No Rest for the Dead 'has the best of all worlds'
6th July 2011
A crime novel co-written by 26 bestselling authors and published this week gives readers the best of all possible worlds, the man who came up with the idea for the book has claimed.
Andrew Gulli, editor of Strand magazine, said the idea for No Rest for the Dead was first formulated when he thought of a plot involving a woman who was executed for a crime she did not commit, then asked other writers to contribute.
The response from the literary world was great, with famed crime novelists from Alexander McCall Smith to Jeffrey Deaver committing themselves to the project.
Gulli said this is the first time in the history of publishing that such a large-scale, collaborative effort has resulted in the creation of just one work of fiction.
'If you add up the group of writers who have taken part in this book, you'll find they have sales of hundreds of millions of books,' he explained.
Fans of each of the authors should be able to recognise their favourite writer's contribution, Gulli added.
'When we re-read it, we thought it had the best of all possible worlds in that you can still see the different styles,' he explained.
Gulli, who edited the novel with his sister Lamia, revealed that proceeds from the sale of the books will be donated to the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society.