Contains preview pages for The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton!
Dave Thomas, of SCTV fame, has ed forces with Max Allan Collins, the celebrated writer of Road to Perdition, to bring readers a new crime thriller with a twist: The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton. The novel will be published digitally by NeoText on October 26; a print edition will be available as well.
Dave Thomas is an award-winning actor, writer and producer. Thomas rose to fame as a cast member of the comedy show SCTV, which aired in Canada and the United States in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Thomas originated a number of characters on the show, his most popular being Doug McKenzie, who featured in 1983’s Strange Brew; fellow SCTV castmate Rick Moranis played Doug’s brother Bob. The character, and film, propelled Thomas (and Moranis) into the mainstream; Thomas would go on to amass an extensive filmography, as both actor and writer. He will be collaborating with Max Allan Collins on The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton. Collins is an acclaimed crime novelist, who created the character Ms. Tree as well as Jason Todd’s modern origin; perhaps Collins’ most notable work was Road to Perdition, later adapted into a feature film, starring Tom Hanks, and receiving several prose and comic sequels.
The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton is a unique crime thriller. Jimmy Leighton is a small-time thief living in Boston, looking for his next job. He finds more than he bargained for and is sent on a quantum odyssey through the paths he did not take. A secondary plot, concerning the Boston Police Department and two detectives, intertwines with Leighton’s story. Enjoy the cover and opening pages below:
On the surface, Collins and Thomas may seem to be unlikely collaborators; Collins is known for gritty, hard-boiled noir stories in the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Thomas is best known as a comedy writer. Yet it was these differences that became a hallmark of their collaboration. Thomas acknowledges this, saying, “Max and I clicked instantly. We had similar interests and tastes and yet we were just different enough that the collaboration on this novel turned out to be greater than the sum of the parts. We each brought something to the party. Max brought experience and intelligence. I brought insanity and recklessness. In the end, it was what collaborative writing should be — fun. And I think that's reflected on the pages of the novel."
Collins also revealed the collaboration began during the pandemic. Collins looks back fondly on the process, saying, "Dave had this great idea about a guy who blundered into a quantum experiment and got thrust into one life after another, reflecting the various paths his life might have taken. It was during the Covid lockdown that we started collaborating by phone and Zoom call, and the great fun of it wasn't in the drafts we ed back and forth, but the plot twists and characterization that developed out of our almost daily conversations. A secondary plot about the Boston police team, an older Black detective and a young female detective, drew on both our backgrounds, mine as a mystery writer and Dave's as a scripter on BONES and BLACKLIST." The collaboration works. In the excerpt provided, readers meet Jimmy Leighton and the seedy world he lives in. As Leighton is casing houses, he stumbles across a mysterious device that propels him into an alternate world. It is the perfect marriage of Collins and Thomas’ sensibilities, one that will delight readers.
Although best known for the role of Doug McKenzie in SCTV, Dave Thomas is also a multi-talented writer and producer, and he is teaming up with Road to Perdition writer Max Allan Collins to take readers through The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton.
