Gideon

by Russell Andrews Narrated by James Daniels

Overview

Carl “Granny” Granville is a young, talented writer who is given the chance of a lifetime. A contract to ghostwrite a sure-fire bestselling political thriller. The inside source will be known only as Gideon. His real identity will never be revealed. But the information Granny receives-and then turns into a book-will change the course of history.

Then the murders begin-first his editor, then the gorgeous neighbor with whom he's been having an affair. The mysterious go-between has disappeared. And his publisher has never heard of Gideon or Granny. Suddenly Carl Granville is a man alone, on the run, and wanted for murder.

“Gideon is a terrific thriller with plenty of surprises, an engaging hero, and really nasty villains. A compelling page turner.” -Phillip Margolin

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

The Barnes & Noble Review
Who is Gideon? In the powerhouse debut from Russell Andrews, a pen name for author Peter Gethers and mystery scribe David Handler, that's what struggling writer Carl Granville must desperately try to answer after blindly accepting an apparently unbelievable publishing deal. A briskly plotted, well-conceived, twisting-and-turning thriller about a project any writer would die for -- and in Carl's case, very well may -- Gideon is a savvy and sinister read.

At his agent's funeral in New York City, unpublished writer Carl Glanville -- an all-American type of guy: young, handsome, well built, with a determined heart and a lot of talent -- is introduced to Maggie Petersen, the top editor at New York's largest and most successful book publisher. Maggie claims that before her death, Carl's agent forwarded her a copy of his manuscript; Maggie read it, thought it was rough in places but brilliant in others, and would like to publish it. Next thing we know, not only is Carl offered the works from this publishing giant -- fancy advance galleys, publicity tour, a big marketing campaign -- but another deal as well. And this, my friends, is where Gideon begins to spark.

If Carl should accept this project, he will be paid a quarter of a million dollars to scribe a novel that, Maggie promises, will change the world; a million-copy announced printing goes a long way to add credence to Maggie's over-the-top prediction. The novel will be published anonymously and will be based on fact, on information Carl will receive in utmost secrecy from an unknown informant, known to both Maggie and Carl only as Gideon. While this Primary Colors-type project makes Carl feel extremely uncomfortable, the $50,000 advance that Maggie waves in front of his face, plus the promise to publish his novel with all the bells and whistles, is too much for Carl to turn down.

Ecstatic, Carl seeks out Toni-with-an-i, the beautiful actress-wannabe who has recently moved into his building. But when he arrives, Toni is bolting to an "All My Children" audition and is forced to take a rain check. Slightly disappointed but still flying high as a kite, Carl returns to his apartment to pop a cork by himself. Unfortunately, as Carl immediately realizes, he's not alone. An enormous, well-dressed stranger is sitting quietly in a corner, patiently awaiting Carl's return. This intruder, Harry, who we know has already committed two vicious, cold-blooded murders in a previous scene, is now the tough-as-nails partner of the frightened and angered Carl. For the next two weeks, Harry appears each morning with new information from Gideon, cooks Carl a gourmet breakfast, and sits quietly as Carl jots down notes. When Carl finishes, Harry collects the data, retapes it to his powerful thigh, and is off -- only to return the next morning with additional information from the enigmatic Gideon.

But who is Gideon? What is this story that he's writing, taken from the almost illegible scribbling of a young woman in the deep South in the mid-1950s? A million questions flood Carl's mind, but no answers follow. Soon, just as the story Carl is transcribing becomes extremely grim, sick, and horrible, the real-life murders begin, and Carl is on the run, a fugitive from the law and the life he once led -- and will likely never lead again.

Gideon is an electrifying novel. The writing team of Gethers and Handler has constructed a rapid-fire thriller with a titillating premise, slick writing, a vicious, well-conceived cast of characters, and an ending that will shock you off your beach chair. There's an innocent man on the run -- not only from the law but from someone who wants him dead for knowing too much about something that he doesn't really know anything about -- a death at every corner, a precarious love affair, and a surprise on almost every page. Gideon is a grade A tale, a perfect match for the hot summer sun. (Andrew LeCount)

Mike Lupica

Gideon is one of the smartest and most intricate thrillers you will read this summer. Or any summer, for that matter.
—New York Daily News

