Print the Legend [Hardcover]

Craig McDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2010

Ingeniously plotted and executed, Print the Legend is an epic masterpiece from Craig McDonald. Beginning to end, I was riveted by this story of character, history and intrigue.--MICHAEL CONNELLY

The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and -- rarest of the rare -- a true original.  I am always eager to see what he's going to do next."--LAURA LIPPMAN

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

 

With Print the Legend, with a James Ellroy-like scope and vision of national history, McDonald takes on governmental conspiracy, Hemingway hagiography, the under-history of the FBI, the Death of the Author (literal and figurative) and the tantalizing, destructive mythologization of the Writer's Life. While the scale is immense, McDonald's hand is deft, and we never forget that, at its center, this is a human story, complex and bruising and deeply felt. --MEGAN ABBOTT

 

"Print the Legend is a landmark book. Lassiter for me is the Flashman/Zelig of the new era, but with a ferocious literary knowledge that is worn so lightly. A book beyond genre, stunning." --KEN BRUEN 

 

Craig McDonald's debut, Head Games, a relentlessly slick and action packed literary caper novel, was shortlisted for the Edgar, Anthony, Crimespress and Gumshoe awards for Best First Novel.  Now, with Print the Legend, McDonald exceeds the extraordinary promise of his debut, delivering a consummate mystery about a conspiracy gone wrong, and the outer edges of creative jealousy and obsessive revenge. 

 

It was the shot heard around the world:  On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway died from a shotgun blast to the head...  4 years later, two men have come to Idaho to confront the widow Hemingway—men who have doubts about the circumstances of Hemingway's death. One is crime novelist Hector Lassiter, the oldest and best of Hem's friends...the last man standing of the Lost Generation.  Hector has heard rumors of some surviving Hemingway manuscripts: a "lost" chapter of A Moveable Feast and a full-length novel written by a deluded Hemingway that Hector fears might compromise his own reputation.  The other man is professor Richard Paulson, who along with his pregnant wife Hannah, herself an aspiring writer, is bent on proving that Mary Hemingway murdered Papa.   As Hector digs into the mystery of Hemingway's lost writings, he uncovers an audacious, decades-long conspiracy tied to the emergent art movements of 1920's Paris, the most duplicitous of Cold War espionage tactics, and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Edgar-finalist McDonald raises a little discussed theory about Ernest Hemingway's suicide in 1961—that the writer's last wife, Mary, killed her husband as an act of mercy—in his provocative third Hector Lassiter mystery (after 2008's Toros & Torsos). Set in Sun Valley, Idaho, at a conference of Papa academics in 1965, the plot zeroes in on three men who have come to the conference with their own pieces of unfinished business to discuss with Mary. One is crime novelist Hector Lassiter, Hem's old friend, who's heard rumors of the discovery of lost writings. Another is Richard Paulson, a Hemingway scholar who wants to set the record straight on the suicide. Finally, there's Donovan Creedy, an old FBI man who's dogging the case for his own, dark reasons. McDonald creates a fast-paced drama—replete with shifting motives and personal interests on the part of all the major players—about the lore of one of America's greatest novelists. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Four years after the death of Ernest Hemingway, raffish crime novelist, Hollywood script doctor, ladies’ man, and Hemingway confidant Hector Lassiter is in Sun Valley, Idaho, to address a Hemingway conference. He’s also there to assist Papa’s widow, Mary, in preparing Papa’s unpublished work for publication. Hector is also feeling his years, and, as Hemingway before him, he’s worried about his “long game,” his own literary legacy. But he quickly realizes that he’s being followed by several different men. One of them is Donovan Creedy, an FBI agent who reports directly to J. Edgar Hoover. Creedy seems to have gone fully around the bend; he’s determined to destroy Papa’s legacy and kill Hector. Legacy be damned! Hector must save “his craft.” McDonald began his Lassiter series with Head Games (2007), a good-natured romp. Toros & Torsos (2008) was richer and darker. Print the Legend is darker still. Literary criticism and professors repeatedly get jabbed, but McDonald saves his knockout punch for Hoover, whose harassment of writers such as Hemingway and Steinbeck continued for decades. --Thomas Gaughan

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books (February 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312554370
• ISBN-13: 978-0312554378
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,385,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edgar-nominee Craig McDonald is an award-winning novelist, editor and journalist. His debut novel, "Head Games," was a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, Gumshoe and Crimespree Magazine Awards for best first novel.

McDonald's second novel, "Toros & Torsos," (2008) was picked for several "year's best" lists. The third and fourth novels in the Hector Lassiter series, "Print the Legend" and "One True Sentence," were published by Minotaur Books. A standalone thriller, "El Gavilan," will be available from Tyrus Books in autumn 2011. McDonald's novels have been translated and published to critical acclaim in numerous countries.

His nonfiction works include "Art in the Blood," a collection of interviews with 20 major crime authors that appeared in 2006, and "Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life" (2009), a second collection of interviews with authors including Daniel Woodrell, James Sallis, James Crumley, Elmore Leonard and Pete Dexter. A third collection of author interviews is forthcoming.

