Publishers Weekly

"Rights Alert"

March 28, 2003

Viking Buys New Novel by Paul Cody

Viking Penguin senior editor Paul Slovak bought world rights in a new novel called "Shooting the Heart" by Paul Cody, whose previous work, "So Far Gone," was done five years ago at Picador.

Slovak describes the new book as a "powerful, intense, even frightening" one about love, madness and the need to be forgiven; its central character is a former schoolteacher, just committed to a mental institution, who thinks he may have killed his wife, and who reviews in his mind his courtship and marriage, his times of manic depression and his own obsession with the lives of famous serial killers.

He bought the book from agent Noah Lukeman and plans to publish in summer of next year.