Three years ago, while spending ten days at Canada’s Trent University as a writer-in-residence, I brought along a notebook to start jotting down some ideas.
It was time to try something a little different. My nine previous novels had been standalone thrillers (okay, No Safe House was a seven-years-later follow-up to No Time for Goodbye), but in the fall of 2013 I was thinking of ways to up my game.
I decided to write three linked novels. A trilogy, I suppose, but maybe not a traditional one. The first two novels would largely be standalones, but there would be another story percolating in the background. In book three, that backstory would take over.
But before I could write word one of that first book, I needed to know what that overarching story would be. It had to be something BIG.
I figured out what it would be.
And now, three years later, readers will finally find out what it is.
The Twenty-Three arrives in stores in the UK on 22 September. On 1 November, the book will be released in North America. (Just in time to take U.S. readers’ minds off the election…as if that were possible.)
As a quick reminder, first there was Broken Promise, then Far From True, and now The Twenty-Three. Aptly named, I think, given what has happened in the two previous books.
In case you’ve already read both and you’ve forgotten:
- 23 dead squirrels hung from a fence
- a sexual predator wearing a hoodie with “23” on the front
- a threatening message painted on three naked mannequins in carriage 23 of a decommissioned Ferris wheel
- Promise Falls city bus number 23, in flames
- the bombing of the local drive-in, at exactly 23 minutes past 11 o’clock (the 23rd hour of the day)
As The Twenty-Three opens, on the 23rd of May, something will happen that will make all those other incidents seem positively timid.
It’s so exciting for me – and readers, too, I hope – to see the final book released. Folks who have read books one and two are going to have all their questions answered.
I think they’re going to be blown away.
Those who have not yet explored these books will have the opportunity to “binge” read them back-to-back! |