New Book Spotlight

Cosmic Widow

A mini-interview with Jonathan Nevair

Tell us about your new book?

Cosmic Widow is the latest standalone spy-fi adventure in the Agent Renault series. Lilline, a tough yet conflicted secret agent/poet, delves into a shadowy galactic underworld to hunt down a stolen masterpiece. Think Mission: Impossible meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet with a dash of The Da Vinci Code. Cosmic mysteries and cloak and dagger intrigue abound in an exciting mix of spy thriller suspense and space opera adventure.

What aspect of the book was the most fun to write?

As an art historian, I enjoyed infusing the rich and varied aspects of how we understand and experience visual art into the storyline. It was delightful to embed clues and relate characters’ discoveries to the methodologies of hidden symbolism, lost languages and iconography, and arcane research that informs viewer understanding in art history. One of the thrills of viewing art is the alluring and enlightening spell it casts, and I tried to build that experience and its revelations into character experiences in the novel. Of course, the power of illusions made for great fun and served as a means to employ literary devices related to mysteries in interesting and unique ways.

If there is one emotion or theme that you would hope that the reader connects with, what would that be?

Time. An undercurrent related to the passage of time, missed opportunities, memories, and the opportunity to take advantage of the time remaining, lurks underneath an entertaining spy-fi thriller/mystery storyline.