The Girl Talk of Spy Novelists

Quentin Rowan
Image via Guardian.com

Quentin Rowan was a promising young writer who had been published in The Paris Review and the 1996 edition of The Best American Poetry anthology. While working in a Brooklyn bookstore in 2009, he became enamored with pulp spy novels of the '60's and '70's and churned out his own version in a matter of months. He titled it "Spy Safari" and submitted it to a publisher friend of his father's, who found it an enthralling read. Within a few more months, the book was bought by a suspense imprint of major New York publishing house Little, Brown. The book was retitled "Assassin of Secrets", a run of 6500 copies were printed and the book was released last September to very positive reviews from critics and fans alike.

However, fans on various spy novel message boards, including one for Ian Fleming's James Bond series, began noticing familiarities between passages in "Assassin of Secrets" and novels by other acclaimed authors in the genre such as John Gardner, Charles McQuarry, and Robert Ludlum (of the Jason Bourne series).

Author Jeremy Duns, who had interviewed Rowan on his blog The Debrief prior to the release of "Assassin of Secrets", began investigating these charges along with fellow blogger Edward Champion (Reluctant Habits). They found over thirty-four instances of plagiarism in the book's first thirty-five pages alone. It soon came to light that Rowan had pasted together various passages from a number of spy novels and other works of literature in creating his literary "mash up", and in performing the revisions recommended by his editor at Little, Brown.

Needless to say, the initial print run was pulled from bookstore shelves and Rowan's publishing deal was nixed by Little, Brown. In the online edition of The New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicombe provides a detailed account of Rowan's deception, as well as an in-depth character profile and personal history of the "author", culled from family members, former co-workers, acquaintances, and Rowan himself. Read it here.

Also, check out author Johnathan Lethem's experiment in plagiarism from a 2007 feature in Harper's.