Mysterious Profiles Coming to a Publisher Near You

Not long after the Mysterious Bookshop relocated from its longtime midtown location to TriBeCa, Otto Penzler came up with a very cool idea to generate income for the store and interest for his customers: enlisting the likes of Laura Lippman, Robert B. Parker, Michael Connelly and Jeffery Deaver to write profiles of their beloved series characters. Once a month, a new pamphlet is published – a limited edition hardcover at $60 a pop and more inexpensively priced paperback versions.

Now the vast majority of these pamphlets will be collected in a single edition to be published in the US by Little, Brown and in the UK by Quercus, reports Publishing News:

Little, Brown’s

Michael Pietsch has

acquired North

American rights to a

collection of 20 of

these profiles, which

include Anne Perry on

Thomas and Charlotte

Pitt; Laura Lippman on

Tess Monaghan; Robert

B. Parker on Spenser;

Michael Connelly on

Hieronymus Bosch; and Jeffery

Deaver on Lincoln

Rhyme. Agent Nat

Sobel handled the deal,

and in addition to

Quercus in the UK,

Hayakawa in Japan has

also taken the title.

The book will be called

Mysterious Profiles.

There is no Little,

Brown publication date

yet, but Penzler is due to

deliver the 20 profiles, of

which 13 have been

written, next June.

Committed authors

include Jonathan

Kellerman, Faye

Kellerman, Ridley

Pearson and Stephen

Hunter. In the terms of

the deal, the authors will

come away with half of

Penzler’s advance and

royalties.

As to why some of the profiles won’t be collected, I’m hearing it’s a matter of whether the rights to do so were assigned by the author to Penzler in the first place (and, in fact, though the PN article lists Lee Child’s profile of Jack Reacher as part of the collection, I gather that’s not the case.)