DEATH IN THE FACE: COMING IN OCTOBER

My next novel—the next-to-the-last in the Hector Lassiter series—is DEATH IN THE FACE, set largely in the early 1960s.

The novel will be published in October by Betimes Books.

This one features James Bond creator Ian Fleming and finds novelist Hector Lassiter on Playboy Magazine's dime following Fleming through Japan for Ian's research tour of the novel YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and on into Istanbul for the filming of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

For now, here is a teaser, and a glimpse of the chapter title page of the coming novel.

DEATH IN THE FACE

By Craig McDonald

Ian Fleming and Hector Lassiter: Novelists, ex-spies and at last, lions in winter.

It’s 1963, and the future isn’t what it used to be.

Lassiter, crime novelist and screenwriter, senses the culture is slowly but surely shouldering him aside. Yet his slightly younger friend, British thriller writer Ian Fleming, stands on the verge of unimaginable success as his long-running series of James Bond novels at last makes its way to the Silver Screen.

But fortune has come too late for an ailing, deeply troubled Ian, who finds it harder to live the high-life necessary to feed his 007 page-turners: he is a dying man and ex-spymaster pining for a last grand adventure.

Enter Playboy Magazine and its offer to stake Hector to trek Ian on a research trip to Japan for his next Bond novel, You Only Live Twice, then onto Istanbul for the filming of From Russia With Love.

As Hector dogs Ian’s heels through the far-flung cities of the world, he discovers Fleming is secretly determined to right their one shared intelligence failure: “Operation Flea,” the key to a bio-weapon of terrifying scope that could bring Britain and America to their knees.

With cameos by Sean Connery, Robert Shaw and the death-obsessed Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, Craig McDonald again deftly mixes fact and fiction for a darkly seductive historical romp through the mid-20^th Century.

This is the penultimate Hector Lassiter literary thriller in the Edgar/Anthony-awards nominated series BookPage declared “wildly inventive” and The Chicago Tribune calls “the most unusual, and readable crime fiction to come along in years.”

Part 1 / “Every day is a journey…”

1. People Dying Who Never Died Before

2. Strangers On A Plane

3. Dead On Arrival

4. Safe Haven?

5. The Man With The Golden Typewriter

6. Ghost Of A Flea

7. The Last Mission?

8. No Leg To Stand On

9. Tomorrow Never Lies

10. Trust Dies/Mistrust Blossoms

11. Confessions Of A Mask

12. A Hidden Claw

13. Double Agent/Double Cross

Part 2 / “…and the journey itself home”

1.     Into Japan

2. Company Man

3.     Here’s Mud In Your Eye

4.     The Root Of All Evil

5.     Suitcases With Teeth?

6.     To Hell And Gone

7.     Out of Japan

8.     Murder On The Orient Express (1963)

9.     Something Wicked This Way Comes

10. Brinke Of Destruction

11. Every Man’s Death (1964)

12. Coda: Patriotism & The Spy Who Loved Me (1970)