Gideon - Hardcover

Andrews, Russell

 
9780345423467: Gideon
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0345423461 ISBN 13: 9780345423467
Verlag: Ballantine Books, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Hired in a secret meeting to write the story of a powerful man he is forbidden to meet, Carl Granville soon finds himself embroiled in an astonishing conspiracy that threatens to destroy him and those around him.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Russell Andrews is a pseudonym for the team of
Peter Gethers and David Handler.

Peter Gethers has written two previous novels, The Dandy and Getting Blue, and two bestselling nonfiction books, The Cat Who Went to Paris and A Cat Abroad, and is the coauthor of an annual, Rotisserie League Baseball, and Historical Cats. In addition, he is an editor and publisher and, with David Handler, has written numerous film scripts and television shows. Mr. Gethers lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York. This is the first collaboration between Mr. Gethers and Mr. Handler under the name "Russell Andrews."

David Handler began his career as a journalist and critic. He won widespread critical acclaim for his autobiographical first novel, Kiddo, and has gone on to win an Edgar and an American My

Aus dem Klappentext

rst and only thing you need to know about Gideon is that you'll get no answers whatsoever about him. None. You will never meet him, you will never speak to him, you will never have any contact with him. . . . Gideon is in an extremely sensitive position."
Framed for two murders he didn't commit, Granville is a man on the run. He knows too much--but not enough to save himself. Pursued by the FBI, hunted by an assassin who kills with lethal precision, and desperate to escape the hell that is threatening to destroy him, Granville turns to the one person he can trust: his ex-girlfriend, journalist Amanda Mays. With her investigative skills and Granville's instincts for survival, they strive to uncoil the tightly wound truth. But they are embroiled in something far greater than either could ever have imagined--a dark conspiracy that will forever change the course of history.

Granville's only hope: penetrate the enigma of the name that began his nightmare--unearth the real identity o

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It had not been one of Carl Granville's better weeks.        

For starters, in his weekly pickup game at the Chelsea Piers, he had been taken to the hoop and dunked on by a spindly high-school kid. Then New York Magazine gave the Nathan Lane profile they'd promised him to another freelancer--the editor's sister-in-law. Then his dad called from Pompano Beach to tell him he thought Carl was wasting his precious Ivy League degree and his life, not necessarily in that order. Plus the Mets had lost three in a row, Nick at Nite had cleared out The Odd Couple and Taxi to make way for I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, and now, just to round things out, he found himself in a room with the only two people left in the world who believed in his talent, in his future, in him. Unfortunately, one of those people was dead and the other one hated his guts.

No, it had definitely not been one of Carl's better weeks.

He was standing next to an open casket in the Frank E. Campbell funeral parlor on Madison Avenue and Eighty-first Street, where Betty Slater, the legendary literary agent and even more legendary alcoholic, was laid out, looking as rosy and lifelike as a basket of wax fruit. At least she was not glowering at him with undisguised hostility, the way Amanda Mays, standing on the other side of the casket, was. Amanda was still angry over a slight misunderstanding. Something to do with a certain plum job in Washington, marriage, and living happily ever after. Carl had to admit to himself that some of the misunderstanding was his fault.

Actually, Carl had to admit that all of the misunderstanding was his fault.

The turnout for Betty's funeral was huge, considering just how cranky Betty had gotten toward the end of her life, when she'd managed to offend just about every publisher, critic, and author in town. It was her brutal honesty, mostly. Throwing out words like stinks, and phony, and--one of her favorite combinations--pseudointellectual crap. Nonetheless, this was an event and people had dutifully turned out in droves for it, clustering around her open casket in solemn tribute. Norman Mailer was there. And John Irving. Maya Angelou was there. So were Sonny Mehta, Tina Brown, Judith Regan, and a number of prominent editors and literary agents. All to pay their respects. To mingle. And, Carl was horrified to observe, to work the room. Because Betty had still had a few money clients in her stable, and now they were on the loose. Most notably Norm Pincus, the balding, splayfooted little shlub known to the reading public as Esmeralda Wilding, author of eleven straight best-selling bodice rippers. Agents were hovering
around the tubby little gold mine like vultures, waiting to swoop down on him. It was, Carl reflected, in terrible taste.