McDonald was a contributor to the NYT's nonfiction bestseller "Secrets of the Code." His short stories have appeared in several anthologies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A writer who cannot write can no longer live.", February 16, 2010

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Print the Legend (Hardcover)

The legend begins with the suicide of Ernest Hemingway, July 2, 1961, "the shot heard `round the world", the tragic end of an iconic figure. Hemingway's forth wife, Mary, has possession Papa's manuscripts. Now the long-suffering Mary intends to write her own story. She is also planning a biography, entertaining the notion that scholar Richard Paulson might be the man for the job. Accompanied by his pregnant wife, Hannah, a talented fiction writer, Paulson fairly oozes hubris, Hannah much abused by her spouse.
And Paulson, a mediocre writer, nurtures a kernel of hope that he may pen quite another scenario of Hemingway's demise. In an interview with the widow at Topping House in Idaho, Paulson may find just the opportunity he seeks. And it doesn't hurt that Mary is frequently in her cups.

A veritable cottage industry has grown around Hemingway, writers, scholars and critics feasting on the literary accomplishments and the lore. In town for a conference where he is the keynote speaker, the last of the Lost Generation, Hemingway's close friend, mystery writer Hector Lassiter intuitively mistrusts Paulson's motives, and his associations, at the same time drawn to the beauty and intelligence of the very pregnant Hannah. Lassiter intends to run interference between the bombastic Richard and the oft-inebriated Mary Hemingway, to protect his friend's "long game".

The self-contained universe of the literati, a group of hard-drinking, ambitious writers, is unaware of the presence of Donovan Creedy, a clandestine FBI agent who reports directly to J. Edgar Hoover. "Even paranoids have real enemies", Papa no exception, from the bohemian scene of 1920s Paris to the years of revolution in Cuba. The surveillance continues, double-dealing agents lending an air of menace, the ambitions of a drunken, bullying Paulson merging with Creedy's malevolence, the widow at the heart of the mystery. Then there are the others: the twittering scholars and critics trolling for material, hangers-on who complain and cajole, looking for an angle.

All converge at Topping House, a mystery writer, a hack, his talented wife, the spy, Mary in an alcoholic haze, spinning her own web. There are villains and heroes, a government far exceeding its boundaries. Throughout, Hemingway's reputation looms, larger-than-life, the years of his writing and travels filled with strange politics and stranger bedfellows. Mc Donald has blended a heady cocktail of espionage, betrayal, reputation and ambition, with masterful, nail-biting scenes and deeply flawed characters, the truth best left to the imagination: "When legend becomes fact, print the legend." Luan Gaines/2010.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The sun also rises on this book....., March 5, 2010

By 

Quixote010 (columbus, ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Print the Legend (Hardcover)

Lots of books are good: good premise, good characters, good pacing, good structure. I think Craig McDonald is just a GOOD writer.

Print the Legend begins with the interesting premise of what if Hemingway didn't commit suicide? Discovering the truth particularly appeals to a Hemingway-obsessed professor who takes on a Papa-persona; and Hector Lassiter, a long-time Hemingway friend and the last of the "Lost Generation" of writers of the 1920s. Lassiter is an on-going McDonald protagonist, and his character development and appeal is woven throughout the tale.

Adding to the mystery is Hemingway's last wife, Mary, who claims to have a variety of her husband's unpublished manuscripts. This concerns Lassiter who--sensitive to academic critics, wonders if Hemingway may have written something that would reveal him.

Historical fiction aficionados will enjoy the references to Hemingway's character and works, other recognizable authors of the era, events of the 20th century, and Fidel Castro and the Cuba of the 1950s. Conspiracy theorists will also indulge in the involvement of Hoover's FBI with so-called Marxist authors.

The book transitions quite smoothly. The plot is well-defined, and frankly it is simply a well-written book. Hemingway would have been pleased.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McDonald is a MASTER, February 22, 2010

By 

Fred Reahm (Duluth, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Print the Legend (Hardcover)

I stumbled onto Craig McDonald by accident about six months ago. I read Head Games, loved it, and wondered why in the hell this McDonald guy wasn't a huge-selling author yet. Then I read Toros & Torsos, loved it even more, and at this point was apoplectic that this great writer isn't getting the recognition that he deserves. I started telling every reader I know about him.

The character McDonald created, Hector Lassiter, is as well-developed, fascinating and entertaining as any character I've ever read. McDonald has achieved that special effect with Hector that few novelists accomplish with their characters; he has somehow created an utterly fascinating man in such a subtle and nuanced and deep way that Hector simply defies explanation, defies deconstruction. He's as hard to summarize as is a real man. To truly know him, you must read about him.

And now, with Print The Legend, McDonald has even outdone himself. I had such high hopes for this book that I thought perhaps I was in for some disappointment. Just the opposite turned out to be true. As awesome as the first two books are (flat-out MUST READS), Print The Legend is even better.

I can't explain Craig McDonald's brilliance. It's just one of those things you intuitively realize when you're reading his books. His characters, his plotting, his excellent prose style....It all melds together into what we're all looking for when we read books: high entertainment that also feeds the soul in a strange and lasting way. You can't shake McDonald's writing, especially Hector. He just seems so real. I sure wish he was. Hell, maybe he is. Very few authors can achieve what McDonald has with Hector, even on their best day.