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5 Novels by Non-Authors That are Actually Pretty Good
Being a novelist is rarely a good career move. For every writer making millions from bestselling books and film deals, there are thousands making much, much less, and even more making nothing at all. The list of professions with better earning potential is astoundingly long, which may be why one approach to launching a career as a novelist is to have another, better-paying career first. Like, say, acting, or being a professional athlete, or having a storied music career. Earn a few million doing that, and you can write your novel, then go relax in your Scrooge McDuck bathtub filled with gold coins. These 5 novels are written by people famous for something other than writing, but are well worth reading.
The Explorer’s Guild, by Kevin Costner and Jon Baird
Yup, that Kevin Costner: the Dances with Wolves and Waterworld guy. Inspired by his years of traveling the world to make movies, Costner has cowritten (with Jon Baird) a fast-paced fantasy centered on a secret society of adventurers who meet in a hidden room behind a tony gentlemen’s club. Bringing an old-school Allan Quatermain vibe to the story, this first volume in a proposed series sees the Explorer’s Guild seeking the mythical golden city of Shambhala in the days just before World War I tore the world apart. This quest takes them—and the reader—all over the world in an exciting story punctuated by visual bursts in the form of comic panels drawn by illustrator Rick Ross.
Mycroft Holmes, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse
A life-long fan of Sherlock Holmes, Abdul-Jabbar teams up with screenwriter Waterhouse in a fantastic debut novel that focuses on Sherlock’s older brother Mycroft, filling in his often overlooked backstory. Set in 1870, when the young Mycroft is serving in the British War Office (and dealing with his reputation for risk-taking), the older Holmes is called on to investigate a series of mysterious child deaths in Trinidad. The children are left drained of blood, and the locals have a superstitious explanation—but when a Holmes is on the case, a solution won’t be far behind. If you’re only aware of Abdul-Jabbar’s skill on the basketball court, get ready—this is an assured novel that fans of Holmes stories (old-school and new) will love.
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Beautiful Losers, by Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen is one of the most fascinating artists of the last century, a musician whose immense body of work is both incredibly influential and largely unknown to the casual fan. Were it not for his 1984 composition Hallelujah and its many, many cover versions (and many, many performances on reality singing shows), folks might not even know his name. Even more obscure is his fiction: Cohen wrote two novels in the 1960s, and his second, Beautiful Losers is a dense and gorgeous, a postmodern fable written in a deceptively simple prose. Cohen’s poetic and lyrical style is omnipresent in the book’s imagery and symbolism, making it tough to understand, but wonderful to read.
Between the Bridge and the River, by Craig Ferguson
Ferguson, the recently-retired Scottish comedian who hosted The Late Late Show on CBS, has penned a surprisingly hilarious novel following the misadventures of a group of Scottish perverts and grotesques: a scandal-plagued televangelist, his cancer-stricken childhood friend George, empty-headed actor Leon, and Leon’s gross but surprisingly seductive brother Saul. In a rambling adventure through Scotland, the American South, and Hollywood, Ferguson manages to not only make you laugh out loud with his acidic observations, but but brings the hallucinatory ingredients of the story together in an elegant, surprising conclusion.
The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie
It’s almost a cheat, as Laurie—best known in the States as the lead character on the TV series House—is a veteran television comedy writer. But The Gun Seller, while hilarious, is also a first-rate thriller, etched with sharp prose. It tells the story of Thomas Lang, a former Scots Guard struggling through awful jobs to make a living, after he turns down an offer to make a lot of money by assassinating a CEO, and goes one step further by warning the potential target—only to discover it was the CEO’s idea in the first place. From there, the plot becomes old-school detective yarn, twisting and turning while Laurie makes you laugh with every other paragraph.