For a writer of thrillers, the biggest thrill I’ve received lately is the wonderful response to Dominus that has come in since it was published last summer. I’m profoundly grateful for the reaction readers have had, and to so many of you for sharing them with me—and providing me with the impetus to compose this follow-up, to carry on with the tension and the fun. The joy of a novella, rather than a full-length novel, is the ability to play with just that much more mystery and cloudiness, popping into a scene at full bore and bounding our way through it—a story that flashes in and out of life like a bright match. I hope you’ve enjoyed this small “aside” with Alexander Trecchio in the aftermath of the events that he and Gabriella Fierro got up to in Genesis and Dominus, and that for a few moments I was able to get your heart rate up again.
My thanks as always to Luigi Bonomi, agent extraordinaire, and for a lovely lunch we had with Thomas Stofer over cold wine on a hot London afternoon a while back, where a few of the thoughts of this story (and almost the whole vision of Dominus) were born. Everyone at LBA Books (especially Alison Bonomi and Danielle Zigner) are on my perennial thank-you list, and each for good reason. Gratitude also to Miles Orchard for editorial comments and notes on the earliest, and roughest, of drafts; and to Darcy Nicholson, now Assistant Editor at Transworld, for her fantastic editing on this text, carrying on in the superb tradition she laid out with its two predecessors.
The team at Headline is a joy to work with. I’ve rarely known such enthusiasm and talent paired together as I encounter on a regular basis in the person of Emily Griffin, Commissioning Editor, whose shepherding of these stories from concept to design to distribution (not to mention being a gifted editor in her own right) is simply remarkable. She and the whole Headline family—I cannot fail to mention my excellent copy editor, Jane Selley, who always knows what I meant to say, in just the way I meant to say it; and Sara Adams, Editorial Assistant, who keeps all the gears moving in the elaborate publishing machine I don’t even pretend to fathom—are what make Headline the kind of publisher authors consider it a treat to work with.
Finally, the two priests who kindly assisted me in some of the research for Dominus were both oddly and energetically open to doing so again with Exodus, and my gratitude to the self-effacingly anonymous figures of Fr. A—and Fr. I—remains just as strong.
I have (at least) as much fun writing these books as anyone has reading them: so here’s looking forward to the fun we’ll be getting up to together in the future …