by Stuart Woods
SW: The process of writing is still a kind of magic to me, and I never try to analyze it too deeply, for fear that it might stop working. I do try to make each chapter a small story in itself, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and I try to end each one in such a way as to lead naturally into the next one. It seems to work.
CEW: What did you enjoy most about having Chiefs turned into a mini-series?
SW: I enjoyed the whole process. The producers were kind enough to let me read each generation of the screenplay, as it was being written, and to ask for my suggestions, some of which they actually took. I also enjoyed visiting the set in South Carolina and playing a small part (an FBI agent) in part three. They “dressed” the town three times, for the different periods of the story, altering something like twenty-three store-fronts and planting a large oak tree in the center of town. I was amazed at the thoroughness of the job. I made some friends, too; I still see Martin Manulis, the executive producer, when I am in L.A., and also Charlton Heston, and Steven Collins, and I hear from the producer, Bill Deneen, once in a great while. The director, Jerry London, pops up now and then; he and his wife usually stop and stay the night when they’re traveling from a shoot in Toronto to New York, and we play golf.
CEW: How much do you use the Internet? Do you find it valuable for research?
SW: I use the Internet mostly to answer email from readers, but I also keep track of my investments, buy cars, rent vacation houses and read about things that interest me, but I haven’t used it much for research, because I don’t do a lot of research these days.
CEW: Rumor has it that you are writing a memoir—is this true?
SW: I have written some chapters of another memoir, but I have no idea when it will be finished or when it will be published. I guess it’s not a priority right now.
This interview was originally published July 1998 in The Internet Writing Journal (R),
http://www.writerswrite.com.
Stone Barrington: The First Five
New York Dead; Dirt; Dead in the Water; Swimming to Catalina; Worst Fears Realized
New York Dead
Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he’s too smart to be a cop, but it’s pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out.
Suddenly he is on the front page of every New York newspaper, and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country’s hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman.
No matter where he turns, the case is waiting for him, haunting his nights and turning his days into a living hell. Stone finds himself caught in a perilous web of unspeakable crimes, dangerous friends, and sexual depravity that has throughout it one common thread: Sasha.
“Hollywood-slick and fast-moving”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“Suspenseful and surprising”
—Atlanta Constitution
Dirt
Feared and disliked both for her poison pen and for her ice-queen persona, gossip columnist Amanda Dart finds the tables have turned. When an anonymous gossipmonger begins faxing the scathing details of Amanda’s sexual indiscretions to national opinion makers, she turns to Stone Barrington—ex-cop, fulltime lawyer, and sometime investigator—for help.
“This slickly entertaining suspenser displays Woods at the top of his game with no signs of flagging…. The narrative rockets toward an abrupt but absolutely stunning denouement. Using all his skills here, and subtly reminiscent of the waggish P.G. Wodehouse, Woods delivers a marvelously sophisticated, thoroughly modern, old-fashioned read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The devious plot…deftly skewering society types, would be enough to hook most of us, but veteran thriller writer Woods…shrewdly stacks the deck further by bringing back Barrington, the immensely likable star of…New York Dead. The result makes for a lost weekend’s worth of dirty fun—the kind you would want your friends to find out about.”
—People
Dead in the Water
A beautiful young woman sails a large yacht into the harbor of the lovely Caribbean island nation of St. Marks.
Alone.
But she had departed from the other side of the Atlantic in the company of her husband, a well-known writer. His absence places Allison Manning under the intense scrutiny of St. Marks’s considerable Minister of Justice, Sir Winston Sutherland—and, therefore, under the protection of the otherwise vacationing Stone Barrington.
Sir Winston’s motives are unclear but his methods bear little resemblance to the judicial system ex-cop attorney Stone is accustomed to navigating—and Stone finds himself inextricably caught in a swirling storm of island madness and murder, made worse by a hurricane of sensational press coverage.
“One of his best…Woods is a pro and this goes by like a summer breeze, with just enough heat to make you sweat.”
—Detroit News
“Fast paced…Thoroughly entertaining.”
—Publishers Weekly
Swimming to Catalina
Stone Barrington had thought he’d heard the last of Arrington Carter after she’d left him to get engaged to Vance Calder, Hollywood’s hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder.
Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to L.A. and find her.
The assignment turns out to be the most dangerous and treacherous of Stone’s career. Powerful people are gunning for him. Where is Arrington? Why did she disappear? And does Vance Calder really want her back?
People magazine’s “Page Turner of the Week”
“A heck of a plot, intrigue, and cover-up between the first page and the last.”
