Colin Harrison must be a very good poker player. Behind his neat beard and glasses, his face gives no hint of emotion. He seems unfazed by his leap from Crown to Farrar, Straus & Giroux, where he is the beneficiary of a low seven-figure, hard-soft deal between FSG and St. Martin's Press. He d s not seem particularly excited, either, by the attention FSG is lavishing on his forthcoming novel, Afterburn, the first of his two-book contract and already the recipient of starred trade reviews (including Forecasts, Nov. 22), two book club deals (BOMC and QPB), an audio deal (S&S Audio), five foreign-rights deals (U.K., Germany, Holland, Denmark and Hungary) and a projected 100,000-copy first printing in hardcover, not to mention an eight-city U.S. tour, starting on Harrison's home turf of Brooklyn. Rumors swirl around Afterburn's film rights; all three of the writer's previous books are already under option (with Bodies Electric being held by Martin Scorsese).

So Harrison has no cause to worry. But he's not exactly turning cartwheels, either. "It remains to be seen whether Afterburn breaks out or not," he says. "I™ve been at this long enough to not assume anything."

Despite the two-book deal, the rights sales and the film buzz, he is "all about the book," and is waiting with what might be called a cautious optimism to see how the hardcover performs upon publication.

Harrison's agent, Kris Dahl at ICM, is more upbeat. "We all feel that this is something of a breakout," she says. "We've always had a good relationship with Crown. We didn't huff off or anything like that. We were kind of restless; Colin had published all his books at Crown [Break and Enter, Bodies Electric and Manhattan Nocturne]. We decided to open up the door to other publishers. Crown participated in a very spirited auction, but so did FSG, and they won it with the two-book deal."

But why FSG, as opposed to a more commercial house? "I thought FSG was an interesting publisher for him," says Dahl. "Most people would think of the house as too literary for the kinds of books he writes, but there are very few people writing thrillers that could be a good fit on FSG's list. We felt that Colin was in a unique position as a novelist. He's an extraordinary writer. He looks for stories in the havoc caused by human weakness and man's potential for cruelty. And he's not afraid of strong plots. I think the combination is very appealing to readers, and obviously to FSG."

Of Genres and Thrill-Seeking

Confounding stereotypes may be what Afterburn itself, and Harrison's jump to FSG, are all about. When the writer is questioned directly about Afterburn's position among FSG's notably highbrow thrillers (The Black Book, The Quincunx), the talk switches immediately to genre. "The question is, what is a thriller?" he asks. "The term is often used pejoratively to mean a poorly written, fast-moving story that sells a lot of copies and yet which is utterly forgettable. And that's correct. On the other hand, a lot of books are protected by the term 'thriller'... they're allowed to travel the world with 'thriller' written on the suitcase and, therefore, they live. I am not intimidated by the word 'thriller,' because I think that the word 'thriller' means 'thrilling.'

"So I'm going to have my cake and eat it too," Harrison continues avidly, "and then eat the plate, and the spoon and knife and napkin and tablecloth and table. I intend to write stories that are fascinating, thrilling, exciting, maybe there's some violence, maybe have some sex, definitely have some sex, and yet have writing at a level that someone who enjoys good writing will not be disappointed in. I think there's a lot of room out there. You see a lot of so-called 'literary writers' working their way into the thriller genre, not because of the money and possibility for commercial success, but because you have the possibility for enormously interesting stories. I'm trying to write a hell of a story. That's what Joseph Conrad and John O'Hara did, and they're my gods. This apparently is something that FSG likes--it fits their way of looking at things and what they think the market will bear and how they want to position themselves."

Harrison is quick to credit the editors who helped him along the way as he developed his take-no-prisoners approach to fiction. "I've had good editors," he says. "I've been very lucky. The editor of my first two was a guy named David Groff, at Crown. He had faith in me and taught me a lot and was very attentive. For my third book at Crown I had Karen Rinaldi, now at Bloomsbury, and Ann Patty, both very high-energy, very perceptive people." Of his cumulative experience with book editors, he says, "Generally, what's happened is that the editing has been conceptual. They'd ask, 'Why is this character doing this?' 'Should they be?' 'Where's the story going?' That's very helpful. These editors were smart people. They understand how stories work."

Of his new editor at FSG, John Glusman, Harrison has nothing but praise. "John was absolutely great. As I see it, the book editor's role is to push, to ask questions and to stimulate, but also to reassure, and he was very good at that."

To some extent, these good author/editor relationships have obviously been facilitated by Harrison's editorial career in magazine publishing, particularly with Harper's magazine where, as with any consumer publication, issues of commerce and literateness must co-exist.

"The two worlds definitely feed each other," Harrison says of his two vocations. "There's no doubt about that. At the magazine, I™m standing in a river of information and perceptions about what's going on in culture, and that benefits me. I always try to get the language better and sharper. Magazine work benefits my discipline and creativity. I've thought about how to look at the world as a writer, and that helps me as an editor. On another level, I work with a lot of writers. I understand, watching what other writers go through, how difficult it is, how lonely it is, how you have to be psychologically tough. As much as possible, I've tried to apply some of those observations to my own practice."

