Two years after writing their first novel collectively, the creator James Patterson and former President Invoice Clinton will work on a second one,
Two years after writing their first novel collectively, the creator James Patterson and former President Invoice Clinton will work on a second one, their publishers introduced on Thursday.
“The President’s Daughter,” set for launch in June 2021, will comply with a former U.S. president dwelling in rural New Hampshire whose daughter is kidnapped. Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
“The President’s Daughter” will be a standalone book featuring a new cast of characters, rather than a sequel.
“I never imagined I’d be writing a book with a master storyteller like Jim, much less two,” Mr. Clinton said in the announcement released by the publishers, Knopf and Little, Brown. “I believe readers will enjoy reading ‘The President’s Daughter’ as much as I’m enjoying working on it.”
Mr. Patterson, one of America’s most prolific novelists, relies on a stable of lesser-known writers to produce his thrillers at a steady clip. (David Ellis was credited in the earlier Clinton collaboration, though it’s not clear if he will be involved again.) Mr. Patterson has called working with Mr. Clinton “a highlight of my career” and said in the announcement that readers “won’t be disappointed” by the forthcoming novel.
Knopf and Little, Brown, a Hachette imprint, will jointly publish the book, and it will be edited by Michael Pietsch, the chief executive of Hachette, and Reagan Arthur, who left Little, Brown earlier this year to become publisher at Knopf.
In a joint statement, Mr. Pietsch and Maya Mavjee, the president and publisher of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, said the success of the first book “augurs well for their second,” calling the pair “masters of the presidential thriller.”
Though he did not go into detail about how “The President’s Daughter” will differ from “The President Is Missing,” Mr. Pietsch said in a phone interview that the forthcoming book “is going to be even more of a thriller.” He called working with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Patterson an “ecstatic experience” and expressed excitement about collaborating with Knopf again. “You don’t usually get to work together with your competitors,” he said, “and it went better than anybody could have dreamed.”