by M. J. Hyland
Very special thanks to my friend, Julian Owen, who stepped in when this book was in a terrible state. Julian worked very hard to help me make it better and I owe him—his intelligence and his talent, as both a writer and an editor—an enormous debt.
For the same reason, I also thank my dear friends, Stewart Muir and Carolyn Tétaz. I owe them both huge thanks for their smart and patient editorial advice on the awful and wrong-footed early drafts of this novel.
For their wonderful editorial help and steadfast guidance, I also thank my agent, Deborah Rogers, at Rogers Coleridge & White, and my chief editor at Text Publishing, the brilliant Michael Heyward.
Very special thanks also to Jamie Byng, my publisher at Canongate Books, for continuing to make it possible for me to pay the bills and for his unflinching enthusiasm and faith.
I’d like also to thank Anya Serota, my editor at Canongate Books, Penny Hueston, my second editor at Text Publishing, Michael E. Halmshaw, David Sime and Steve Jones, all of whom provided invaluable editorial and critical feedback during the final stages of editing.
For their generous advice about criminal law and procedure, I’d like to thank Alistair Webster QC, Suzanne Goddard QC, Guy Gozem QC, Tim Storrie, Michael Hayton and Andrew Nuttall. Because I have sometimes ignored their advice (for the sake of dramatic tension, economy and atmosphere) the criminal law and procedure described in these pages is sometimes true-to-life and sometimes not.
And finally, I’d like to acknowledge the late Tony Parker for his tremendous book, Life After Life: Interviews with Twelve Murderers (Secker & Warburg, 1990) which gave me the idea for this novel.
Copyright
For Julian Owen
This Is How
Copyright © 2009 by M.J. Hyland.
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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40278-1
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, by arrangement with Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh.
First published in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in an original trade paperback edition: 2009 This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2010
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