Book Club Kits: Watchlist

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From International Thriller Writers, comes Watchlist: two powerful novellas featuring the same thrilling cast of characters in one major suspenseful package. The Chopin Manuscript and The Copper Bracelet are collaborations of some of the world’s greatest thriller writers, including Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, and Jeffery Deaver, who conceived the characters and set the plots in motion. The other authors each wrote a chapter and Deaver then completed what he started, bringing both novellas to their startling conclusions.

In the first novella, The Chopin Manuscript, former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that now threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. As he races from Poland to America to uncover the mystery of the manuscript, Middleton will be accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins. But the greatest threat will come from a shadowy figure from his past: the man known only as Faust.

Harold Middleton returns in The Copper Bracelet—the explosive sequel to The Chopin Manuscript—as he’s drawn into an international terror plot that threatens to send India and Pakistan into full-scale nuclear war. Careening from Nice to London and Moscow to Kashmir to prevent nuclear disaster, Middleton is unaware that his prey has changed and that the act of terror is far more diabolical than he knows. Will he discover the identity of the Scorpion in time to halt an event that will pit the United States, China, and Russia against each other at the brink of World War III?

Read an excerpt from the novel.

• How well did the serial nature of the book work?  Did the story flow for you?  Or did you find the different authors to be distracting?
  
  
• For the person who chose this book: What made you want to read it? What made you suggest it to the group for discussion? Did it live up to your expectations? Why or why not?
  
  
• Discuss the mystery aspect of the plotline. How effective are the authors’ use of plot twists and red herrings? Were you able to predict certain things before they happened, or did the authors keep you guessing until the end of the story?
  
  
• How important is the setting to the story?  Do the international locations add to or subtract from the story?
  
  
• Do you feel the authors were trying to work together on the story?  Or do you feel they were trying to outdo each other with plot twists and impossible predicaments?
  
  
• Would you read another serial novel like this one?  Why or why not?