Jeffery Deaver on bringing 007 into the 21st century

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We were intrigued to learn, in May of last year, that the next official James Bond novelist would be American (and Chicago’s own!) crime writer Jeffrey Deaver. Best known for his Lincoln Rhyme detective series (its first entry, The Bone Collector , was filmed in 1999 with Denzel Washington as the quadriplegic detective), and his Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award-winning World War II thriller Garden of Beasts, he may have been viewed as a surprise choice for the assignment. But the author of these brainy mysteries also has a personal fondness for scuba diving, skiing, fast cars, and guns, as well as having started his career as a journalist. Sound like anybody we know?

“The novel [now titled Carte Blanche - ed.] will maintain the persona of James Bond as Fleming created him and the unique tone the author brought to his books, while incorporating my own literary trademarks: detailed research, fast pacing and surprise twists,” Deaver tells us, and we’re looking forward to see how he does it.

On last year’s book tour for his novel Edge, he made a stop in Franklin, Tennessee, at the “Killer Nashville” mystery writers conference, where he was Guest of Honor. HMSS sent our good friend — and Deaver’s fellow lawyer — Mark Henderson to chat with the author about his thoughts on tackling the 007 saga.

HMSS: George Bernard Shaw said that the English and Americans are two people separated by a common language. How intimidating is it for you to not only attempt to write an iconic character, but do so in a foreign idiom?

JEFFERY DEAVER: It is a writer’s responsibility, as a novelist, to step into the minds of all his or her characters. Doing that is something that I happen to enjoy a lot. I am a rather empathetic person. I don’t mean that in a good sense, that I care about people necessarily. What I mean is that it is easy for me to take a look at somebody, if I know anything about their life, through either research or having lived these sixty years, and write about them with some credibility. I have written about elderly African American characters. I’ve written about teenagers. I’ve written about women. I’ve written about heroes. I’ve written about bad people. And I seem to have a facility, I won’t call it talent, but I have a facility with a little bit of diligence and research, to step into the mind of someone who is different from who I am. So that has not posed a challenge at all in creating the Bond character as we now know him, although he is British…technically Scottish and his mother was Swiss, but he is a British citizen.

HMSS: Ian Fleming adjusted that over the years to accommodate for Sean Connery.

JD: Right, and we didn’t find out until reading Bond’s obituary [in You Only Live Twice]. So writing about a modern British agent is not then particularly daunting. I did a great deal of research and spend a lot of time in Great Britain, so that doesn’t bother me at all. I will say one thing: I am extremely aware of the responsibility of creating a character who echoes in the time of his creation. He was as you know, and as readers of the books know, unique in thriller fiction. Especially when he came about, we had never seen anyone like that before. Of course, suave and sophisticated, and yet a bit existential. He said, and this is not an exact quote, that he lived life to the fullest because he expected to be dead by the mandatory retirement age from the SIS, which was in the 40′s. 45 I think. So I am creating a character that has those elements that Ian Fleming created, and yet I am bringing them into a story of my own. So, is it daunting? It is no more challenging than writing any other character of mine. I have set books in locations other than those I am indigenous to, through research, and one just has to roll up one’s sleeves and get the job done.

HMSS: Fleming’s James Bond character was very much a product of World War II — forged in the crucible of a truly existential conflict. That’s not only where his fierce loyalty to England (and to M, who for Bond personifies England) comes from, but also his carpe diem attitude towards life. Your James Bond will have been born in 1980. What will have made him into the man we understand to be, and will recognize as, 007?

JD: The question was posed to me once, how can you create a hero, and model him on an essential cold war hero, where the great bear of the Soviet Union was the great threat on the horizon? My response was, how many attacks were there by Russia on the soil of England or the United States during that period? And the answer is none…they did a lot of bad things, assassination and so forth, but nothing like 07/07, the bombing of London, nothing like the Madrid train bombing, nothing like our 9/11 attack and some of the crazy people in America who have tried to carry out other attacks. The threat wears a different guise, but it is nonetheless a genuine threat: good versus evil. My Bond will be a veteran of Afghanistan. He was a soldier over there. And so he is a patriot. He will do anything he needs to do for Queen and country. He believes in freedom and democracy. He believes that bad guys should not get away with bad things. So that was one of the easier transitions actually. He still has the same carpe diem attitude because he puts his life on the line every day. And in my book, without giving away details, there are situations where he is threatened, not only his life (I am not going to kill him off in the first third of the book), but could he sustain a tragic injury forever? I am not saying yes, I am not saying no, but certainly, he is willing to risk everything to make sure the Realm is defended. So, he is not going to miss a moment of life.

