Carl Hiaasen For The Estate Of Joseph Heller

Gone are the days when the demise of a leading novelist meant that their loyal fans were left without any more of their favorite author’s books.

I first realized this a few years ago when I saw one book after another carrying Robert Ludlum’s name on its cover getting published well after the death of the author in 2001. I wondered if this was “ghostwriting” in its literal sense!

Examining one of these books (The Ambler Warning) closely, I discovered that it was credited to the so-called “Estate of Robert Ludlum” that had, since the death of Ludlum, “worked with a carefully selected author and editor to carefully prepare and edit this work for publication”.

Nowadays, publishers seem to be getting books written by surrogate authors and selling them under the label of the estate of the better known, but deceased, author. Most of them remain anonymous, with their books displaying the more famous novelists’ names on their covers. Only the famous writer Eric Van Lustbader, who is contracted to continue Ludlum’s Bourne series, has received credit on the covers of books written by him for the estate of Ludlum.

Legality apart, inventing the concept of an estate to exploit the cachet of a famous, dead author is sheer marketing genius on the part of publishers. And, since some of these surrogate books are as good as the originals penned by the deceased author, loyal readers may not complain too much – not when their only alternative would be to sever all ties with their favorite authors permanently.

Which brings me to the question of why there hasn’t been an estate of Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22 and other books that have a cult-like following, despite his death 10 years ago?

I think the answer to that question can be found in something Heller himself had said a few years before he passed away. When asked why he hadn’t written anything as good as Catch-22, Heller had replied, “who has?”.

Well, if there’s someone coming close to continuing the legacy of Joseph Heller, it’s Carl Hiaasen. His Stormy Weather does to hurricane-hit Florida what Heller’s Catch-22 did to the war.

UPDATE DATED 10 AUGUST 2020:

Nick Douglas dislodges Carl Hiaasen from the estate of Joseph Heller. https://t.co/YgNUXzELSG https://t.co/AvJnNLXE7s

— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) August 10, 2020

UPDATE DATED 15 AUGUST 2020:

Kyle Mills has done a good job with the Estate of Vince Flynn, author of Michael Rapp novels. Here’s my review of the first Kyle Mills / Vince Flynn novel, THE SURVIVOR:

Vince Flynn passed away a couple of years ago and the mantle of continuing Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series of thrillers fell on Kyle Mills. Judging by this debut work, Mills has done a good job. In this novel that crisscrosses Pakistan, USA, Italy and Russia, the head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, hatches a plot to subvert the US intelligence machinery and bring the nation to its knees. More at http://ow.ly/PB4ev.