The Bestseller

by Stephen Leather

  “No he wouldn’t.”

  “And even if he didn’t shoot me, I’d lose my job. There’s no way they’d let me continue teaching there if I was living with a student.”

  She sat up, her eyes flashing. “So quit,” she said excitedly. “You hate teaching anyway.”

  “That’s not true, honey.”

  “You moan about the students, you moan about the Head of Faculty, you moan about the Dean. Name me one thing about the university that you like.”

  “You,” he said.

  Jenny giggled. “I knew you’d say that,” she said. “But that’s the point. You can have me without having to teach. You’re going to make a fortune from The Homecoming. Once the publishers have seen it there’ll be a bidding war and they’ll pay you millions and you won’t have to teach.” She snuggled against him. “Then you can just stay with me and write your next bestseller.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Grose.

  “It is a plan,” said Jenny. “The perfect plan. If you get big bucks for The Homecoming you can let your wife have anything she wants. You’ll have more than enough money.”

  “I guess so,” said Grose.

  “Have you heard from that agent yet?”

  “No, not yet,” Grose lied.

  “What’s taking so long?”

  “I don’t know,” said Grose, fighting to keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “It’s a masterpiece,” said Jenny. “It’s bound to be a bestseller, they must see that.” She kissed his shoulder. “How long has it been? Three weeks?”

  “Two,” said Grose. He felt tears welling up in his eyes and he blinked them back.

  “Maybe you should call him. Tell him you want to get it sent to publishers as soon as possible.”

  “Maybe I will,” said Grose.

  “Everything’s going to work out, Dudley,” she said. “I can feel it in my bones. Really, I can.”

  “Of course it will,” he said. He sighed. “I really do want some Chinese, you know. Can you call that place I like? The one that does the fried prawn thing?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Grose polished his glasses and tried to concentrate on what the student was reading from the laptop in front of her. Her name was Sadie Wilkinson and she was wearing a baggy flower-patterned dress that made her look like an over-stuffed sofa. There were thick rolls of fat around her neck and her arms were the size and texture of hams but she did have a pretty face. Grose found his mind wandering again and he wondered why Sadie didn’t just take a look in the mirror and cut her calorific intake in half. He put his glasses back on and caught Jenny smiling at him. He flashed her a quick smile and then turned his attention back to Sadie. She was in full flow, her cheeks were flushed and there were beads of sweat on her forehead.

  “Laura pressed against her, soft and wet, like no woman had ever kissed her before. Her insistent fingers probed deep into her secret places, touching, caressing, coaxing her on and on until she burned within. She wanted to give her all to Sonya, to open herself wide, wider than she'd ever opened herself to anyone. She wanted to tell Sonya that there wasn't anything she wouldn't do for her. Anything.”

  The last few sentences had come out in a single burst and Sadie had to take a deep breath.

  Grose could see that several of the men in the audience were staring at Sadie, their eyes wide and mouths open.

  Sadie smiled nervously. “That’s all I’ve got so far,” she said.

  One of the male students groaned and sat back, a look of disgust on his face.

  “Interesting,” said Grose. “Any comments?”

  Jenny was the first to raise her hand and Grose nodded at her. “Yes, Miss Cameron?”

  “I thought it was a clever use of narrative. I really felt like I got inside her.”

  There were a few giggles from the students at the back of the lecture hall.

  “I mean, inside the head of the main character,” Jenny added quickly. “You really got to feel her emotions.”

  That's good, Jenny,” said Grose. “Good feedback.” He looked around the class. “Anything else?” All he could see were blank faces and the only student who would look him in the eye was sitting right at the back. A man in his mid-twenties, black gelled hair and RayBans. He took notes the old fashioned way, with a pencil and notepad. Grose took a quick look at his list of students. Adrian Slater from Los Angeles. “What about you, Mr Slater? I don’t think we’ve heard from you yet. What did you think of Miss Wilkinson’s work in progress?”