HMSS: Was it your choice to set the new Bond novel in the present day, and if so, why?

JD: It was a mutual decision. When the Fleming Estate contacted me, I said that I would only want to do it if it were set in the present day, and they said we agree, that is what we were hoping for too. And the reason for that is the original books were not period pieces, of course. They were a product of their time, and Fleming, being a former journalist and intelligence agent, gave them the Cold War ambience. He was a great writer of manners, as they used to call it. So he would look at people in his books, or rather James Bond would, and draw conclusions about them. And they were right on about classes of society, men and women, attitudes of course reflecting the spirit of the time… not quite what it is today…and that is my Bond will be doing. Exactly the same thing.

HMSS: Fleming had been a journalist prior to writing the Bond novels. He credited that experience with giving him attention to detail and pacing, not to mention being able to write with some dispatch. Does your experience as a journalist enhance your writing in a similar fashion, or do you find it gave you other skills that are important? Do you feel like being a former journalist will help you carry on the Bond tradition?

JD: I had not thought about it, but I think it is probably true. I have a very meat and potatoes style, a journalistic style, as Fleming did. Although, he was capable of brilliant word-smithing. Go back and look at the beginning of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, where he is seeing the woman who turns out to be his wife, Tracy. He observes her, in what is a masterful use of flashback. This scene where he is at the beach and Bond is reflecting on his life, as a child going to the beach, responding to when the sun is going down. It is brilliant writing. I aspire to do that, but I do know that my writing style matches the narrative of my books so I am pretty content that I will produce a very satisfying prose.

HMSS: How much of a challenge is it to make the villains truly evil in the modern day, without making them look clichéd?

JD: This book as every other book of mine will have an emotional content to it. A thriller does no good if you do not feel the book in your heart. And you do not feel it in your heart if the characters are cliched or cardboard. I have created sympathetic characters on the good side that have faults, and I have created villains who are to me unique. I have not ever seen any characters like the villains I have created, and yet that resonate with some truth. They will not be cliches. They will be horrific and yet there will be a reason why they are horrific. To put it in context, look at a character like Hannibel Lector who did horrific things, yet had an odd sympathy. So that is the sort of atmosphere I am trying to bring to my book.

HMSS: Will any of Fleming’s recurring characters appear in your novel, and if so, which ones?

JD: I don’t want to say too much, but I will say that the core of his allies are drawn from to populate the book. I can say there will be no bad guys from the past. They are entirely my creation. So, let’s just say that characters like M, Bill Tanner the chief of staff, Miss Moneypenny, of course will be back.

HMSS: Fleming was influenced by reading the novels of Sapper and Buchan during his formative years. Besides Fleming, what authors would you say have had the most influence on your writing?

JD: Going back into classic mysteries, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Agatha Christie, by the way, was one of the masters of the twist. You don’t hear about her so much any more. The BBC had a Miss Marple series that was quite well done, and of course the Margaret Rutherford series which I saw when I was quite young. I sort of relate those to the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series. Rather broad Hollywood films for a larger appeal. The Holmes series with Jeremy Brett had a more subtle appeal. He was the Holmes for me. Anyway, those were major influences on me. As well as John le Carré, in terms of style, his writing is breathtaking. The intrigue within the intelligence community is fascinating. As far as hard-boiled fiction, I don’t read a lot of it. Mickey Spillane and so forth. Now international intrigue, Frederick Forsythe wrote one of my favorite books of all time, The Day of the Jackal. The original movie was excellent. And I also enjoyed Alistair MacLean. The books were quite lean. The late Elliot Kastner, who was a friend of mine, came up with the idea for Where Eagles Dare and talked MacLean into writing the screenplay, from which he later wrote a novel.

HMSS: You won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award from the British Crime Writer’s Association, for Garden of Beasts. The hero of that novel is a hitman for the mob who is sent by the United States government to kill a German who is in charge of organizing Nazi Germany’s re-armament. He is a hitman with a conscience and only kills bad guys. How will your James Bond compare to that character, Paul Schumann?

