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Yes, it's true, this is not a historical novel.
Some readers, I know, may be disappointed that my next novel is a break from what I’ve done in the past. I’ve already received a number of e-mails asking me if I will return to Benjamin Weaver and/or historical fiction. The short answer to both questions is: yes. The long answer is, well, longer.
I’m lucky enough to have a publisher that has consistently encouraged me to write what I want to write when I want to write it. What I wanted to write, when I sat down to begin the novel that turned into The Ethical Assassin, was a contemporary dark-comic thriller. So that’s what I’ve done. I hope to write other novels of this sort again someday. However, as much as I enjoyed working on this book, I also found that when I was done, I was eager to get back to something historical.
Will there be more Benjamin Weaver novels? The answer is so very,
very yes that it could not be more yes. The next Benjamin Weaver novel,
The Devil’s Company (this, by the
way, is the first time I handed in a book with a title that my editor
– now my ex-editor – actually liked, but then I’m the guy who tried
to sell A Conspiracy of Paper with
its original title, The Villainy of Stockjobbers Detected), is done
and in the early stage of production. Random House now plans to publish
it in the 2009.
For those in need of a Benjamin Weaver fix, The Double Dealer, the first Weaver short story, has just been published as part of the anthology Thriller, edited by James Patterson.
In addition, I am now hard at work
at a new, stand-alone historical thriller centered on the financial panic of 1792 and set in Philadelphia and New York.
So, for those of you who wish this novel were historical fiction, I say: hang in there. For those of you who are willing to read this book despite it being a little different, thank you.
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