  Slater held Grose’s look for several seconds and then he nodded slowly and put down his notepad. “It certainly got you inside the head of the main character,” he said. “Personally I’d have liked some dialogue rather than only getting the scene from the protagonist’s viewpoint. But I’m not sure how marketable the story would be, as a novel.”

  “And should that be a concern?” asked Grose.

  “Whether or not a story will sell? Sure. Isn’t that the whole point of writing? To sell.”

  Grose tilted his head on one side as he looked up at Slater. “Is that how you judge quality, Mr Slater? By sales?”

  “What other way is there of assessing a book’s success?”

  Grose chuckled. “Well, there’s the quality of the writing for instance. Sales have nothing at all to do with quality. Who can tell me what the best-selling book of all time is?” He looked around the lecture hall and nodded at a blonde-haired young man in an NY Yankees baseball jacket who had raised his hand.

  “Yes?” asked Grose.

  “The Da Vinci Code?” said the student, and he flinched at the laughter that echoed around the room.

  Grose shook his head sadly. “Enlighten us, Miss Cameron,” he said.

  “The Bible,” she said, on cue.

  “Exactly,” said Grose, looking up at Slater. “The Bible. Closely followed by the Koran. Neither of which are considered to be well written. And while A Tale of Two Cities has sold two hundred million copies and is indeed a classic, it’s also the case that Agatha Christie’s crime novel And Then There Were None has sold over one hundred million and it’s a terrible book.” He looked over at the student in the baseball jacket. “And yes, the Da Vinci Code also sold well, more than eighty million I believe, and yet it falls well short of being a competent novel, never mind a classic. Sales are no guide to quality, Mr Slater.”

  Slater nodded thoughtfully but said nothing.

  “I get the feeling that you don’t agree with me, Mr Slater.”

  “It’s your course, Doctor Grose.”

  “That doesn’t preclude you from having an opinion, does it?”

  “I guess not,” said Slater. He put his pencil down on top of his notebook and leaned forward, interlinking his fingers. He took a deep breath as if composing himself. “It seems to me that the rules have changed and it’s ePublishing that’s changed it.”

  “Ah,” said Grose. “You’re a Kindle convert? Publishing is dead, long live eBooks?”

  “Before long the eBook market will be many times the market for dead tree books,” said Slater. “And anyone can publish an eBook. You don’t need an agent or a publisher, all you need is a laptop and you can put your work out to the worldwide market. And whereas in the old days the agents and publishers were the gatekeepers, now it’s the buyers who decide what sells and what doesn’t. So the idea of producing quality work has gone out of the window. Now all that matters is how many you sell.”

  “You seriously believe that?” asked Grose. “You seriously think that the only worth of a book is how many it sells?”

  “What else is there? Pulitzers?”

  Grose’s jaw tightened.

  “The Nobel prize?” asked Slater. “Are awards the way we should value books? Awards are political as much as anything and have nothing to do with quality.”

  “So you let the people choose, is that it? Writers are selected by popular vote, like some sort of literary American Idol?”

  “Maybe,” said Slater
.

  “Maybe? So you can see the day when writers pitch their stories to the likes of Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan and then America votes to decide the winner. Which means that writers begin to pander to the lowest common denominator. How sad would the world be then, Mr Slater?”

  “I guess it depends on your view of what writing is,” said Slater.

  Grose frowned. “I don’t follow you.”

  Slater shrugged and unlinked his fingers. “Is a writer’s function to produce work of quality, or to produce work that sells? Because speaking personally I would rather sell a million copies than get a Pulitzer.”

  “Perhaps you could do both,” said Grose, though he didn’t for one moment believe that Slater was capable of that.

  “But does the Pulitzer matter? In the grand scheme of things, aren’t a million sales better than any award?”

  “Are you asking me, Mr Slater, or is your question rhetorical?”