JD: It is not a coincidence that Schumann was who he was. The 00′s were sanctioned to commit assassinations for the government in the Fleming novels, and I think there are two references to this never reconciled there. There was a question whether it was awarded first so he could go kill, or afterwards, indicating that he had killed in the line of duty. My Bond will stay true to that, but you have to be kind of careful, because the SIS publically and vocally disavow targeted killings. The CIA does not here: they fire drones. The SIS has disavowed it. Anyway, Paul Schumann was a hitman with a conscience and James Bond is the same thing. For instance, in one of the Bond short stories, “The Living Daylights,” where he is supposed to kill an assassin in Berlin, when she turns out she is a female, he shoots her in the hand rather than kill her.

HMSS: What is your favorite James Bond movie, and why?

JD: From Russia With Love, because it was most true to the book. It was almost a literal interpretation of the book. What I really liked was the subtlety involved. None of the broad Hollywood techniques. It had Robert Shaw as one of the best villains of all time. It encapsulated the gritty spirit of the Fleming novels. I know fans enjoy some of the more recent films, and I would say that my second favorite is the new Casino Royale . It was exactly what I had pictured a high budget production of a Bond movie as being. There were no overly clever special effects. Just a good espionage thriller. And Daniel Craig is fantastic.

http://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/hmss-interviews-jeffrey-deaver/

Interesting interview. I just hope Deaver actually gets into the mind and thoughts of Bond. This is something that Faulks failed to do, and DMC suffered because of it.

Great to see that Deaver is so genuinely knowledgeable and appreciative of Fleming's novels. I'm not too enthusiastic about "modern-day" Bond novels, but at least he won't be making a mockery of Fleming's style.

I like Deaver's committment to the work. This is a man who does not shirk his responsbility to the character nor a good story.
Looking forward to this read. I have read one of his previous books and I quite enjoyed it, so there is no doubt he can write a page-turner.

Which Deaver did you read, tw? I read The Garden of Beasts. I give it a good but not great rating.

Ed Tom Kowalsky wrote:

Which Deaver did you read, tw? I read The Garden of Beasts. I give it a good but not great rating.

Same book. I liked it. Not so much that I grabbed more of his titles but it did keep me turning the pages.

Garden Of Beasts
(2004)
A thriller featuring an American hit man on a secret mission in
Berlin in 1936.

Interesting read. I've never really been into the novels written by any other than Fleming, but this has tempted me. I'm worried however that he may try too hard to replicate Fleming's style, but he seems intelligent and i might just buy it. Not sure I like the idea of him being a soldier serving in Afghanistan, as it may mislead new Bond readers into believing that this IS Bond, when it isn't....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1388481/James-Bond-says-new-007-novelist-Jeffery-Deaver.html

There's a Bond in all of us, says the new 007 novelist Jeffery Deaver

By Jeffery Deaver

Last updated at 10:00 PM on 21st May 2011

James Bond was always more than a literary creation in a series of entertaining popular novels. He was a model for someone I aspired to be.

Ian Fleming invented the prototype of the international agent who lives - and drives - fast

The wind is abrasive, the temperature dangerously low, the air here at 10,000ft dizzily thin.

Below me, at some distance, is a vapour of fog and blowing snow, quite efficiently obscuring whatever rocks and chunks of ice and trees marble the route down which I’m about to ski.

It’s many years ago and I’m in Vail, Colorado, at the top of one of the back bowls. For those of you who don’t know, back bowls are open ski areas on the far side of the mountains, icy, unmaintained and wholly lacking in those quaint cafes where you can rest and enjoy a beer or hot chocolate. Back bowls are where the search dogs find the bodies after avalanches. Sometimes.

Finally, after my discouraging reconnaissance, I decide it’s time. A solid tap on my helmet to make sure it’s secure, a tight grip on my poles, a deep breath and I’m off.

There is one person who is responsible for this descent – and all those that have preceded it. Not a famous skier, not an athletic coach in school, not a co-worker.

No, the reason I have decided to risk life and limb by hurtling down mountains is James Bond.