As deputy editor at Harper's, Harrison has had the opportunity to commission and edit (in conjunction with Lewis Lapham, the magazine's editor) a veritable treasure trove of writers: David Foster Wallace, David Guterson, Bob Shacochis and the renowned war correspondent Scott Anderson, just to name a few.

Working "across genre," as he puts it, Harrison edits both fiction and nonfiction at the magazine. Asked about Tom Wolfe's famous 1989 Harper's article, "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,"in which he criticized American novelists for not getting out into the worlds they describe, Harrison laughs. "Wolfe makes some terrific points about American writers and trying to avoid a kind of insular, overly domestic, overly personalized kind of fiction that we do produce a lot of. I call that kind of fiction 'Volvo' fiction, because everybody in it drives a Volvo or knows people who do. On the other hand, I'd say it's very unfair to tar the literary production of a country with one brush or another; that's being overly simplistic. There's writing going on out there that's marvelous."

Considerable social and historical research of the sort Tom Wolfe would approve of did go into the writing of Afterburn--no mean feat considering the number of exotic locales and pathological characters. Readers familiar with Harrison's previous books will notice the insistent (and often menacing) Asian presence in Afterburn, be it in the form of North Vietnamese Army soldiers or high-placed Chinese nouveau riche. The author is not hesitant to discuss this. "China's fascinating. I™ve been to Hong Kong three times, Shanghai twice, not for long visits, but very intense ones. China's like a disease--once it's in your system, it's there forever. There's a lot that's going to happen in the future over there. It's where a lot of technology is flowing, and there are a lot of questions of reform and what shape capitalism will take."

One of Afterburn's three protagonists, Charlie Ravich, is lured to China by the possibilities of a country in flux. "I was, of course, interested in the ironies of Charlie being in business over there since he almost lost his life once before in that part of the world." Ravich suffers awful injuries at the hands of both his captors and rescuers in Vietnam; he returns to China as a businessman rather than a killer, but nevertheless finds himself wagering huge sums of money on a man's grisly death.

Violence, Money, Sex

Graphic torture scenes, it must be said, punctuate Afterburn, and Ravich's abuse at the hands of the NVA in the prologue sets the stage for the gruesome acts to come.

"I didn't set out to write a book about torture," Harrison insists. "I wanted the story to have a certain velocity and enormity, and these are violent people that the main characters deal with, and I wanted the reader to believe that. The violence in the book is always related to money. We live in a money culture, which is part of the reason we live in a violent culture. I don't think stories are interesting unless they have consequences; that's why we read them, to see what comes of people's choices."

Where violence and greed are paramount, sex must be part of the game, and desire, or the urge to satisfy it, is an important narrative force throughout Harrison's work. In fact, his explicit construction of sexual personae in Afterburn may take some readers aback. He anticipates this. "I'm going to pull some radioactive stuff out of the box here... . Even though Afterburn is in the guise of a commercial thriller, there's going to be some psychological warfare, which isn't about being commercial or a thriller, it's about the writer really pushing at the reader. And I think readers want that. I certainly do when I read. I'm prepared for the criticism."

After witnessing the vitriolic reception of his wife's inflammatory memoir The Kiss, in 1997, he may well be. Readers will remember the outcry over the book, which some felt made scandalous use of sexually volatile material for sensationalistic purposes--the memoir told the tale of Harrison's sexual relationship with her father. Harrison flatly denies any influence that The Kiss, or its reception, had upon his own work. "It's a beautiful book," he says. "As time g s by, its power and integrity are only more confirmed. But that book did not and will not affect the stuff that I do. The essential truth is that she's doing her stuff and I'm doing mine... there's no direct textual connection. We've often said that we might not be readers of each other's books but for the fact that we are married."

It seems that the couple's connection as writers has more to do with their shared devotion to the craft than with the subjects they choose or the genres they write in. "Kathy works during the day, while I largely work at night. It takes a lot of coordination from a logistical point of view. From a psychic one, it's great, because the person you're with is making a similar voyage. It's like having another craftsman in the shop, so to speak. And I like it. At this point, I don't see how I could live any other way."

After these revelations, Harrison resumes his poker face. He has nothing to say about his next book with FSG. The game with Afterburn, after all, has just begun, and the author won't be lured into addressing the larger direction of his career. "I'm tempted to answer that I'm just a humble novelist plying his trade, writing one book after the next, that there's no grand strategy at work here and I'm just writing the stories as they come to me," he says, as though he's just checked his hole card. "I don't think I have an analysis. There's no marketing plan coming from me."

Dunn is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in SOMA magazine, as well as several book-related online publications. He lives in New York City.