Review_FICTION
44 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 9, 2020
Review_FICTION
a fascinating hour turns grim when Wally
sniffs out a body in the school’s attic. The
dead woman was former religion teacher
Bernadette Quinn, who left the school
three years earlier under a cloud. Bernadette
was fanatic about her religion, but a good
teacher and something of a special project
for principal Sister Eileen Flannery. Jazz is
dismayed when the police begin to suspect
that the person with the strongest motive
for murder was Sister Eileen, so Jazz takes
it upon herself to discover who really had
it out for Bernadette. Smooth prose more
than compensates for a couple of unlikely
events. Red herrings, a developing
romance, and just the right amount of
information about cadaver dogs help
make this a winner. Agent: Gail Fortune,
Talbot Fortune. (May)The Last Scoop:
A Clare Carlson Mystery
R.G. Belsky. Oceanview, $26.95 (336p)
ISBN 978-1-60809-357-1
In Belsky’s captivating third Clare
Carlson mystery (after 2019’s Below the
Fold), Clare, the news director of a New
York City TV station, looks into the death
of retired journalist Marty Barlow, her
friend and mentor when she was a cub
reporter. Marty stopped by her office one
day recently to tell her he was working on
the biggest story of his life. Before they
could meet up to discuss it in depth, Marty
was killed in an apparent random mugging.
Clare, however, believes his death is the
result of his research into a possible serial
killer, and she soon realizes that this could
be the biggest story of her career as well.
Clare’s clear-eyed narration (“I am a woman
who deals in lies for a living”) propels the
story, balancing dynamic action with
contemplative passages that reveal her
complicated personal and professional life.
Belsky’s experience as a journalist provides
fascinating insights and a sense of authen-
ticity. Readers will look forward to seeing
more of doggedly determined Clare. Agent:
Nalini Akolekar, Spencerhill Assoc. (May)A Study in Murder:
A Victorian Book Club Mystery
Callie Hutton. Crooked Lane, $26.99 (320p)
ISBN 978-1-64385-302-4
Romance author Hutton (Heirlooms of
the Heart) makes her mystery debut with
this disappointing series launch. Lady AmyWhat inspired this novel?
The idea actually came from filmmaker
Ridley Scott, who had read, and loved,
Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic
novel The Road and had asked me to
write a screenplay inspired by it.
Ridley’s question was what had hap-
pened to cause civilization to collapse.
I started researching, and decided
that the most likely
path to such a catas-
trophe was a novel
virus. Even though I’ve
written about public
health as a journalist, I
was shocked to learn
how stripped-down the
public health infrastruc-
ture has become. There’s
no greater threat to our
safety, but we pay little
heed to the dangers.What about global pandemics did you
find most surprising?
I was staggered to learn the abundance
of viruses, thought to number 100
million times more than the stars in
the universe. Most of these we know
almost nothing about. It was also fas-
cinating to learn that viruses sometimes
insert their own DNA into our
genome, including genes that control
the formation of memories and the
immune system. They are part of what
makes us human.Your movie screenplay about Islamic
terror, The Siege, felt prescient after
9/11. Do you fear this book will be
thought of that way in a few years?
I got the reputation of being prescientfor writing about terror striking New
York a few years before 9/11. I’m no
prophet. The scenario I created for The
Siege evolved from intensive research
about how societies react to terror
strikes and how we, in our own history,
have dealt with such crises. It was
research that led me to shape the story
of The End of October. Once I decided to
write about a new
plague, I followed the
trends already in our
society to foresee where
they would lead.Does the coronavirus
outbreak validate the
concerns you express
here in fictional form?
When I read the accounts
of the spread of this new
disease, I feel like I’m
reading chapters from my
own book. I just hope it turns out better
in real life than it does in the novel.Your plot features concerns about the
virus being man-made. How much of
a threat is biowarfare?
Biowarfare may not be limited to state
sponsors. I once interviewed a senior
intelligence official who said that in a
few years he expects high school stu-
dents who now play with computer
viruses to be able to do something
similar with actual biological viruses.
The appeal of such agents for terrorists
is well known but not yet exploited.
Even if they’re never intentionally
employed, diseases have a history of
breaking loose from laboratories.
—Lenny Picker[Q&A]
PW Talks with Lawrence Wright
No Greater Threat
Pulitzer-winner Wright presents a chillingly plausible look
at the consequences of a global pandemic in The End of October
(Knopf, May; reviewed on p. 40).© kenny braun