Night Fever and a New Undertow Podcast, Out This Week!

We're writing very briefly to note that the latest Brubaker-Phillips collaboration came out this week:  Night Fever is a stand-alone original graphic novel following one man's descent into decadence and violence while on a business trip to Europe.

It's worth noting that the cover art has changed from what was originally announced, with the orange and blue image of protagonist Jonathan Webb's back, shown on the left, replaced by the image shown on the right: the gray and white image has Webb facing the reader, still carrying a knife, standing in shadow, and obscured by a mask one would find at a masquerade ball.

(I honestly prefer the original cover art.)

The hardcover edition went on sale at local retailers Wednesday, with an MSRP of $24.99.

In anticipation of the new book coming out, Robert Watson and I briefly chatted for a new episode of The Undertow Podcast. We talked about the recent news in Hollywood: 

• a film adaptation for Pulp with Oscar-winning writer Tom McCarthy
• an Amazon series for Criminal with novelist Jordan Harper as the co-showrunner 

Robert had an amusing list of casting choices, straight out of a 90s-era issue of Wizard magazine.

This isn't the first time that Hollywood has tried to adapt Brubaker and Phillips, and we hope these projects bear fruit and produce work that is worthy of the source material.

In the meantime, we also discussed the announcement for the team's next book, surprising in that the news broke before Night Fever hit store shelves.

Where the Body Was is due this December, and in a recent email newsletter, Brubaker explained that the book begins with a map of the neighborhood where the body in question was found. This is a bit of callback to the mapback editions of pulp paperbacks, where the back cover would draw in readers with a diagram or map of the scene of the crime.

We've already enjoyed Night Fever on our first readthrough, and we'll probably reread the book just prior to our next podcast recording -- possibly as soon as July! -- but we're already quite looking forward to Where the Body Was.

It seemed we picked a good team to follow so fanatically!