Tom Clancy Take Heed: Brad Steel Has Arrived in the U.S.

If the name Brad Steel doesn't ring any bells yet, just wait a little while.

The buzz has begun. Readers and critics are saying Steel, the Canadian author whose thriller MUTE began shipping to bookstores throughout the United States last week, may be poised to take on the biggest names in the genre—including Tom Clancy. In MUTE, mad cow disease and mysterious cattle mutilations collide in a plot to win the war on terror at any cost.

It may not be so outrageous a suggestion. Clancy's approval rating has been slipping regularly, and not just in the eyes of media reviewers. The readers themselves have been having their say, many via today's most popular medium-Amazon online reviews. At Amazon.com, Tom Clancy's first and probably best novel, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, has an impressive average rating of four-and-a-half stars. (Five being the highest possible.) But Clancy's two most recent thrillers, RED RABBIT and THE TEETH OF THE TIGER rate a paltry two stars apiece. With such sorry reader satisfaction, one might wonder how Clancy continues to invariably hit the top of the bestseller lists.

And newbie Brad Steel? Though his book is yet to be indexed at Amazon.com (any day now, publisher Hushion House says), it's been selling at the Canadian version, Amazon.ca, since April. And readers have been singing from the same song sheet—to the tune of a perfect five-star average rating.

Evidently unlike Tom Clancy, Steel is pushing the right buttons.

And the comparisons are being made. “(Brad Steel) has a clipped, no-nonsense style that kicks the guts out of veterans like Tom Clancy,” writes Robert Falconer of Toronto, adding that Clancy could do worse than emulate the newcomer.

What is Steel doing that's so different? “I think it comes down to effort,” he says. “When you're becoming known, you give it everything you've got. I suspect I sweated over my manuscript a little longer and harder than a lot of top authors tend to. And it shows in the details. I've got a web presence at BradSteel.com that's very pro, full of fun visuals and fresh information. Go google 'The Official Tom Clancy Website.' There's no such site, and TomClancy.com is an empty domain. And this is the world's number one technothriller author.”

While sales of books by Clancy continue to slip steadily (along with those of fellow number one bestselling authors Stephen King, John Grisham and Michael Crichton), Canadian fiction writers like Steel are selling more and more books in America. According to the Association for the Export of Canadian Books (AECB), the United States imported 331 per cent more Canadian fiction titles in 2000 than it did in 1993. And Canada's agents are pulling their weight too. Over the same period, the country's rights sales to the U.S. increased by a whopping 368 per cent!

Perhaps Tom Clancy and the others should indeed pick up a copy of Brad Steel's Mute-and their notepad.

MUTE is now arriving on shelves in chain and independent bookstores throughout the United States. It continues to ship worldwide at a special reduced price from Amazon.ca: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0973642106/officialbrads-20/702-2710365-8787218

More info about Brad Steel and MUTE are at http://www.bradsteel.com

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