The Bestseller

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Would you kill to write a bestseller? Well Adrian Slater says that he’s prepared to do just that – and announces the fact in a creative writing class.

Lecturer Dudley Grose is convinced that Slater is a psychopath and means what he says. But the Dean of the university doesn’t believe him and neither do the cops.

But when a student on the course vanishes and her bathroom is awash with blood, the police wonder if Slater has actually carried out his threat, and if the book he’s writing contains the evidence that will put him away.

The Bestseller is a book about murder, but it’s also an insight into the creative writing process and how ePublishing has changed the rules for ever, creating a world where murder as entertainment might actually pay.

The Bestseller is a fast-paced novella of 53,000 words, about 200 pages, with a shocking twist in the tail.

It's already had a great five-star review from an Amazon Top 100 reviewer!

By Midnight - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bestseller

Wannabee author Adrian Slater attends creative writing classes and reveals to the class he intends to commit a murder so he can have a factual basis for his novel.

Stephen Leather has come up with another engrossing thriller that at around 53,000 words provides an absorbing journey to an unexpected destination. Readers may think they have worked out the ending before reaching the climax but as they read on, the story takes a final twist - but you'll have to read the story to find out what happens!

His offerings have ranged from the short very gentle Inspector Zhang locked room mysteries; the excellent Dan Shepherd series; the Jack Nightingale occult detective series through to the hard biting novellas specifically written as ebooks 'The Basement' and 'Once Bitten'. Those who found that for them 'The Basement' was a tad on the gory side will find 'The Bestseller' does not come into the same category; nor are there any vampires - I simply found 'The Bestseller' an excellent fast-paced thriller and would heartily recommend it.

The formatting and flow of the text is excellent with noticeably absent typos - something which can be a problem with some ebooks.

Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers. He was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. Two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were made into movies.