In late 2005,

PublishersMarketplace reported: “Pseudonymous UK journalist who worked for The Washington Post during the Clinton era Sam Bourne’s THE RIGHTEOUS MEN, a thriller that goes inside the secret worlds of fundamentalist religion, kabbalah and biblical prophecies, and which turns on a timeless question: what counts as a truly good act - and who counts as a truly good man?, to Claire Wachtel at William Morrow

Update: This does sound like a sure-fire best-seller. It’s the part about “righteousness” — what counts as a truly good act? — that gives it some special resonance in this era. It makes me hope that the author has shrewdly tapped into the noble Talmudic tradition of moral reasoning, Maimonides, Chaim Potok’s THE CHOSEN, Rabbi Hillel, and so on.

The pseudonymous author was identified by a couple of other blogs, but HarperCollins publicity has prevailed on them to withdraw the name. Suffice it to say he is an important name in UK journalism who works for a paper that is roughly as prestigious as the Post.

Update^2: An advance reading copy arrived yesterday! Nice blood-spattered cover. The first few chapters are pretty good–I’m about 25 pages in. It’s apparent that the author is a first novelist — the protagonist is, surprise, a journalist working for a big publication, and his interior monologues are pretty clunky — but the protagonist’s wife is sharply drawn and, as I’d hoped, the book shifts into a higher gear with the occurrence of the first “righteous” act.

Watch this space for more buzz and an exclusive interview at launch.