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The president of the U. S. has a secret so horrifying it even terrifies the priest he confesses to, in this debut thriller pitting ambitious, fallible politicians against a diabolical media mogul. Unsuspecting ghostwriter Carl Granville is enlisted by super-agent Maggie Peterson to take a hand-scrawled, stolen diary and turn it into a million-copy expos --but Carl is kept in the dark about whose story he's writing. The book is known only as "Gideon" and when Carl's apartment is trashed, the diary stolen and Maggie murdered, he soon discovers that nobody at the publishing house has any knowledge of the book deal. Branded the main suspect in Maggie's death, Carl goes on the lam, and with his Washington, D.C., ex-girlfriend Amanda Mays, tries to uncover the deadly conspiracy. The mess gets increasingly complicated, as the president commits suicide and the political climate is ripe for the First Lady to bid for the executive position. A homosexual priest, a British billionaire, an elderly midwife who knows all and a killer in disguise figure in the labyrinthine plot. Andrews is a pseudonym for Peter Gethers (The Dandy; The Cat Who Went to Paris) and David Handler (Kiddo): the ghostwriting angle is one of Handler's trademarks (he's the author of the popular Stewart Hoag mysteries). Dead-on publishing in-jokes are a lagniappe (Gethers is the former publisher of Villard); Carl has ghostwritten a series of Kathie Lee Gifford mysteries. Though saturated with winning details, however, the narrative, with its endless twists (blackmail, childhood secrets, love affairs) winds up with several complications too many, and this plethora of side plots dilutes the lucid, cumulative pleasures a good thriller is designed to evoke. $250,000 ad/promo; BOMC and QPB selections; author tour; audio rights: Brilliance Corp.; foreign rights sold to U.K., France and Holland. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A political conspiracy thriller with more fizzle than firepower. Who is Gideon? That is, who is he really? It's the burning question absolutely no one seems able to answer. Strange, since Carl Granville, a struggling young novelist, was offered a fat fee for a ghostwriting chore on the very subject—an assignment originating with Maggie Peterson, "the hottest editor in New York." The modus operandi proposed by her was certainly unconventional: Carl is to novelize by the numbers, so to speak. Periodically, she'll feed him material (extracted from a diary) that he's to convert into fictional increments of an eventual whole. Will he accept the conditions? Broke and at loose ends, of course he would. But when Maggie becomes defunct and no one at Apex Communications, her firm, will admit to having heard of Gideon, life gets complicated for Carl. Even more so when the local corpse count skyrockets, and the police seem alarmingly eager to credit Carl with multiple offings. Only Amanda Mays, Carl's ex-flame, persists in regarding him as constitutionally nonlethal. To her, he still looks like "an overgrown Campbell's Soup kid." In any case, the two partner up and go on the lam, pursued by contract killers who are efficient, implacable, and staples of this kind of fiction. And when our heroes decide it's up to them, them alone, to solve the Gideon mystery, few thriller buffs will be taken aback. Nor will any of them gasp at the denouement—on learning how high an echelon has been tainted by political wickedness and chicanery. What's a wannabe blockbuster without a conspiring top banana? A suspense-fiction pastiche in which characterization is thin, pacing lethargic, and freshness inshort supply: the first team effort from Peter Gethers (A Cat Abroad, 1993, etc.) and David Handler (The Man Who Loved Women to Death, 1997, etc.). (Book-of-the-Month/Quality Paperback; $250,000 ad/promo; author tour)

From the Publisher

"THE EFFECT IS A BIT LIKE ROLLING DOWN A GRASSY HILL . . . YOU PICK UP SERIOUS SPEED. . . . Writer Carl Granville - down on his luck personally and professionally - is approached one day by a hotshot publisher who says she'll pay him a startling amount of money to turn a top secret diary into a novel. Gift from God or devilish trap? . . . The conspiracy he gets tangled in plays on some seriously topical fears."
-Entertainment Weekly

"THE BOOK'S GOT EVERYTHING A BIG ADVENTURE THRILLER SHOULD - a potentially world-shaking secret, nearly invincible villains, vulnerable protagonists on the run, romance, [and] betrayal. . . . What takes it a step beyond . . . are the seriousness of its message and the playfulness with which it bites the hand that publishes it."
-Los Angeles Times

"FRANTIC . . . NOTHING IS EVER AS IT SEEMS."
-The Boston Globe

"THIS ONE WILL KEEP YOU GUESSING UNTIL THE END."
-Houston Chronicle

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169701531
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/17/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

"I meant--"

"I know what you meant. And the answer is no. Starving artists aren't very popular these days."

"Starving artists were never popular."

"Now you tell me," he said, grinning at her.

"Uh-uh," she said, shaking her head. "It won't work, so don't even

try it."

"What won't work?"

"The Granny grin. I'm wearing a Kevlar shield now. It bounces right off me."

"Look, Amanda ..." He reached over and took her hand.

She pulled away. "Please don't," she said quietly. "Don't tell me you're confused and you don't know how you feel. Because I'll tell you how you feel, Carl. You feel relieved."

He fell silent after that. They both did.

"I guess it was too soon," she said finally. "It still hurts too much. Maybe ... maybe we can try again next year."

"I will if you will," he said gamely.

"Done," she said, stubbing out her cigarette.

Carl's street was largely deserted. Thanks to the rain, the idlers had been driven inside. She pulled up with a screech in front of the beat-up brownstone Carl had lived in since he first moved to New York. He had the front apartment on the fourth floor, a studio that was hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and noisy all year round. The waterbugs and the mice didn't mind, and neither did he, but Amanda had despised it. They had always stayed at her place, which had heat and hot water and other such luxury amenities.

A very attractive young blonde was trying to wrestle an old overstuffed chair in through the front door of his building. She wasn't having much luck. The chair was getting all wet and so was she. The T-shirt and tight jeans she was wearing werethoroughly soaked.

"New neighbor?" Amanda asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Upstairs." He nodded. "She moved in last week."

