“What’s going on with Hugh Laurie‘s novel The Paper Soldier?” asks an anonymous reader. Good question! According to Amazon.com, the sequel to his 1997 thriller-parody The Gun Seller is being published Thursday in the UK by Michael Joseph, but there’s been no review attention in the British press, and absolutely no buzz here in the States—no US edition listed on Amazon, no mention of a US sale in Publishers Marketplace. “Shouldn’t this second novel be a bigger deal by now, given his House fame?” asks our reader.
You’d think, right? I mean, Courtney Thorne-Smith writes a novel, and Gawker gets mileage out of it for weeks, along with all the other media hype it generates, so where’s the love for Hugh Laurie? The answer is simple, according to Laurie’s agent, Anthony Goff of Daivd Higham Associates: “Not only is Hugh Laurie’s new novel not coming out in the UK this week, Hugh hasn’t even started writing it!” Goff writes in response to my email query. “When he does,” he adds, “I’m sure it will find a publisher in the US.”
Damn. I was kinda looking forward to it myself.