The Stranger On the Wedding ceremony by A.E. Gauntlett
What’s It About?
…A rollercoaster of a e-book that may depart your head spinning.
“The difficulty with lies is that one begets one other. They multiply like rats, one stacked on the opposite, till, earlier than you recognize it, it’s rats all the best way down.”
Annie and Mark met on the 5:38 prepare to London Bridge. As they might uncover, each had traumas of their previous. Annie’s was the sudden loss of life of her two-year-old sister, Jessica. Mark’s was the disappearance of his spouse, Hope, who walked out the door at some point and was by no means heard from once more. They bonded shortly, dated, courted, bought engaged.
After which on the marriage day, as Annie gazes across the pews, she sees a face she doesn’t acknowledge, and for some motive, a chill runs by her: “The stranger within the crowd, the uninvited visitor, smiles. He sits there and he smiles. And that smile belies an incredible, rotten fact: one thing depraved this fashion comes.”
So begins A. E. Gauntlett’s The Stranger on the Wedding ceremony, a rollercoaster of a e-book that may depart your head spinning. The stranger is Cameron Wilkes, a retired detective inspector, employed by Hope’s father to seek out out the reality about Hope’s disappearance. However fact is such a slippery idea. Hope had secrets and techniques. So does Mark. So does Annie. So, it seems, does Cameron Wilkes. Within the weeks that observe, all these secrets and techniques will emerge, collide, flip their lives the other way up. Nobody will survive unscathed. Some won’t survive in any respect.
Suppose you recognize the particular person you married? Suppose once more.
“This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband. This isn’t my husband.” – Hope’s diary
“The concept got here to me after studying a terrifying article a couple of horrific true crime incident in Germany,” says the creator. “I received’t say an excessive amount of about what that involved for worry of giving the sport away(!), however suffice to say it struck a chord. That gave me the ending, after which it was a case of working backwards. Admittedly, an uncommon means of approaching a novel.”
There’s a robust ingredient of Greek fantasy and legend to the e-book — I received’t say which of them — and that’s been a strong motif for a lot of different suspense writers as properly. Why do they proceed to carry such fascination for us?
“In some ways, Greek myths, certainly myths usually, are a kind of Rosetta Stone of literary type. Regardless of the tradition from whence myths derive, there are stark commonalities. It doesn’t matter the place we come from, we’re all pushed by the identical preoccupations, albeit generally to lesser or larger levels. These fears and preoccupations discover their pure expression within the tales we inform others, and the tales we inform ourselves. There’s, then, a pure connection between myth-telling and suspense novels; each are fears realized, given type, and each usually have a moralistic crucial, or else enjoyment of upending that crucial.”
Different sources influenced him, too: “E. M. Forster, vastly; his novels, after all, however so too his information to writing, Facets of the Novel. I learn a substantial amount of Rushdie, Sarah Waters, Josephine Tey, Steinbeck, and The Queen of Crime, herself. However, and undeservedly much-overlooked, I’d additionally level to videogames. The storytelling within the Last Fantasy sequence, or in The Final of Us (now reaching new audiences on account of the latest HBO adaptation) has impressed me significantly.”
Additionally inspiring him: his shut information of publishing itself. Gauntlett is an agent on the highly-regarded British literary company Peters, Fraser and Dunlop, and he’s seen all of it:
“Too many aspiring writers are involved with the story they need to inform, not with the market circumstances essential for them to inform it. So, being an agent has saved my ear near the bottom. The market strikes shortly — readers and publishers alike become bored with sure tropes re-appearing again and again — and it helps to be positioned to maneuver with it. On the identical time, brokers and publishers can not predict bestsellers. There are too many forces concerned, too many headwinds or guiding currents. Luck has its half to play.
“I’ve seen the ups and downs of publishing, and am skilled sufficient to know the downs far outweigh the ups. Only a few books get away and attain a wider readership. My expectations for my very own e-book then stay suitably low. However I’m at all times open to being properly shocked.”
And, in actual fact, that was the case with The Stranger on the Wedding ceremony: “I by no means wrote the e-book with the intention of getting it revealed. It was a distraction greater than anything. A paragraph right here, a paragraph there over a interval of months and years. Earlier than I knew it, I had an entire manuscript, and I made a decision to likelihood my arm. I wrote to Ariella Feiner at United Brokers — whom I’d heard good issues about, however by no means met — and the remaining is historical past. I used to be eager for the manuscript to face by itself two ft, so insisted it was submitted to publishers beneath a pseudonym. Ariella went one step additional and eliminated the creator’s identify completely. All editors needed to go on was a title and the e-book itself.”
Notes Feiner herself: “My inbox was flooded with editors making an attempt (and failing!) to guess who in publishing had written such a superb thriller.”
Is there one other e-book on the horizon? “I’m contracted for a second e-book now, however undecided how a lot I’m allowed to say about that at this stage. Silence appears the higher choice!”
Silence, nevertheless, will play no half within the reception for The Stranger on the Wedding ceremony. Count on to listen to plenty of noise – and gasps.
About A.E. Gauntlett:
A. E. Gauntlett accomplished an MA in English Literature at King’s Faculty London in 2010, earlier than becoming a member of the publishing business as a literary agent. The Stranger on the Wedding ceremony is his debut thriller, written in secret whereas agenting the work of quite a few bestselling authors of his personal.
Publish Date: 4/13/2024
Style: Suspense, Thrillers
Creator: A.E. Gauntlett
Web page Rely: 288 pages
Writer: Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 9781250343369
