First Thrills - Lee Child [43]
THEO GANGI is the author of Bang Bang (Kensington Publishing), a hard-boiled New York City–based crime thriller. His stories have appeared in The Greensboro Review and the Columbia University Spectator. His articles and reviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Inked magazine, and Mystery Scene magazine. His second novel, Twist the Trees (Kensington), will be released in early 2010. Visit him at www.theogangi.com.
JEFFERY DEAVER
When J. B. Prescott, the hugely popular crime novelist, died, millions of readers around the world were stunned and saddened.
But only one fan thought that there was something more to his death than what was revealed in the press reports.
Rumpled, round, middle-aged Jimmy Malloy was an NYPD detective sergeant. He had three passions other than police work: his family, his boat, and reading. Malloy read anything, but preferred crime novels. He liked the clever plots and the fast-moving stories. That’s what books should be, he felt. He’d been at a party once and people were talking about how long they should give a book before they put it down. Some people had said they’d endure fifty pages, some said a hundred.
Malloy had laughed. “No, no, no. It’s not dental work, like you’re waiting for the anesthetic to kick in. You should enjoy the book from page one.”
Prescott’s books were that way. They entertained you from the git-go. They took you away from your job, they took you away from the problems with your wife or daughter, your mortgage company.
They took you away from everything. And in this life, Malloy reflected, there was a lot to be taken away from.
“What’re you moping around about?” his partner, Ralph DeLeon, asked, walking into the shabby office they shared in the Midtown South Precinct, after half a weekend off. “I’m the only one round here got reason to be upset. Thanks to the Mets yesterday. Oh, wait. You don’t even know who the Mets are, son, do you?”
“Sure, I love basketball,” Malloy joked. But it was a distracted joke.
“So?” DeLeon asked. He was tall, slim, muscular, black—the opposite of Malloy, detail for detail.
“Got one of those feelings.”
“Shit. Last one of those feelings earned us a sit-down with the Dep Com.”
Plate glass and Corvettes are extremely expensive. Especially when owned by people with lawyers.
But Malloy wasn’t paying much attention to their past collars. Or to DeLeon. He once more read the obit that had appeared in the Times a month ago.
J.B. Prescott, 68, author of thirty-two best-selling crime novels, died yesterday while on a hike in a remote section of Vermont, where he had a summer home.
The cause of death was a heart attack.
“We’re terribly saddened by the death of one of our most prolific and important writers,” said Dolores Kemper, CEO of Hutton-Fielding, Inc., which had been his publisher for many years. “In these days of lower book sales and fewer people reading, J.B.’s books still flew off the shelves. It’s a terrible loss for everyone.
Prescott’s best known creation was Jacob Sharpe, a down-and-dirty counterintelligence agent, who traveled the world, fighting terrorists and criminals. Sharpe was frequently compared to James Bond and Jason Bourne.
Prescott was not a critical darling. Reviewers called his books, “airport time-passers,” “beach reads,” and “junk food for the mind—superior junk food, but empty calories nonetheless.”
Still, he was immensely popular with his fans. Each of his books sold millions of copies.
His success brought him fame and fortune, but Prescott shunned the public life, rarely going on book tour or giving interviews. Though a multimillionaire, he had no interest in the celebrity lifestyle. He and his second wife, the former Jane Spenser, 38, owned an apartment in Manhattan, where she is a part-time photo editor for Styles, the popular fashion magazine. Prescott himself, however, spent most of his time in Vermont or in the countryside of Spain, where he could write in peace.
Born in Kansas, John Balin Prescott studied English literature at the University of Iowa