The Blue Zone

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

They say that every person has a story inside them. The problem sets in when they actually begin to believe it.

And when my first story, written after fifteen years in business in an unrelated field, made a final clunking sound on the last publisher’s floor, a senior editor whom I had never even heard of happened to pass it along to their top-selling author with a note: “Read this.”

Thank God, he did! I figured I would do one book with Jim Patterson-I’m sure he thought the same thing too-and hoped it would leave me off somewhere inside the circle I was peering into, unable to nudge my way in. But the one turned into many, all number one bestsellers, and I got to catch murderers in San Francisco, find holy relics in fourteenth-century France, chase bad guys from Palm Beach to Tierra del Fuego-the greatest postgraduate degree a thriller writer could have.

So here at last is my chance to say thanks to a few of you, some unsuspecting, who guided me along the way.

To Gerry Friedman, a friend who convinced me over lettuce wraps, in what now seems a lifetime ago, that I’d be chasing that dream the rest of my life if I didn’t, like the commercial says, just do it!

To Hugh Sidey, senior editor at Random House UK. Everyone needs a first believer. A long-overdue case of wine will be at your door!

To Holly Pera, homicide sergeant of the San Francisco Police Department, my real-life Lindsay Boxer, who so graciously shared her time and experience, and taught me to think like a female cop.

To Dr. Greg Zorman, my brother-in-law and chief of staff at Lakeside Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, my medical editor-upon-demand who, for years, has been making me appear a whole lot smarter and medically savvier than I really am.

To Amy Berkower and Simon Lipskar of Writers House, who took an outline I had noodled together in the lull between Patterson books and transformed it into a full-fledged career. Simon, your keen insights for what is on the page and steady advocacy for what is beyond it made this transition a fabulous ride.

To Lisa Gallagher and David Highfill of William Morrow/HarperCollins, for believing so strongly in that outline-and in me! David, The Blue Zone is a far better story for its ebb and flow along the way. And thanks most of all for, I hope, permanently taking the prefix “co-” out of my job description for the rest of my career. Also to Lynn Grady, Debbie Stier, and Seale Ballenger, for their commitment and energy in advancing the book along the way.

To my sister, Liz Scoponich, and my friend Roy Grossman, early readers of The Blue Zone, for taking that responsibility seriously and for your truly constructive thoughts. The same to Maureen Sugden, copy editor par excellence, a person I’ve never met, yet whose imprint found its way in big, red ink onto every page. (Every goddamn page!)

And a long-overdue thanks to Maureen Egen, former deputy chairman and publisher of the Hachette Book Group, USA, for seeing something in that first heavily rejected manuscript and passing it along to Jim, almost ten years ago.

But mostly this book contains the spirit and belief of three people who set me on the road and kept me there solidly-in books and in life:

Jim Patterson, whose call, completely out of the blue, changed my writing life.

My wife, Lynn, whose belief in me never wavered, and who’s kept my direction on course for twenty-five years.

And my mom, Leslie Pomerantz, for her faith too, and who stood by patiently while my credits went from tiny to small, from small to a little larger with each passing book, and who, I suspect, is probably carrying this around and showing it off right now.