Saturday, October 3, 2015

DEATH IN THE FACE COVER REVEAL


Cover by J.T. Lindroos. Coming Oct. 21 from Betimes Books. Pre-order eBook version here. Trade paperback soon to follow.
Here's the pitch:
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-20th 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 “most unusual, and readable crime fiction to come along in years.”

LIVE TWEETING GOLDFINGER TONIGHT AT 6 (EST)


To celebrate the coming publication of DEATH IN THE FACE featuring 007-creator Ian Fleming, I will be live-tweeting the second James Bond film, GOLDFINGER, starting at 6 eastern this p.m. (Saturday, Oct. 3).

Head over to https://twitter.com/HECTORLASSITER if you care to follow along/chime-in using hashtag #GLDFGR.


Once the film wraps up, we'll be unveiling the cover for DEATH IN THE FACE.

The filming of the Connery Bond FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE occupies roughly the last third of my new novel, with cameos by Robert Shaw and Sean Connery, among others key to the film's production. The first two-thirds track Fleming and Hector Lassiter through Japan as Ian gathers materials for his penultimate 007 novel YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

(As it happens, DEATH IN THE FACE is the penultimate novel in my Edgar Award-nominated Hector Lassiter series.)

A few weeks ago, this effort to live tweet the entire Bond films series (absent that disaster with David Niven), kicked off with DR. NO.

DR. NO LIVE TWEETS ARCHIVE
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE LIVE TWEETS ARCHIVE
GOLDFINGER LIVE TWEETS ARCHIVE
THUNDERBALL LIVE TWEETS ARCHIVE
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE LIVE TWEETS ARCHIVE
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE LIVE TWEETS