  “It’s rhetorical because I think the answer is obvious.” He looked around for support and several students were nodding in agreement.

  “Perhaps you would be so good as to give us a sample of your writing, Mr Slater?”

  Slater looked pained. “I don’t have it with me,” he said.

  “That’s a pity,” said Grose. ”Can you at least tell us the title? Do you have one?”

  “The Bestseller,” said Slater. Several of the students laughed and Grose saw Jenny twist around in her seat to look up at Slater. He felt a sudden twinge of jealousy and he gritted his teeth. Slater held up his hands, smiling good naturedly. “I know, I know, but I figured there was no point in hiding my light under a bushel.”

  “Perhaps you’d be good enough to bring in your work in progress tomorrow,” said Grose. “Then the class can let you know whether you really do have a bestseller on your hands.”

  Slater sat back in his seat and put his pen down on his notepad. ”Can I ask you something, Doctor Grose?”

  “What?”

  “Could we perhaps hear you read something you’ve been working on?”

  Grose said nothing but his eyes narrowed.

  “I mean, you haven’t published a book in what, seven years? Nothing since The Brothers McFee, right? And your last big seller was Snow Birds and that was twenty-odd years ago. The one that was nominated for the Pulitzer. I think we’d all like to hear what you’re working on now.”

  Grose swallowed. His mouth had gone dry. He coughed to cover his discomfort ”This course is about helping you to improve as writers,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is to have you listen to my work.”

  “But Snow Birds sold half a million copies, and was nominated for a Pulitzer,” said Slater. “You managed to combine quality with quantity.”

  “That’s nice of you to say so, Mr Slater, but as I said, this course is about you and your fellow students.”

  “But you are working on something, aren’t you?” pressed Slater. “Writer’s write, that’s what you said on the first day. Writing to a writer is like breathing, you said, it’s something you do.”

  Grose took off his glasses and began polishing them.

  “Is it because you’re worried that you might have peaked when you were thirty and that you’ll never write as good a book again?”

  Grose put his glasses back on and shoved the handkerchief in his pocket. He looked at his watch pointedly. “Let’s call it a day, shall we. You can all use the time to work on your projects, and you Mr Slater, tomorrow we will all listen to your bestseller and see if it lives up to its name.”

  Grose picked up his briefcase. As he walked out he flashed Jenny a quick smile but she wasn’t looking at him, she had twisted around in her seat to get a better look at Slater.

  CHAPTER 7

  Grose dropped his briefcase onto the table and turned to survey the class. He flashed Jenny a quick smile and then looked towards the back of the class. Slater was there, his eyes hidden behind impenetrable RayBans. The students fell silent. The overzealous ones already had their fingers poised over their laptops, ready to take down his every word. “I hope you’re all progressing with your work,” he said, taking off his glasses and polishing them. “Because that is what this course is about. It’s only by putting one’s work up for peer review that one can improve. And a writer who doesn’t improve will stagnate and die. So criticism is not to be feared or even resented, it is to be welcomed with open arms.” He put his spectacles back on and looked up at the back row. “So with that in mind, is Mr Slater now ready to share his work in progress with us?”

  Slater put down his notepad and pencil then stood up and looked around the lecture hall, like a gladiator surveying the Coliseum. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.

  “And is it still titled The Bestseller?”

  “It is,” said Slater. He bent down to pick up a backpack and took out several sheets of paper held together with a large bulldog clip.

  “I admire your confidence,” said Grose. He sat down, crossed his legs, and motioned for Slater to begin.

  Slater took a deep breath, lifted his chin, and began to speak. “I’d kill to write a bestseller,” he said. He spoke loudly and clearly and his words carried across the lecture hall but most of the students frowned as if they weren’t sure what they had just heard. Slater paused for effect before continuing. “I can write. I know I can write. But being a writer isn't enough for me. I want to be the best, the most successful, the most commercial. I want to sell a million copies. I want to be famous, all around the world.”

