Death's Savage Passion Read Online Free PDF Page A

probably going to crash. If you want my opinion, the romantic suspense lines aren’t going to save the situation for long. They’re making the same mistakes and they’re going to go on making them. Six books a month, twelve books a month, fourteen books a month. Tip sheets, which means all the books start sounding the same after the first year. General conviction that the readers are fools and illiterates and can’t tell good from bad. You name it.”
    “Susan Dangerfield,” I said, picking up another cover proof. This one had a man and a woman in a dark alley. He had one arm under her breasts and the other pointing into the distance, a .357 Magnum dangling from his fingers. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse and four-inch high-heeled sandals.
    “One of my packagers is thinking of doing a line,” Nick said. “This is research.”
    “What happens when romantic suspense doesn’t work?”
    “More bankruptcies. A few real disasters. From what I hear, your agent is going to go down like a penny dropping from the observation deck of the World Trade Center.”
    “Dana?”
    “It’s just a rumor,” Nick said. “They say she’s bare-assed to the wind with a storm coming up behind her, and I believe it. Have you seen that line she’s doing for Gallard Rowson?” He hunted through his papers. “Passionate Intrigues. That’s what it’s called. Nothing but brand-name authors. Some minor television celebrities. They have to be costing her ten thousand a shot in up-front. She’s going to have to sell a lot of books to justify the expense.”
    I thought of Verna’s romantic suspense, and something clicked.
    “That must have been what Verna was talking about at dinner,” I said. “She kept complaining about how she wrote a romantic suspense and she hated it, and I couldn’t figure out why she bothered.”
    “She’s Dana’s client?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Dana probably talked her into it. Circumstances probably talked her into it. She wasn’t big enough to survive this thing. She had a little trouble with her last publisher.” He shrugged again.
    I had a sudden vision of Phoebe thumbing furtively through sex manuals at the back of the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble. “Nick?” I said. “Is Phoebe going to be all right? I mean, are her books going to do well, or is she going to get caught up in this thing and find herself having to write juveniles or something?”
    “Wild Winter Passionsong was number one on the Times list for thirty-six weeks.”
    “That doesn’t answer my question.”
    “Yes it does.”
    “Nick—”
    “That’s all you care about, isn’t it? You don’t know anything about the business you’re in and you don’t want to know.”
    “I want to know about Phoebe.”
    “Phoebe will be all right. Let’s change the subject.”
    “To what?”
    “I can think of a lot of things. I can think of some that haven’t come up recently.”
    “That came up two days ago.”
    “So it’s been two days.”
    “Nick.”
    “Just letting you know you haven’t been forgotten.”
    I turned over on my stomach, searching for an ashtray. “I’m drunk,” I said. “And for your information, I don’t care about the business and I don’t want to care. I want to write nice long nonfiction books about murders I haven’t been involved in and go on Johnny Carson and talk about what psychopaths eat for breakfast. That’s all.”
    “Murders you haven’t been involved in.”
    “Exactly.”
    He put his hands in my hair and stroked the back of my neck with the tips of his fingers. It was a very comforting gesture, the physical equivalent of a lullaby.
    “It’ll be all right,” he said. “The Agenworth book is successful. The Brookfield book will be successful next year. You’ll think of something to do a third book on. A nice historical murder.”
    “Ancient history,” I said.
    “Ancient history,” he agreed. He stood up and started stacking papers into his arms. “I’ll let you