The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

Hector Lassiter #4

by Craig McDonald

Nazis, black magic and secret history collide in Craig McDonald's The Great Pretender. In 2007, McDonald launched the Hector Lassiter series with the Edgar Award-nominated debut, "Head Games," pairing the globetrotting, larger-than-life crime novelist with equally legendary filmmaker and amateur magician Orson Welles. McDonald's international bestselling and critically acclaimed follow-up, "Toros & Torsos," extended the story of Hector and Orson's uneasy friendship while exploring the infamous murder of Elizabeth Short, the so-called 'Black Dahlia', whom some came to suspect Welles of actually having killed. "The Great Pretender" fits the capstone on the Lassiter/Welles legend, spanning their decades-long, uneasy association from the run-up to Welles' infamous War of the Worlds "Panic Broadcast of 1938" to the set of the noir classic "The Third Man" and the ruins of post-war Vienna. The novel finds the actor and author in a race for a lost holy relic promising its possessor infinite power but a ghastly death if lost. Hector and Orson's competitors in their quest for the 'Spear of Destiny' or 'Holy Lance' include German occultists, members of the Third Reich, a sensuous Creole Voodoo priestess and a strangely obsessed J. Edgar Hoover. Drawing on dark historical legend and rich in atmosphere and character, The Great Pretender is the latest instalment in the series BookPage called "wildly inventive" and The Chicago Tribune declared the "most unusual, and readable" crime fiction "to come along in years." *** Praise "With each of his Hector Lassiter novels, Craig McDonald has stretched his canvas wider and unfurled tales of increasingly greater resonance." -Megan Abbott "Reading a Hector Lassiter novel is like having a great uncle pull you aside, pour you a tumbler of rye, and tell you a story about how the 20th century 'really' went down." -Duane Swierczynski "What critics might call eclectic, and Eastern folks quirky, we Southerners call cussedness -- and it's the cornerstone of the American genius. As in: "There's a right way, a wrong way, and my way." You want to see how that looks on the page, pick up any of Craig McDonald's novels. He's built him a nice little shack out there way off all the reg'lar roads, and he's brewing some fine, heady stuff. Leave your money under the rock and come back in an hour." -James Sallis "Craig McDonald is wily, talented and - rarest of the rare - a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either." -Laura Lippman "James Ellroy + Kerouac + Coen brothers + Tarantino = Craig McDonald." -Amazon.fr

285 pages, Paperback

First published September 19, 2014

About the author

Edgar/Anthony-nominee Craig McDonald is an award-winning novelist, editor and journalist. His internationally acclaimed Hector Lassiter series includes "One True Sentence," "Forever's Just Pretend," "Toros & Torsos," "The Great Pretender," "Roll the Credits," "The Running Kind," "Print the Legend," "Three Chords & the Truth," "Write From Wrong," and "Head Games," which was a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, Gumshoe and Crimespree Magazine awards for best first novel. It is being adapted as a graphic novel by First Second for release in 2015.

A standalone thriller about illegal immigration, "El Gavilan," was published in autumn 2011 to starred reviews and was also selected for several year's best lists.

A new series of direct-to-eBook thrillers featuring crime novelist Chris Lyon was launched in 2012; the series features crossovers by characters from the Hector Lassiter series; Hector himself appears in "Angels of Darkness."

Reviews

[Chris Eirschele · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Pretender by Craig McDonald is part of the Hector Lassiter series, called a historical thriller. This story covers 1938 through 1948, and finds the journalist-storyteller still in Europe looking for a doppelganger causing him headaches with his readers.
Lassiter meets up with Orson Wells just as he is about to broadcast the "War of the Worlds." Though WWII ends, the Niazis are still looking for a relic rumored to be in the possession of the long time artist-friends.
Lassiter novels are a bit raw; this one leans more than others. The Great Pretender story connects with other Lassiter stories which include Orson Wells., the character.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hector and Orson Welles

I love the Hector Lassiter series by Crag McDonald( I've read all but three of the ten in the series). They are a literary cinematic history of the 20th century seen through the eyes of a pulp novelist who crosses paths with some of the great figures in art and literature ( and politics) of that time. They are sexy, violent, well written , pulply literature. This one involves nazis , lost relics, Orson Welles , the movie The Third Man, and Welles' 1938 radio broadcast that panicked the Eastern United States. I agree with the other reviewer that this isn't the best of the bunch but it is a cut above most other crime fiction. Start with Head Games and read this one thereafter.