Fear Strikes Back in SHADOW MAN
This week’s Igloo Book Buzz, the psychological suspense novel SHADOW MAN by Alan Drew, was published by Random House on Tuesday, May 23, amidst much buzz and enthusiasm from the media, fellow authors and inside Penguin Random House. Kate Medina, Executive Vice President, Executive Editorial Director, Associate Publisher, Random House, said, “It has been a dream come true to work with Alan Drew on SHADOW MAN. Alan knows how to tell a spellbinding story about characters who seem real, in a novel that also shows how the evil secrets in a suburban town can be hiding in plain sight, until one man has the guts to say, ‘Enough.’ SHADOW MAN is riveting to read, even as it reminds us of important truths about being human.”
Kate Medina and Alan Drew
Alan Drew reveals, “SHADOW MAN was in part inspired by the summer of 1985 when Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker, terrorized the suburbs of Southern California. He preyed on neighborhoods where people felt safe, where they left windows open and doors unlocked at night. It was the first time I remember being truly terrified of another person. I was 15 at the time, and I’d always wanted to write about that moment when your sense of safety is shattered, as mine was that summer in my master-planned community of Irvine, CA.”
Mr. Drew adds, “It feels a bit miraculous that this book is finally out in the world. It’s a privilege to publish a book, to have readers out there in the world, and I’m so thankful that these characters have a life beyond my little attic office.”
Fellow Penguin Random House authors have been effusive with their praise:
- “SHADOW MAN revises the old detective story and turns it in several fascinating directions. Alan Drew writes with precision, subtlety, and a streak of suspense that does not often color the literary novel.” —Colum McCann
- “A home run—wonderfully imagined and wonderfully written, patient but propulsive, serious but suspenseful, grown up but gripping, SHADOW MAN is everything a great thriller should be.” —Lee Child
- “Always thrilling and often terrifying, SHADOW MAN is a descendent of Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Underlying the grisly dangers of Drew’s novel is the forceful honesty of all good California noir, the necessary and clear-eyed exploration of the innate human truths that should and do scare us.” —Claire Vaye Watkins