"She's not," Amanda said.

"Not what?"

"Wearing a bra. That is what you were thinking, isn't it?"

He turned to stare at Amanda. "It might surprise you to learn that I'm not always thinking what you think I'm thinking."

Her eyes searched his face carefully, as if she was trying to memorize how it looked. "You're absolutely right," she said gravely. "That would surprise me."

"Watch out for the pothole," he warned her as he climbed out. It was a broad, deep one in the middle of the block. It was really more of a crater. And, of course, she accelerated right into it. Would have lost a hubcap, too, if she'd had any hubcaps left to lose. Carl watched her cross Broadway and disappear down the street, feeling rueful and glum and dissatisfied and lonely. He shook it off and started inside. But the chair and the very wet blonde were in his way.

"You're not planning to carry that thing all the way up to the fifth floor by yourself, are you?" Carl asked his new neighbor.

"I sure am," she replied. She possessed a soft, cotton-candy voice and the biggest, bluest, most arresting eyes that Carl had ever seen. Her silky blond hair glistened with moisture. She wore hot pink lipstick and matching nail polish. She was a tall girl, nearly six feet in her steel-toed Doc Martens. "I found it around the corner on the street. Can you believe someone was throwing it out?"

The chair was covered in green vinyl. And huge. Not to mention hideous.

"I can't believe anyone bought it in the first place," he said.

"Well, I think it's perfect. Particularly because I don't have a chair and I need one. Only it won't fit through the damned door." She began chewing fretfully on her luscious lower lip.

Carl stood there thinking that it had been a long time since he'd dated a woman who wore hot pink nail polish. Come to think of it, he had never dated a woman who wore hot pink nail polish. Amanda's nails were unpainted and bitten to the quick.

"Sure it will," he said bravely. "We just have to angle it, that's all." He bent down and grabbed an end, trying as hard as he could not to stare at her nipples, which protruded right through her wet T-shirt, large and rosy and in his face.

"This is very nice of you."

"No problem," he grunted. "Neighbors do these things for each other. That's what holds this cruel, dirty city together. Besides, if I don't help, I can't get in out of the rain."

Together they angled it through the vestibule and wrestled it to the bottom of the stairs, where they dumped it. It was heavy and ungainly.

"I'm the Granville whose buzzer is right below yours, by the way. Carl goes with it. What goes with Cloninger?"

"Toni. With an i."

"Nice to meet you, Toni with an i. You new to the city?"

"Just moved from Pennsylvania. I'm an actress. Oh, God, that sounds so funny to say out loud, doesn't it? I want to be an actress. Mostly I've just done some modeling and stuff. And taken a ton of classes. How about you? Do you model, too?"

"Keep talking to me like that and I'll curl right up on your welcome mat and never leave."

"There's another thing I have to do--get a welcome mat," she said, smiling at him.

She had a wonderful smile. It made the entire lower half of his body feel like it was suspended in warm Jell-O. He took a deep breath, sizing up the logistics of chair and stairs and banister. "Okay, I'll push, you pull. On three. Ready?"

"Ready. Did I remember to say this was real nice of you?"

"You did. But feel free to keep right on saying it."

He pushed, she pulled, and somehow they managed to force the big, horrible, overstuffed thing all the way up to the second-floor landing, where they rested. Only three more flights to go.

"Can I ask you something personal?" she said, huffing and puffing. "I keep hearing this ba-boom, ba-boom noise coming from your apartment every morning. What exactly are you doing?"

"Banging my head against the wall. I'm a writer."

She let out a laugh, which was just as wonderful as her smile. It was big and easy and genuine. "I've never lived over a writer before. This may take some getting used to."

"Oh, you'll learn to love it. In fact, pretty soon you'll wonder how you ever got along without me."

She eyed him with flirty amusement. "Seriously, what are you doing?"

"It's my heavy bag. A sixty-pound Everlast. I work out on it every morning." He picked up his end of the chair. "You never know what might come up."

His lower back was in spasms by the time they reached the fourth floor. "I'm feeling uncommonly generous. Why don't you just leave this at my place? You can come visit it anytime you want."

"One more flight, Charles."

"Carl."

Her place was a studio like his, but the ceiling was lower and it felt even more cramped. She had very little in the way of possessions: a bed, a dresser, a TV, a cactus that looked dead, although Carl wasn't exactly sure how you could tell with cactus plants. There was still some stuff in cartons. The chair went in an empty corner, facing the TV.

"The least I can do is offer you a beer," she said gratefully.

"The least I can do is accept," he replied, waiting for her to move toward the refrigerator. But she made no move toward anything. "I don't actually have any beer," she admitted.

"Do you always make such empty offers?"

"It's not empty. You know Son House?"

"The blues bar down on Ninth Avenue?"

She nodded. "I wait tables there most nights, eight to two. Stop by and I'll treat you to a brewski. Deal?"

"I don't know. I'll have to think about it," he said. He looked at this gorgeous creature not two feet away from him. Then he pictured Amanda, angry as ever, hurtling through the pothole. "Okay, I thought about it," he said. "It's a deal, Toni with an i."

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