A nonfiction title marking its second week on the list and a fiction new arrival have something in common—their authors' surnames. A Different Drummer: My Thirty Years with Ronald Reagan is by Michael K. Deaver, who clearly knows his subject—he served as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for four years, and was one of Reagan's closest advisors in both Sacramento and Washington. Deaver was interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABC's Primetime Thursday on April 19 (the day before pub date); other appearances include Good Morning America, Meet the Press and CBS Evening News. In addition to a number of bookstore visits, the author also signed books at the National Press Club (Washington, D.C.), the Nixon Library (L.A.) and the Commonwealth Club of California (San Francisco). The HarperCollins title has 100,000 copies in print after two trips to press.
Suspense novel #17 for thrillmeister Jeffery Deaver, The Blue Nowhere, is nothing if not up-to-the-minute: a Silicon Valley murderer is a genius hacker who targets his victims through information obtained from their personal computers. Published by Simon & Schuster on May 4 (copies in print: 225,000), Deaver's latest is being made into a feature film by Joel Silver, producer of The Matrix. (Looks like Deaver is becoming as visible in neighborhood multiplexes as on bestseller lists: his The Bone Collector was a 1999 hit starring Denzel Washington, and The Devil's Teardrop is being developed by Perfect Storm director Wolfgang Petersen.) The author's 13-city tour began in Dallas on May 2 and will wind up in Cleveland on the 24th. This is Deaver's fifth book to make our charts—the most recent, The Empty Chair, was an eight-week tenant last spring in its S&S edition; today marks week #5 for the Pocket mass market.
With reporting by Dick Donahue.
