often overrule his masters' wishes - you can't be distracted by a squirrel when you're tracking a terrorist - so The Institute decides Chipper must be put down.
Chipper's not about to let that happen. The chase is on.
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There's my
Twitter feed, where I say all sorts of things I probably shouldn't, particularly about a certain politician with short fingers:
And there's my
Facebook author page, where I mostly behave myself:
Have a great summer, and take plenty of books to the beach!
'Til next time . . .
Linwood
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