Foul matter
(Books)

Sophisticated intrigue, dry humor, and eccentric characters flow effortlessly from Martha Grimes's rich imagination. Not to mention the atmospheric and storytelling genius that has made her a consistently bestselling author. Her newest novel, Foul Matter, is set in a world she knows all too well and unfolds with a consummate deadly irony. Author Paul Giverney is between publishers. Despite stratospheric sales of his books and frenzied competition to sign him up, he lives modestly in New York's East Village and nurses a secret ambition of a very different sort. In fact, he has a byzantine plan for accomplishing it: the #1 condition of his proposed contract with the literary giant Mackenzie-Haack. They must drop Ned Isaly, a brilliant but far less successful author, and assign his equally gifted editor to Paul. In the hornets' nest of preening egos and cutthroat career moves this stirs up, ambitious editor Clive Esterhaus covets the glossy megastar Paul for himself. But Isaly's book contract is unbreakable and Clive never dreams how a very different kind of contract will force him-and his ambition-into a very foul matter, indeed.