Shades of Grey

Acknowledgments

I am hugely indebted to both Hodder and Penguin for affording me the luxury of tackling this novel, a departure from my usual oeuvre that proved rather more difficult to get onto paper than I had anticipated. I trust and hope that the tardiness in its delivery have not tested too harshly a robust relationship. In particular, I would like to thank Carolyn Mays and Jamie Hodder-Williams in the UK, and Molly Stern and Clare Ferraro in the United States, for their patience, guidance and continued faith in my abilities. My thanks also to the many talented individuals in marketing and publicity both sides of the pond, and to Bruce Giffords and Ian Paten for their sterling work in correcting what is my poor grammar and speling. Huge thanks must also go to Tif Loehnis and Luke Janklow of Janklow and Nesbit for their support and continued efforts on my behalf, and to Dot Vincent and Rebecca Folland for their work developing my considerable foreign readership. My thanks would be incomplete without mention of Eric Simonoff, who for many years oversaw my U.S. interests and without whom my presence on the western side of the Atlantic would not be as strong as it is today.

I would also like to thank Mari Fforde, for help in ways too numerous to mention, from simple research to support, editorial skills and also allowing me continued sleep when Tabitha was teething. My thanks also to Matt McDonell for his valuable insights into what it is like to be colorblind, to Mike Pringle for the “enactment” joke and to Tom, Charlie and Corisande for many valued discussions. I should also mention my immediate family of Maddy, Rosie, Jordy, Alex, Tabitha, Mum, Cress, Maggy and Stewart for simply being there, and finally my thanks to Milly, who has always believed in me and whose unwavering enthusiasm for walkies kept me well exercised.

Jasper Fforde, July 2009

Brunswick and deMauve return in

Shades of Grey 2: Painting by Numbers

Shades of Grey 3: The Gordini Protocols