Potboiler

February 20, 2012
Kellerman’s insightful satire on publishing, bestsellers, and series continuing long after an author’s demise opens promisingly. Years earlier, Arthur Pfefferkorn’s one coming-of-age novel received “mild acclaim but sold poorly.” Arthur now ekes out a living as an adjunct professor “at a small college on the Eastern Seaboard.” He seethes over the success and wealth of his oldest friend, bestselling thriller writer William de Vallée, who married Arthur’s first love, Carlotta. After William is lost at sea, Arthur finds his friend’s last manuscript, plagiarizes the story, and becomes a bestselling author. But the price of Arthur’s new success unfurls into events that could be lifted from his thriller—a series of betrayals and double crosses with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Kellerman (The Executor) makes witty use of thriller clichés, especially at the rousing finale, but the flaccid middle section suggests that this one-note joke might have worked better at novella length. Agent: Liza Dawson, Liza Dawson Associates.

September 24, 2012
Failed-novelist-turned-professor Arthur Pfefferkorn has long been jealous of his oldest friend, William de Vallèe, who married the only woman Pfefferkorn ever loved and became a fabulously successful writer. But when de Vallèe disappears at sea with his latest manuscript unfinished, Arthur is given the chance to take his place both on the bestseller lists and in the bedroom. However, there’s a dark side to the deal, one that thrusts Pfefferkorn into a perilous, twisted adventure oddly similar to those of de Vallèe’s books. Satire works best when served with subtlety and that’s just how narrator Kirby Heyborne handles it, letting the book’s humor stand on its own, while also deftly rendering moments of genuine suspense. His Pfefferkorn sounds alternately passive and fussy, reluctant and eager, pretty much the kind of aimless, over-educated naïf who’d allow himself to be drawn into a mess from which he can’t escape. A Putnam hardcover.