—San Antonio Express News
Worst Fears Realized
It is the scenario that every ex-policeman dreads—all around him people are dying, and Stone Barrington suspects the killer may be someone he’d put in prison years before. Stone hooks up with his ex-partner from the NYPD, Dino Bacchetti, now the head of detectives in the 19th Precinct, and the two men must pool their resources to protect those close to them.
Stone’s former love, Arrington, now married to movie star Vance Calder, is back, too, and nose-to-nose with the new woman in Stone’s life—who has a Mafia bloodline and who may be as dangerous as she is beautiful.
From a premier table at Elaine’s to dark back alleys where lurk Armani-clad mobsters with the latest lethal accessories, Stone launches a life-and-death hunt that will test him as no case has ever done before.
“Satisfying to the last dirty deed…This seductive novel will have readers twitching with suspense.”
—Library Journal
“Excellent…A fun read for fans of undercover agents who get plenty of action under the covers.”
—USA Today
More Stone Barrington and Stuart Woods coming from PerfectBound…
The five Stone Barrington novels described above (there are, to date, nine, also including L.A. Dead; Cold Paradise; The Short Forever) are available from HarperCollins e-books as of April 2003. Please visit www.perfectbound.com for details of and to purchase these five titles and other Stuart Woods e-books titles. And get all the latest news on Stuart Woods at www.stuartwoods.com.
And new in hardcover from Stuart Woods…
Dirty Work
Back in New York City after the London adventures of The Short Forever, cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington is approached by a colleague at the firm of Woodman & Weld seeking help with a celebrity divorce case.
Heiress Elena Marks needs proof of her layabout husband’s infidelity before she can begin divorce proceedings. When the undercover work Stone sets up turns dirty—and catastrophic—leaving the errant husband dead and the mystery woman gone without a trace, Stone must clear his own good name and find a killer hiding among the glitterati of New York’s high society.
Carpenter
—the beautiful British intelligence agent first encountered in The Short Forever—arrives in New York to begin an investigation of her own; Stone suspects that her case is strangely connected to the dead husband. And he and Dino, his former NYPD partner, are set to face the most bizarre and challenging assignment of their very colorful careers.
About the Author
Stuart Woods was born in Manchester, Georgia; graduated from the University of Georgia; and served in the Air National Guard. A professional sailor, Mr. Woods participated in the Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR) in 1976 and the catastrophic Fastnet Race in 1979, in which fifteen competitors died.
W.W. Norton published Woods’s first novel, Chiefs, in 1981. It won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America that year and was made into a six-hour television drama starring Charlton Heston.
Mr. Woods, who has written twenty-six novels—including nine featuring Stone Barrington—currently resides in Florida, New York City, and Maine.
Please visit www.stuartwoods.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Critical Acclaim for
Stuart Woods and
DEAD IN THE WATER
“Fast-paced, filled with enough humor, sex, and clever surprises all the way to the last page to make it thoroughly entertaining amusement.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Trying to make this neat tale last more than one sitting would be like staying up all night nursing a Godiva truffle.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
DIRT
“Blackmail, murder, suspense, love—
what else could you want in a book?”
—Cosmopolitan
“Dirty fun.”
—People
“This slickly entertaining suspense displays Woods at the top of his game…. Subtly reminiscent of the waggish P.G. Wodehouse, Woods delivers a marvelously sophisticated, thoroughly modern, old-fashioned read.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“There is something delightfully nasty about the way Stuart Woods settles every account in his crime capers. Even more delightful is the juggling act that lasts almost to the last page, when payoffs fall like autumn leaves.”
—New York Daily News
Books by Stuart Woods
Stone Barrington Novels
New York Dead
Dirt
Dead in the Water
Swimming to Catalina
Worst Fears Realized
L.A. Dead
Cold Paradise
The Short Forever
Dirty Work
Holly Barker
Orchid Beach
Orchid Blues
Blood Orchid
Will Lee
Run Before the Wind
Grass Roots
The Run
Standalone Titles
Chiefs
Deep Lie
Under the Lake
White Cargo
Palindrome
Santa Fe Rules
L.A. Times
Dead Eyes
Heat
Imperfect Strangers
Choke
Nonfiction
Blue Water, Green Skipper
A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and England
Credits
Cover design and illustration by John Lewis
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEAD IN THE WATER. Copyright © 1997 by Stuart Woods. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
“We Are Very Different People”: Stuart Woods on Stone Barrington. This interview originally appeared in The Internet Writing Journal (R), http://www.writerswrite.com. Copyright © 1997–2003 by Writers Write, Inc. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2003 ISBN: 9780061801945
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1997 by HarperCollins Publishers.
First HarperPaperbacks printing: May 1998
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