3.5
The List
ByPublisher Description
A bold and successful scheme to outwit the biggest players in publishing and film animates this novel by the bestselling author of The Judge--a suspenseful thriller in which the price of fame becomes terror.Gable Cooper has penned a novel to kill for. Six million dollars in book and film rights are looming just off the table for this unknown author. But there is a problem: Gable Cooper doesn't exist.Abby Chandlis is an attorney turned novelist and the creator of Gable Cooper. In an age when glamour, not grammar, is often the secret to selling books, Abby has an intriguing plan to keep her writing career alive: find a charismatic male face to pose as the phantom author for the knock-dead thriller she has written.Jack Jermaine is a man with dangerous good looks and a shadowy past. Trained by the military to kill, his obsession is to pen a blockbuster book. He has a trunk filled with rejected manuscripts and a gnawing problem that has turned him bitter: Jack can't write.Desperate to find a man to play the role of Gable Cooper, Abby is about to give up when Jack forces his way into her life. Reluctantly she is convinced that Jack's humor and looks will clinch success for her novel. She uses her legal wits and makes a deal with the devil. Jack becomes Gable Cooper.When Jack is propelled into the orbit of celebrity, Abby finds herself at once seduced and trapped by her own creation. Success turns to terror. The story careens from the Pacific Northwest to New York City and finally through the islands of the Caribbean as Abby races for her life to the one person she can trust--the one person who can prove to the world that she wrote the novel, and put an end to the nightmare that was once her dream, the dream of making The List.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe List Reviews
3.5
“This book betrays its age with everything it's got, and that's okay with me. Published on 1997, The List gives not only the 90's in setting and actions people can get away with that are nearly unthinkable today, but in the way it's written. I would not have doubted for a minute that this was written between 1980 and 2000, even without the few things that completely tell you the timeline cannot be newer than that.
There is a stylistic age to books. I knew this because I read Doyle, Collins and VW like they aren't who they are, but I hadn't realized that it also applied to books written in the 90s as opposed to nowadays. The tightness of the story, the fact that violence and action happen, but they aren't the be all end all of the story, and then things we both take for granted Joe and that we haven't been allowed to do since 9/11 all age this like a fine wine. You want this setting, this time. It isn't noir, it's a thriller, but its an action thriller. When they speak about the film for Abby's first book, the 'star' they're speaking of is going to be Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in your head. A 90s star with a 90s look.
Funny thing, that this was a current book when written, so these things were just how you wrote. You had the woman trying to make her way as a writer, the dangerous and handsome man who's helping her, a cast of secondary characters, and Morgan Spencer. Oh my word, Morgan Spencer. I don't think I've been this impressed with an antagonist in a long time.i absolutely had no clue about him and I'm so happy! This is what a thriller was back then. This is why I said 1980 to 2000. It reminded me of some older stuff, some younger, where you have this person you never suspect, but somehow they're very normal. Things are just what has to happen, and they're cool and skilled and you never see that until the end.
Another thing to make it the 90s. People died, and these were murders, and that was what happened. It reminds me of watching cop shows from the 90s and early 00s. There is violence and it is just there. It isn't glorified or horrifying in the same way as nowadays. Not to judge it, but that's how it really seems to me. Watching Due South you see that this stuff happens and you get on with it, whereas there seems to be a subtle wrongness to it happening on something like ... we'll go Republic of Doyle. The way violence is written and filmed and dealt with has changed. So too with books.”
About Steve Martini
Steve Martini worked as a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles and as a capital correspondent at the state house in Sacramento, California. An honors graduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Mr. Martini holds his law degree from the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. He has written widely on the law and politics, having covered both state and federal courts, the state legislature, and the administrations of governors Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown. In 1984 Martini turned his talents to fiction, quickly earning positions on bestseller lists and garnering both critical and popular praise for his New York Times–bestselling novels, including The Simeon Chamber, Compelling Evidence, Prime Witness, Undue Influence, The Judge, The List, Critical Mass, The Attorney, The Jury, and The Arraignment. Mr. Martini lives on the West Coast.
Other books by Steve Martini
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