  He paused again and looked at Grose, then smiled. Grose stared back impassively.

  “But what I need to succeed is a gimmick,” Slater continued. “A unique selling point. Something that will seize the public's imagination. I have that unique selling point, I know how to write a book that will sell like no other book has sold before. I will - literally - kill to write a best-seller.”

  “Mr Slater, what is this?” asked Grose.

  Slater ignored the interruption and carried on reading. “So here's what I'll do. I'll choose a victim, someone at random. I'll write about her - yeah, it'll have to be a girl - then I'll kill her. Not for pleasure, not for the kick, but for the book. The bestseller.”

  Several of the students began whispering among themselves and those at the front were twisting around in their seats to get a better view of Slater.

  “I'll describe everything in the book. What I did, how I did it, but I won't say who the girl was or where the body is buried. But there'll be clues in the book, clues that'll tell where the body is.”

  “Mr Slater!” said Grose. “What are you doing?”

  Slater looked up from his papers. “What?”

  “I said what are you doing?”

  Slater frowned. “I’m reading my novel.”

  “That is not a novel.”

  Slater put his head on one side. “It is. It’s what I’ve been working on.”

  “But it’s not a novel. It’s…” Grose threw up his hands. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a novel.”

  “It’s my work in progress,” said Slater. “It’s setting the scene for what comes next.”

  “But the narrator is you, correct?”

  Slater shook his head. “No.”

  “I’m confused, Mr Slater. The narrator is talking about writing a bestseller?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that he’s going to kill to achieve that aim?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But that’s not you?”

  “The narrator? Of course not. Can I carry on?”

  Grose waved a languid hand but didn’t say anything.

  Slater took a breath, and began to read again. “The trick, of course, is to get everybody talking about the book. Word of mouth is what sells. A buzz, they call it. And what better way to create a buzz than to tell everyone that I’ve committed the perfect murder. I’ll reveal everything. I’ll explain how I chose the victim, how I carried out the murder, and how I
disposed of the body. I’ll describe my feelings, I’ll explain what goes through your mind when you take a life, what it feels like to see a human being die in front of you. I still haven’t chosen the weapon. A gun is too easy, too quick, too impersonal. It doesn’t take any skill to kill with a gun. You point and pull the trigger and the technology does the work. A knife maybe. A knife is personal. You have to get close, so close that you can look the victim in the eye as their lifeblood drains away. And the victim. That’s the really important choice, of course. Who do I kill? Whose life do I take?”

  “Enough, Mr Slater!” shouted Grose. He got to his feet and walked up the stairs to where Slater was standing.

  “What’s the problem?”

  Grose took the sheets of paper from Slater. “This!” he shouted. “This is the problem!”

  “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” said Slater. He sat down and folded his arms.

  “You were supposed to be writing a novel,” said Grose. He removed the bulldog clip and held up the papers. “This is garbage. A novel is a work of fiction. This, this is… I don’t know what this is.”

  “It is a novel,” said Slater. “First person narrative. Maybe it’s the structure you don’t like?”

  “It’s not about structure. Good God man, what are you thinking?” Slater didn’t answer. “You’re supposed to be writing a novel. A story with a beginning, a middle and an end. This isn’t a novel. This is….” He struggled to find the right word. “Sick,” he said eventually. “This is sick.”

  “The narrator’s sick. That’s the point.”

  “The point?” echoed Grose.

  “The point of the book. The narrator’s sick.”

  “But you’re the narrator.”

  “What?”

  “It’s your voice. You’re the narrator.”

  Slater shook his head. “I’m the writer,” he said. “Writing with the narrator’s voice. It’s like American Psycho. Bret Easton Ellis.”

  “I know who wrote American Psycho, Mr Slater,” said Grose. “Terrible book.”

  “It sold millions, though. And it was written from the viewpoint of a psychopathic serial killer.”