|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
| ||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||
STEP ON A CRACK by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge Fast-paced suspense from one of the best-selling authors of all time. A trap is sprung when powerful people from around the world are gathered in New York City for the funeral of a beloved former first lady. What becomes a deadly hostage situation is just the beginning of a brilliant and cold-blooded scheme. It's up to New York cop Michael Bennett to find a way to rescue the captives-or face an unthinkable disaster. |
||||||||||
Excerpt from Select Editions' STEP ON A CRACK
I showed my shield to a sergeant by one of the blue-and-white sawhorses. She directed me to the mobile command center, a long white bus parked across the street from the cathedral. As I got out of my car, a jackhammer throbbing sounded, and I looked up as a police helicopter swung out from behind Rockefeller Center across the street and hovered low over the cathedral. A sniper in the helicopter's open door scanned the stained glass and stone spires over the barrel of a rifle. I stopped and stared in disbelief. How could this be happening at Caroline Hopkins's funeral? Will Matthews was standing on the sidewalk in front of the command center bus. Though only five seven, with his broken nose and violently frank way of looking at everybody, he was as pugnacious-looking an Irish cop as you could find on the force. "Glad you could join us, Bennett," he said. "Yeah, well," I said, "I hadn't had a chance to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree yet." Instead of chuckling, Matthews looked like he wanted to hit me with a billy club. "I'm in no mood for stand-up," he said. "The mayor; the former president; several movie, music, and sports stars; and about three thousand other VIPs are being held hostage inside by a dozen or more heavily armed masked men." It was hard to register what Will Matthews had just said to me. The mayor and the former president alone would have been mind-boggling, but all the rest? "We don't know if the gunmen are terrorists. They took out thirty-one cops and about two dozen federal agents with nonlethal weapons. Tear gas and rubber bullets and Tasers. Twenty minutes ago, they opened the Fiftieth Street entrance doors and bum-rushed all the cops and security personnel. There were a lot of broken noses and black eyes, but they could have gunned them down just as easy as let them go. I guess we can be grateful for small mercies." |
||||||||||
|
 |
|
WRITERS are often portrayed as
solitary creatures, toiling alone in
their garrets. James Patterson,
however, obviously loves to collaborate.
Since 1996, he has
worked with five coauthors (Peter
de Jonge, Andrew Gross, Howard
Roughan, Maxine Paetro, and
Michael Ledwidge), all but one of
whom (de Jonge) are published
authors in their own right. In addition
to the twenty-five novels
that carry only Patterson's name
(not counting his five children's
books), there are sixteen additional
books that give credit to
a collaborator. Why does he use a
cowriter so often? Admits Patterson,
"I'm not a fast writer. I struggle
through the writing. I can get
it done. But I know it's not my
strength."Says Patterson's long-time editor, Michael Pietsch, "A lot of great popular entertainment, even serious art, comes out of collaboration." Indeed, other famous writers, such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen King, have successfully worked with coauthors (Conrad with literary novelist Ford Madox Ford and King with thriller writer Peter Straub, among others). But James Patterson takes the notion of collaboration to a new level. Pietsch believes that Patterson, who maintains homes in Palm Beach County, Florida, and northern Westchester County, New York, is developing nothing less than a Hollywood-style studio system for writers. The process, Patterson says, is simple. He'll write a detailed outline (the one for Step on a Crack ran to thirty pages), and then his coauthor will pen the first draft. Patterson will write the subsequent drafts—often it takes as many as seven to get the story right. For Step on a Crack, c o a uthor Michael Ledwidge sent his work to Patterson several chapters at a time. Revisions came back, mostly having to do with the pace, but through it all the two writers maintained a friendly, cooperative relationship. Ledwidge says he agreed to become Patterson's coauthor "at about the speed of light." The thirty-six-year-old Bronxborn writer, who lives in Avon, Connecticut, solicited the older writer's advice while working as a doorman in Manhattan and writing his first novel in his spare time. After it was published, Ledwidge came out with two more novels, all with lukewarm sales, and had to take a job as a telephone repairman to make ends meet. But now his future as a writer looks rosy. "It's like a dream," Ledwidge says, "to have one job, not two. Everyone is always talking about how to market yourself . . . now I don't have to worry about that." Patterson's prodigious imagination and his talent for developing storylines are legendary. He has a three-inch-thick folder filled with ideas. "Stories are what light Jim's lamp," says Steve Bowen, the president of James Patterson Entertainment, a firm with five full-time employees devoted to driving sales of Patterson's books and developing his stories in other formats, such as films and video games. Five to ten times a week, Patterson will ask Bowen what he thinks of a new plotline. Says the prolific idea man and author, "I'd love to write all of them, but obviously I can't." 
|
|
|
| Home | Get Your Free Book | What is Select Editions? | Preview Current Volume |
|
Copyright © 2006 Reader's Digest |
