What Sawyer's been reading...

Okay, I'm back on one of my favorite subjects today...ABC's LOST. For the past few months, off and on we've seen my man Sawyer sitting on the beach reading a manuscript he found in the wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815. (Presumably the author perished in the plane crash.) He's been telling people it's a good mystery. He was almost finished with it when he got into an argument with Jack and Jack grabbed the manuscript out of Sawyer's hands and threw the whole thing in the fire.

Sawyer's burnt-up book, BAD TWIN by Gary Troup (Hyperion, ISBN 1-4013-0276-9), is now available at a bookstore near you.

This real book by a fictitious author (whose name is an anagram for Purgatory) is yet another piece of what has to be the most elaborate and intricate worldwide television promotion puzzle, The LOST Experience.

The game started a few weeks ago, and clues are everywhere. It revolves around the mysterious fictional corporation The Hanso Foundation, the power that seems to be behind the mystery on the LOST island. CLues are dispersed through fake TV ads aired during the last few LOST episodes, print ads taken out in major metropolitan newspapers around the world, websites including TheHansoFoundation.com, GaryTroup.net, InsideTheExperience.com and others, emails to and from a Hanso Organization principal, and phone numbers like 1-877-HANSORG. Most of the clues need to get decoded before you can use them. If you're lazy (like me), head over to thelostexperience.com, an unofficial fan blogsite where you can find the answers as soon as the more obsessed and geeky LOST fans among us figure them out.

But back to BAD TWIN. Of course, I ran right out and got a copy. A number of people posting on Amazon are speculating that the book has been ghost-written by Stephen King. Granted, It's been a while since I've read a SK book, but halfway through BAD TWIN, I'm not inclined to think it is truly his voice. I could be wrong, though.

In the tradition of The Maltese Falcon, BAD TWIN is an intricate mystery involving Paul Artisan, a down-on-his luck PI who is inexplicably sought out and hired by filthy rich CEO and heir to an old-money family empire, Clifford Widmore. Widmore, obstensibly the "good twin," wants Artisan to track down his identical mirror image "bad twin," Zander Widmore, who disappeared shortly after the untimely and suspicious death of Clifford's wife, Shannon. There are references to the Hanso Organization in the book as well as other clues about the TV show LOST. On the Hanso website and in numerous newspaper print ads, The Hanso Organization denounces the information presented in BAD TWIN about the Foundation as a pack of malicious lies. What is certain is that in the novel, as on the island and on the Hanso website, nothing is what it seems. As I said, I'm halfway through the book right now. The deceptions, along with the dead bodies, are starting to pile up.

Check out my website, www.joynash.com, in a couple weeks. I'll be posting a review of BAD TWIN, an intriguing and well-written story that stands firmly on its own, whether or not you've seen a single episode of LOST.

Until next Friday...

Joy Nash
http://www.joynash.com/