James Patterson uses a real life Mayo employee as the protagonist in a just published mystery. Her name: Angela Hoot.

He got the idea to use her name in a book because of two things. “One, because she was really good to me. It was a big deal for me to have an operation, you’re sort of dealing with matters of mortality for the first time, so in the context of that, Angela and the people at Mayo made it as easy as it could be,” he said. …

“And then the name — it’s such a terrific, unusual name.”

Had Hoot’s name been, for instance, “Mary Jones,” he might not have chosen to immortalize her this way.

“That’s what makes it fun,” he said. “Hoot — what a great name, don’t you think?”

I normally don’t read a lot of Patterson, but this novel and the one in which Angela Hoot is the protagonist are on deck, I guess.

The dynamic duo – who gave us 2018’s The President Is Missing (I devoured it in 2 days while on vacation in New Mexico) – is set to thrill once again in ‘21.

Announcing the book on Thursday night, publisher Century said the novel would be “informed by details that only a president can know”.

The book will follow the pair’s first thriller, 2018’s The President is Missing, but is a standalone novel, not a sequel, with a new cast of characters. The President is Missing, which has sold over 3.2m copies worldwide, sees the US president forced to go off grid after he discovers a traitor in his cabinet. Television network Showtime is currently developing an adaptation of the novel, with David Oyelowo playing the president.

The short story collection from Stephen King, If It Bleeds. Just finished the first — “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone”, an eighty-page or so treatment on the unintended consequences of one’s reticence toward nascent technology. Glad I waited for a couple of years to get my first iPhone, a 3GS.