THE HOOK

Since blockbuster novelist Bryce Proctorr is blocked and can’t write a word, while midlist author Wayne Prentice can’t find

a publisher for his new book, since each of his titles has sold even less well than the one before, Bryce offers Wayne half of his million-plus advance if he can palm Wayne’s finished manuscript off as his own—with a few changes, of course—and one small hook. Bryce’s wife Lucie is stalling on their divorce. Would Wayne please kill her as part of their deal? Wayne talks it over with his wife Susan, and soon thereafter—in a scene so brutal, so ugly, so powerful that readers will still be wincing at it weeks later—Lucie dies. Bryce introduces Wayne to his agent, to his editor, to the heady upper echelons of the New York publishing world. Bryce moves to the country, and Wayne moves into his New York place. The switch in their lives continues inexorably: Wayne becomes more successful, while Bryce becomes consumed with Lucie’s last moments, asking how it felt to kill her. Bryce, however, is still blocked, and enters into another deal for another book with Wayne. What’s the hook this time? Suffice it to say that Susan’s life has also been undergoing changes, and trust Westlake to out-think you for a chilling, remorseless ending. Like The Axe (1996), this number shows Dortmunder’s usually genial creator at his dourest. The set-up borrows a bit from Strangers on a Train, but the insider’s view of the writer’s life and the publishing industry are Westlake at his most

trenchant—and several of those failed Bryce plots sound suspiciously like the work of Robert Ludlum.