Especially because not one of the vultures was paying the least bit of attention to him.

Hey, wasn't he talented? Didn't he have the potential to write best-sellers? Quality best-sellers? Couldn't he go on Oprah and charm the hell out of America?

And wasn't that Maggie Peterson staring at him from across the room?

It was.

Holy shit. The Maggie Peterson. Staring at him. And not only that. Now coming toward him. Smiling and sticking her hand out. The most famous, the most visible, the most flamboyant, and by far the hottest editor in New York publishing was speaking to him. She'd had three number-one best-sellers in a row. Her own imprint at Apex, the international multimedia conglomerate. She was a star. And Carl Granville knew that what he could use more than anything else right now was just a little bit of stardust. He was twenty-eight years old and burning to write the next great American novel. He had just delivered the first draft of his most recent attempt to Betty Slater, but she had died before she could tell him what she thought of it. And now he had no agent, no money to pay this month's rent, and no reason whatsoever to believe that his next payday would arrive any sooner than the twenty-fourth of never. But suddenly there was hope. Maggie Peterson was saying something to him.

She was saying: "I don't know whether to hire you or fuck you."

Carl had to admit, she got his attention.

Everything about Maggie Peterson was calculated to get attention. The severe blue-black pageboy hairdo that had been cropped sharply at the chin, with what looked to be a hatchet. The wide slash of bright red lipstick. The matching skintight black leather jacket and trousers. This was a highly charged woman, most likely forty, a lean, tightly coiled whippet who exuded energy and sexual challenge. This was a very sexy predator. A meat eater. And right now she was eyeballing him up and down as if he were a

T-bone steak, medium rare.

Carl glanced around just to make absolutely, positively sure that he was the person Maggie had said those words to. He was. So he cleared his throat and took his shot. "If I have a choice," he said, smiling, "I need the job more."

Maggie didn't smile back. He got the feeling that smiling was not usually on her agenda.

"I read those murder mysteries you ghosted for Kathie Lee," she said, gazing up at him. "I liked them. I liked them a lot."

That would be Kathie Lee Gifford. Not his proudest creative moment. But a job was a job.

"Betty got that for me," he said, and modestly shrugged his broad shoulders at Maggie, feeling the twinge in the left one that was always there. A Penn power forward who was now playing over in Greece had given that to him under the boards his senior year. Carl had started at point guard for Cornell for three years, a smart, determined floor leader, a good passer, an accurate shooter. He was the complete basketball package. He had it all--everything except the height, the vertical leap, and the foot speed. He was an inch and three-eighths over six feet tall and his weight hadn't changed, it was still 185. Although fifteen of those pounds kept wanting to drift south. He had to work out regularly to prevent that.

"Betty sent me your novel, you know."

"No, I didn't know." He couldn't help it; his pulse was definitely quickening.

"It was the most dazzling prose I've read in two, possibly three years. Parts of it were even brilliant."

There it was, the b word. The word every writer hungered to hear. And it wasn't just anybody saying it to Carl. It was Maggie Peterson, who could actually do something about it.

"We need to talk," she was saying now.

Carl stood there a moment, grinning. He looked no more than eighteen when he grinned. He looked, Amanda once told him with a disgusted look in her eye, like an overgrown Campbell's Soup kid, with his shiny blue eyes and apple cheeks and unruly dirty blond hair that was forever tumbling down into his eyes. He was so wholesome and innocent-looking that bartenders still asked him for his ID.

"Well, sure," he said. "Let's talk."

Maggie glanced abruptly at her watch. "Meet me at three o'clock."

"Your office?"

"I have a lunch date on the East Side. It'll be easier to meet at my apartment. Four twenty-five East Sixty-third. We can be alone there. Have a nice little talk in my garden."

"It's pouring rain outside."

"I'll see you at three, Mr. Granville."

"It's Carl."

"I thought people called you Granny."

"Some do," he allowed. Although precious few, and it had to be his idea, not theirs, and ...

And how the hell did she know that?

"I do my homework," she said, as if reading his mind. Her eyes were already elsewhere, flicking around the crowded room, restlessly...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345423461
ISBN 13 
9780345423467
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
435
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41
Madrid
Madrid
Spanien