One bleak winter day, more than 40 years ago, I read Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which Bond escapes from arch-enemy Ernst Blofeld’s Alpine eyrie on skis. I loved those scenes and, despite living in an area outside of Chicago, Illinois, where the highest elevation was about 300ft, I decided that some day I was going to learn the sport.

For me, James Bond was always more than a literary creation in a series of entertaining popular novels. He was a model for someone I aspired to be. True, I was a young nine-year-old from Illinois when he first entered my life, but why couldn’t I be James Bond?

Imagining a future as this suave, Savile Row-suited upper-class English spy was every schoolboy’s dream, one that transcends continents.And then the unbelievable happened – I was given the chance to become him, if only for a limited period.

I have won a number of awards for my thrillers, and my book The Bone Collector was made into a Hollywood movie, but the accolade I am most proud of is the day I was awarded the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, presented in conjunction with the UK’s Crime Writers’ Association, for my thriller Garden Of Beasts.

'James Bond moulded my philosophy,' says new 007 novelist Jeffery Deaver

What followed was a twist of fate. In the audience was the head of Fleming’s literary estate, Corinne Turner. She was so taken by my heartfelt eulogy to the great man as I accepted the award that she decided Mr Bond would have an interesting new adventure in my hands. It was the culmination of a lifetime’s ambition.

As a writer, Fleming’s Bond books appealed to me as wonderful stories, but they also stood as singular examples of a thriller writer’s craft. I learned, through osmosis as well as design, much technique from Fleming’s work; compactness, attention to detail, heroic though flawed characters, fast pacing, concrete imagery and straightforward prose.

Writing the latest Bond continuation novel, Carte Blanche, has given me reason to reflect on the many ways that Fleming has inspired me as an author, but also to reflect on quite how much this quintessentially English character was an inspiration for my entire life.

As I have already suggested, our lives were hardly parallel. I’m an American, I was not an orphan, I attended a modest state school, I was never asked to leave Eton over some ‘trouble’ with a maid… sadly.

Growing up I was pudgy and had little athletic skill. I never saw military service, though I grew up with great reverence for the military, particular the air force, since my father was a flier in World War II (stationed in East Anglia, by the way).

My family rarely travelled and the only international journeys in my youth were driving 100 miles or so north into Canada, and the purpose of those secret missions was solely to trick fish into thinking that my angling lure was really a tasty frog or caterpillar. Bond’s life was, in fact, about as opposite from mine as could be… and that may have been the reason that I resolved to make myself a bit more like my hero.

Gambling, for instance.

In high school I started a regular poker game. (In the Sixties, adolescents did not play Bond’s game of baccarat.) I still recall one Saturday night when I was about 17. Inspired by the great bridge scene in Moonraker, where Bond puts a stop to Hugo Drax’s cheating by stacking the cards, I did the same. I prepared a deck beforehand, to give my fellow players, respectively, a full house, four of a kind and a straight flush.

You can imagine the giddy betting, the size of the pot… and my fellow players’ expressions when I laid down my royal flush and scooped in the chips. (Yes, yes, I confessed and we all took back our money.)


Live And Let Die finds Bond travelling from New York to St Petersburg, Florida, and onward to Jamaica, where he does battle against the villain, Mr Big

Bond was quite the marksman, of course, and, though I’ve never had an interest in hunting game, I took to collecting guns and going to the range, even working on weapons myself. Although I lacked any skill for sports like American football and baseball, I found I had a talent for shooting and became captain of the team at school. (By the way, it is much easier to stand or sit in one spot and put holes in paper 50 yards away than to exhaust yourself running up and down an athletic field, only to get knocked down by large opponents).

Live And Let Die finds Bond travelling from New York to St Petersburg, Florida, and onward to Jamaica, where he does battle against the villain, Mr Big, in part by scuba-diving to the man’s yacht and planting explosives on the hull. I grew up with little interest in large bodies of water – not having actually seen one until I was about nine or ten. Still, reading Live And Let Die awoke in me a desire to strap some oxygen tanks on my back and descend into the ocean.

Cars. Ah, you can’t separate Bond from his vehicles, and that’s a passion Ian Fleming also ignited within me. Fast vehicles and spies seem to go hand in hand, but this is a recent convention. Fleming invented the prototype of the international agent who lives – and drives – fast. Because of Bond, I made sure that my first car had a manual gearbox because I wanted to make ‘racing changes’, whatever those were, as he regularly did.

