Newly Declassified:         The Donovan Creedy Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRINT THE LEGEND The third novel in the Edgar®-nominated Hector Lassiter series NOW AVAILABLE! "Provocative...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."    —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "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 Read more praise here. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It was the shot heard 'round the world: On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway died from a shotgun blast to the head. It's 1965: two men have come to Idaho to confront the widow Hemingway—men who have doubts about the true 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 intimations of some surviving Hemingway manuscripts: a "lost" chapter of A Moveable Feast and a full-length manuscript written by a deluded Hemingway that Hector fears might compromise or harm his own reputation. What Hector finds are pieces of his own, long-ago stolen writings, now in danger of being foisted upon an unsuspecting public as Ernest Hemingway's work. The other man is scholar Richard Paulson, a man with a dark agenda who sets out to prove that Mary Hemingway murdered Papa. Paulson and his young, pregnant wife Hannah, herself an aspiring writer, travel to Idaho to interview Mrs. Hemingway who believes Paulson has come to write her hagiography. As Hector digs into the mystery of his and Hemingway's lost writings, he uncovers an audacious, decades-long conspiracy tied to J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Print the Legend is a literary thriller about Hemingway's death and the patina that perceived suicide lends the author's legend...an exploration of the sinister shadow play and co-dependence that binds authors and their academics...a novel that could forever change how readers regard the death of Ernest Hemingway. When legend becomes fact, print the legend. Read an excerpt here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Order now! IndieBound Amazon BN.com Borders.com Booksamillion.com Powells.com Minotaur Books hardcover, February 2010: ISBN-13: 978-0312554378 ISBN-10: 0312554370 Unabridged audio edition from Recorded Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRINT THE LEGEND BOOK TRAILER # 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRINT THE LEGEND BOOK TRAILER  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRAISE FOR PRINT THE LEGEND "The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's 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. 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 "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 "With each of his Hector Lassiter novels, Craig McDonald has stretched his canvas wider and unfurled tales of increasingly greater resonance. With Print the Legend, his triumphant third novel in the series, McDonald cunningly blends high, low and pulp American culture at the mid-century. 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. As big as the scope, we are never far from the novel's true, pulsing center: the sumptuously etched characters of the widow Mary Hemingway, aspiring writer Hannah Paulson and our beloved Hector himself."    —MEGAN ABBOTT "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."    —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "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, BOOKLIST "Hemingway's oldest and closest friend, tough crime novelist Hector Lassiter, is full of misgivings as he travels to Papa's Idaho ranch. Rumors abound that among the manuscripts Hemingway's fourth wife Mary is guarding may be things that should not see the light of day. Mary has decided that she should be the subject of a biography, and to pen it she's chosen Richard Paulson, an alcoholic professor with a beautiful and very pregnant wife. But Paulson aims to prove that Mary murdered Hemingway. He has help from a sleazy author, Donovan Creedy, a jealous wannabe who's been on Hemingway's case since his early days in Paris and now works for the FBI and the CIA. Racist, paranoid J. Edgar Hoover, who hounded every artist in the country, recruited Creedy years ago to spy on Hemingway. He's still digging up dirt and is not above giving Paulson LSD to spike Mary's drink. Lassiter carefully soothes hard-drinking Mary, reluctantly falls for Hannah Paulson despite her advanced pregnancy and finds himself in mortal jeopardy from both Creedy and an unidentified man who's stalking Hannah. Papa's failing health may indeed have led to suicide, but Lassiter must bring all his formidable talents to bear if he's to flummox Hoover and protect Hemingway's legacy. Hector's third case is another intriguing and convincing mix of history and hardboiled mystery."    —KIRKUS "I had a great deal of difficulty trying to review McDonald's last novel, Toros & Torsos, because of its scope, depth, style, and complex plot. Right up front, I'll tell you: the man hasn't missed a step in this third episode of the life and times of Hector Lassiter. For those who just want action and heroes and villains, you won't go wrong with this book. But you'd be cheating yourself if you didn't look even just a little deeper. There's a rich, liquid quality to this book, in characterization and in plot, that leaves me thirsting for more. Here again he has seamlessly blended fact and fiction until my head was in a whirl. I kept one hand on the book and one hand on Google while I was reading. What really happened on that July morning in Idaho? The book ends with a delicious mixture of resolution and ambiguity. While studying the ripple effect of Hemingway's life and death, McDonald has created his own ripple effect. Long may he wave."    —COREY WILDE, THE DROWNING MACHINE (Read the full review here) "One thing readers have to love about McDonald's books is that every one of them is a surprise. Readers just have no way of knowing where McDonald is going to take them until they have turned the very last page. And Print the Legend is no exception. What on the surface is another fictional account of Hemingway's delusional final days and his power hungry fourth wife Mary, is also an accurate account of the extreme lengths J. Edgar Hoover went to while compiling dossiers on American writers. But more than either of these stories, Print the Legend is a highly involved book with twisted plot lines about what extremes people are willing to go to in order to get the big scoop on our celebrities, to advance their own careers without regard to the reputations left sullied in their path and the public's pathological desire to know even the most sordid details of someone's life. It's a tricky feat for a writer to use real people and events and weave a plausible work of fiction around them. With Print the Legend, McDonald is quite successful.    —CARYN ST. CLAIR, BESTSELLERSWORLD.COM "McDonald is a superb writer and well on his way to the top of a very competitive writing world. The Hector Lassiter series (all three books) are a must read. For those interested in good, smart writing, ditto. For those interested in a wild ride that transverses time and continents, ditto again. And for those looking for something that will not only enlighten, but will provide some genuine background of what government can (and often will) do to those it fears, Print the Legend, as quoted by best selling author Michael Connelly (on the cover), is indeed "an epic masterpiece."    —CHARLIE STELLA, author of JOHNNY PORNO (Read the full review here) "You—whoever you are—really ought to read Craig McDonald's latest, Print the Legend. This ain't your momma's cozy nor your daddy's pulp tale. It's more Hemingwayesque than Chandleresque. For the price of one book, you get scandal, history, mystery, pulp, noir, thriller, intrigue, literature, action, and romance. The female characters in this book are strong AND realistic. No mean feat, that! The prose is legit, the plot intricate, the characters fully developed. No hack this McDonald guy. And this book will give you a reason not to be ashamed of reading genre...The book goes well beyond labels and categories...This could easily turn out to be the best book you'll read in 2010."    —NAOMI JOHNSON (Read the full review here) "Print the Legend is the third novel by Craig McDonald featuring Hector Lassiter, the man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives. And it's a full-on tour de force. Not many authors would dare to write a missing chapter from Hem's A Moveable Feast. Fewer would pull it off as McDonald does here. He then follows up with a beautifully structured section jumping between the POVs of his five major characters. Late in the book there's an extended description of let's say physical courage that Papa himself would approve of. Me, I went pale just reading it.Print the Legend moves with the intensity of a fever dream, driven by Hec's zeal for life."    —VINCE KEENAN (Read the full review here) "One of the best books I'd read in years. Although the story begins with a Hemingway scholar wanting to prove Mary Hemingway murdered her famous husband, it quickly becomes a multi-layered plot with moving timelines. The book is labeled a crime novel, but that's a terrible oversimplification. McDonald uses Hector Lassiter, an old friend of Hemingway's, as a hero and a literary guide. Through Hector's musings and actions, we are treated to an intimate view of Hemingway's writings as well as his life. And as Lassiter tries to protect the woman he loves while pursing a personal enemy, he evolves into a credible romantic figure. This book will appeal to readers who read outside the crime genre."    —VERONIKA PELKA, HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY (Editor's Choice Selection) "A stellar novel. Here McDonald builds his mystery around the death of Ernest Hemingway. Did Hemingway really kill himself, or was he, perhaps, a murder victim? Did he leave a viable literary legacy? Print the Legend is almost as atmospheric and skillfully executed as the works of Papa Hemingway himself."    —MYSTERY LOVERS REVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brian Lindenmuth interviews Craig at Spinetingler. John Kenyon interviews Craig at Things I'd Rather Be Doing. Jedidiah Ayres interviews Craig at Hardboiled Wonderland. Crime novelist Sandra Ruttan interviews Craig about Print the Legend for the Baltimore Examiner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . French translation coming from Belfond