Dateline LBF: Then again, maybe serial killers still have some life in them

(Today is all about the London Book Fair, which began yesterday and ends tomorrow. Scroll down for earlier posts, and check back for more LBF-related news throughout the day.)

I said in my previous post that perhaps one of the reasons an Italian thriller is getting no bites from English-based publishers is because “the serial killer/thriller has had its day.” But then again, maybe not:

HODDER publisher Nick Sayers has made a second big swoop, winning a heated auction for two novels by debutante Cody McFadyen, a 37-year-old California-based video games developer. The Shadow Man, the first of the two and scheduled for spring 2006, is “a brilliant and defiantly graphic serial killer thriller in which a small FBI team, led by an unforgettable heroine, must hunt down a deadly killer who is armed with devastatingly intimate details on them all”.

Sayers was “gripped from the first page” by “an outstanding novel, dark and compelling” that “reads like the wind” and which “marks the start of a great career”.

OK, now admittedly I’m skeptical of any book that’s deemed to "read like the wind" (doesn’t that sound a bit flatulent?) but in any case, look for THE SHADOW MAN to appear Stateside next year under the Bantam Dell imprint.