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After several years of writing in other genres and other media, New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer returns to what he’s known for in the publishing world: mystery-thrillers.
“The Viper” (William Morrow $32) is not only marks his return to the mystery-thriller genre after four years, but it’s also his third book featuring mortician Jim “Zig” Zigarowski and special operative Nola Brown – popularly known as the “Zig and Nola” series – the protagonists in “The Escape Artist” and “The Lightning Rod.”
“I loved coming back,” said Meltzer, an alumnus of the University of Michigan and Columbia Law School. “I just love these characters.”
Meltzer’s final stop of his book tour will be at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, located on 325 Michigan Street in Toledo, on Thursday, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. as part of its “Authors!” series. “Authors!” is sponsored by the Library Legacy Foundation (see sidebar for details).
In “The Viper,” Zig and Nola are thrust into their deadliest case yet. It opens with Andrew Fechmeier, who spent decades concealing a secret, brutally murdered for a priceless object hidden in his burial suit. Roddy LaPointe, Nola’s twin brother, who’s seeking justice for his mother’s murder decades earlier, recruits Zig to investigate. The case becomes deeply personal for Nola, who uncovers a sinister plot that ties her mother’s dark history and the killer’s true identity to the object Fechmeier was hiding.
“I was doing research in a funeral home, and the person there showed me a closet filled with all the clothes that people gave him to be buried in,” explained Meltzer. “It’s such a crazy thought: Picking out what you plan to wear to your own funeral. Right there, I had this thought: If you go to a bank to open a safe deposit box, paperwork gets filed, and the government gets notified. Same thing if you open a P.O. Box at the local UPS Store. In today’s interconnected world, everything’s tracked. But if you hide something in an old suit and tell your local mortician to hold it for your funeral, you have a truly untraceable hiding spot. I built the whole book around that idea: What happens when someone finds what’s in that suit.”
“The Breakfast Club” – the 1985 coming-of-age dramedy written and directed by the late John Hughes, which starred Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and the late Paul Gleason – influenced Meltzer when writing “The Viper.”
“C’mon, I based the plot of ‘The Viper’ around ‘The Breakfast Club.’ It’s the 80s movie to me,” he said.
According to Meltzer, he was more honest when writing “The Viper,” which makes it stand out from his other Zig and Nola books.
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“The book is about closure – and how we really never get over anything,” he said. “Zig is the side of me that believes that if you put good into the world, you’ll make the world a better place. It’s a completely naïve idea. But it’s an idea worth fighting for. Nola believes if you want the world to make sense, you need to grab it by the throat and force it to make sense – especially when you’re fighting against injustice. That’s also an idea worth fighting for. The evolution is that I used to wonder who I was and who was more right. And I’ve now realized I’m both of them. You need love and war.”
“The Viper” isn’t the only book penned by Meltzer that will come out this year. At the end of February, “I Am Princess Diana” will be published, his latest installment in his beloved “Ordinary People Change the World” series of children’s books. Meltzer’s impetus to start this series began as a way to help his three children when they were younger differentiate fame from heroism. He told them that just because reality TV stars are famous doesn’t mean they are not heroes. Among the historical figures he’s highlighted, living and dead, are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Anne Frank, Gandhi, Neil Armstrong, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Simon Biles, Sally Ride, the Beatles, Helen Keller, and Amelia Earhart, et al.
“I Am Teddy Roosevelt” will come out in June. A fan of comic books, Meltzer is working on a project for Marvel Comics, which he can’t talk about at the moment. He’s also working on the comic book called “First Ghost” through [Ghost Machine], the cooperative media company he co-founded with several other creators in 2023 that publishes comics through [Image Comics]. He is co-writing “First Ghost” with fellow Ghost Machine founder [Geoff Johns] with artist Gene Ha illustrating it.
“Comic books are one of my first creative loves and I’m thrilled to be part of Ghost Machine, where we can create stories that we’re all invested in,” he said. “During COVID, Geoff called me up and asked, ‘Want to write a book together? There was only one answer to that. We started meeting on a weekly basis and the whole thing came to life.”
In “First Ghost,” the newly elected President moves into the White House with his son. They quickly discover it’s more terrifying than cutthroat politicians and bureaucratic red tape once they cross paths with this apparition.
No specific release date has been set for “First Ghost,” but Meltzer stated it will debut sometime this summer.
“Geoff is so incredible to write and create with,” he said. “I’m so proud of what we’ve all built with Ghost Machine.”
SIDEBAR: “Authors! with Brad Meltzer”
Brad Meltzer will sign “The Viper” at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, located at 325 Michigan Street in Toledo on Thursday, Jan. 15, from 7-8pm. For questions or more information, call the library at (419) 214-4332.
