“Panic Attack” e-galley giveaway from Minotaur Books

Minotaur Books, the mystery/suspense imprint of St. Martin’s Press, is doing it again: giving away an ebook. Or, as they term it in this case, an e-galley. Which suggests the likelihood that there could still be some changes to the book before it’s published once and for all.

This time, it’s Panic Attack, by Jason Starr. The book will be in stores on August 4, 2009, so this is the chance to get an ebook preview.

The new book, Panic Attack, is about a successful doctor, his wife, and their adult daughter dealing with the after-effects of a break-in, the shakiness of the parents’ relationship, and then the suspicious events that begin to follow them, centred on the artistic young man with whom their daughter has fallen in love.

After I’ve seen all these other mystery/suspense writers lately who started out as something else (lawyers, quite often, but also working in the financial industry), Starr seems to be rather a rarity: someone who actually began as a writer. (Even though he actually grew up wanting to be a baseball player!) He worked on play writing at first, having several plays produced, before finally wrote his first novel, Cold Caller. And, apparently, has never looked back.

If you’re American, you can go to the Panic Attack page at Macmillan, and click there to enter your name and email address for a download of this book. If you’re Canadian, see if the site will let you download it even though you can’t enter a “state” code. If you want to fake it, try that too. But if you don’t want to do that, leave a comment for me and I’ll send you the email address of the PR person who will send it to you directly.