Bond’s first vehicle was a supercharged four-and-a-half-litre ‘Blower’ Bentley, which, after failing to survive run-ins with villains in two books, was replaced by first one then another Bentley Continental.

Trivia: the Aston Martin that Bond drove in Goldfinger was not his own, but was drawn from the Secret Service’s car pool. If the government budget in the UK is anything like that in America, he would today be driving a Vauxhall Astra or a Ford Focus. In Carte Blanche, I decided to give Bond back his Bentley. He now drives a Continental GT.

You can't separate Bond from his vehicles, and that's a passion Ian Fleming also ignited within me. Fast vehicles and spies seem to go hand in hand, but this is a recent convention (pictured: Bond's Aston Martin DB5)

My entry into the vehicular world was somewhat more modest than Bond’s. That first car I mentioned was a Chevrolet Vega (Google it, and please don’t laugh). But whenever I had the resources I would upgrade. My fun cars have been a Jaguar, a Maserati, and several BMWs, including an old Alpina and more recently an M5 and M3.

I don’t compete in racing (my insurance is high enough already), but I do go to the track occasionally to try to beat my prior records. While I can’t swim as far as Bond or beat him at golf, I can say I have driven considerably faster than what I believe is his highest documented speed in the books: 125mph.

I can point to other influences too: a love of Black Sea caviar, Champagne, well-tailored though not extravagant clothing and a passion for travel and exploring other cultures (read Fleming’s Thrilling Cities, which is as entertaining as his novels). But Bond has been more than just an inspiration for activities and accessories in my life; like other fictional protagonists – Sam Spade, Horatio Hornblower, Sherlock Holmes – he moulded my philosophy, in much the same way that Harry Potter and Hermione Granger have, I’m sure, shaped the outlooks of young people today.

First, of course, he was a patriot. He’s a classic hero, willing to sacrifice himself for his country and its allies. This was a quality shared by both the movie Bonds and the protagonist of Fleming’s novels, but a reading of the books shows that the original character had other qualities as well, ones that are not so evident in the films.

For instance, Bond had a wry sense of humour and was a master of irony. He had a healthy scepticism and was willing to confront authority and question ill-advised decisions, no matter how high the origin. He ignored the doubts that occasionally plagued him and strode forward to do his duty. His distaste for intolerance and contempt for mindless adherence to conformity are clear throughout the books. He preferred to act on his own, rather than be part of a committee or team, and gladly took responsibility for the consequences.

In Moonraker, Bond reflects that it’s his ambition to spend all his money on the things that matter to him and to die with a bank balance of zero. And in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond learns that he might be descended from a family whose motto is ‘The World Is Not Enough’.

These hint at what I think is the ultimate lesson I’ve taken from Ian Fleming’s books: while master criminals or Russian assassins may not be plotting our demise, our time here is limited; accordingly we should, like James Bond, make very sure that every single moment counts and nothing that’s important to us escapes our grasp, whether it be the Rolex watch, the steering wheel of your speeding sports car… or, of course, the sultry woman who just might, or might not, be a spy.

Nice insight into Deaver's passion for the character and novels. I may yet read Carte Blanche, despite having little interest in the non-Fleming offerings. He sounds like he gets Bond.

I am counting the days until this book. I really miss the days when Gardner followed by Benson were cranking out a fresh read every year.
If the Deaver book does even reasonably well, I believe the plan is to keep the books coming, with a variety of authors.

danslittlefinger wrote:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1388481/James-Bond-says-new-007-novelist-Jeffery-Deaver.html

There's a Bond in all of us, says the new 007 novelist Jeffery Deaver

By Jeffery Deaver

What a refreshing, joyful article to read! Mr. Deaver's enthusiasm and love for Bond is infectious, to say the least. This is exactly the type of attitude towards Bond and Fleming that I wish EON would have right now. There is nothing shameful about being inspired by the elements of the literary Bond. They are as relevant as ever and will always be. I think I'm sold on getting Carte Blanche. ;)

Sounds good, but I'm not sure about this bit:

"[Bond] was willing to confront authority and question ill-advised decisions, no matter how high the origin. His distaste for intolerance and contempt for mindless adherence to conformity are clear throughout the books."

Bond certainly questioned the decisions made by authorities, but he did not question the necessity of authority per se. He also did not flout the decisions made by M, even when he disagreed with them.

As for the distaste for intolerance, perhaps, but I'd need to see examples of this. None spring readily to mind.

And Bond was essentially an upper-class conformist. Fleming makes clear that Bond had a weakness for the trendy, and there was absolutely nothing about Bond that was eccentric or anti-establishmentarian.

Outside of these quibbles, Deaver seems to have a solid grasp of Bond and a healthy appreciation for the character.

I read the article the other day and I'm enjoying reading his enthusiasm for Bond. I wasn't going to buy any of the non Fleming books, but since someone bought me Silverfin, along with these articles and interviews, I may just have to get it.

The only Non-Fleming novels I've read are Licence Renewed and Devil May Care none of which appealed to me very much although the former had some interesting sequences. I might read this in the summer to see how Deaver manages to update the character.

Great interview and gives me a lot of faith in Deaver. He seems to understand Fleming and his character, but I like that he says he'll still be writing a Jeffrey Deaver novel. That was the problem with DMC, the whole "Faulks-as-Fleming" conceit. Instead of getting a good Sebastian Faulks starring Bond, we got Faulks entire condescending "oh, Fleming wrote these in a week and spent most of that time scuba diving, so whatever" attitude that turned the whole thing into the very definition of pastiche.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Great interview and gives me a lot of faith in Deaver. He seems to understand Fleming and his character, but I like that he says he'll still be writing a Jeffrey Deaver novel. That was the problem with DMC, the whole "Faulks-as-Fleming" conceit. Instead of getting a good Sebastian Faulks starring Bond, we got Faulks entire condescending "oh, Fleming wrote these in a week and spent most of that time scuba diving, so whatever" attitude that turned the whole thing into the very definition of pastiche.

Yes it is important that he write a Jeffery Deaver Bond novel. Authors have to be themselves in order to be interesting. The Faulks novel was like a wierd science experiment. Gardner and Benson on the other hand at least put their own stamp on the novels but didn't mess with the character in any really bad way, at least I don't think so. It wasn't quite Fleming's Bond that Gardner and Benson wrote, but really how could it be as Flemiing put a lot of his own quirky self in Bond. I am truly greatful that neither Gardner nor Benson tried to pretend that they were Fleming.

Bottom line is that all who follow Fleming are going to invite unfavourable comparisons with Fleming from Fleming fans, which is as it should be.
We want post Fleming Bond to be as close as possible to the original, so we gotta bitch when we don't like what we read, but we don't want, or at least I don't, the continuation novelists trying to imitate Fleming.
Only Fleming himself got a free pass because it was his character to do with as he pleased.

Just come back from a book signing and met him. I think I might have had one too many vodka martini's too. He did a good hour or so talking, then took questions - he was fun, easy to listen too and refreshingly honest. Now I've not read his previous stuff but I just warmed to him with his integrity/principals towards writing/plotting etc. This definitely sounds like a Jeffrey Deaver novel, rather than him trying to ape Fleming's style ala Faulks. The character has been updated with a few changes that some purists might not like - but I think he still gets what made the original Fleming stories work. I'm also in love the promotional Bentley they are using for the signings - lovely car. Anyway, really looking forward to reading this - moreso than any recent Bond novel.

Bah! It's out in Russia already, but not in Canada. June 14 can't come soon enough! Maybe in the meantime, I'll settle for The Spy Who Loved Me - the only Fleming I've never read.

That's pretty good "settling" Gogol. If Carte Blanche is as good as Spy, we've got something here.

GeneralGogol wrote:

Bah! It's out in Russia already, but not in Canada. June 14 can't come soon enough! Maybe in the meantime, I'll settle for The Spy Who Loved Me - the only Fleming I've never read.

Did you read Fleming's Spy thinking it might be about Amasova and Gogol and Mother Russia, only to find out otherwise.


===I do like that IFP is putting a big push behind this book, like they did with DMC. Should certainly help to drive sales and create a buzz.
The Gardner and Benson books didn't seem to get much pub. They just appeared on shelves. But that was before the power of the web and you-tube. Maybe I just missed it.