Book Log 2006 # 31: Bad Twin by Gary Troup

Bad Twin is a mystery novel whose author died in the crash of Oceanic Airlines flight 815, as seen on the TV show Lost. For those playing along, the book has been published posthumously, and while it claims to be a work of fiction with no basis in reality, it does mention the Hanso Foundation (among other people and entities that exist in the Lost universe), which has put together a negative advertising campaign against the book.

So we have a fake foundation taking out real ads to trash a real book by a fake author that claims all of its contents are fake but makes several mentions of the fake foundation.

And that's all outside of the actual book, a pretty standard mystery where a downtrodden PI is hired to track down the missing son of an extremely wealthy industrialist. But in the course of his investigation, many of the people he's talked to wind up dead, and he fears that death might catch up to him before he can complete the task at hand.

As far as the writing goes, it's adequate. I don't think I'd have picked it up were there no tie-in with the TV show. As far as that tie-in goes, you have the mentions of Hanso et. al, and it definitely shares some themes. And those numbers keep showing up. But even with all that, I don't know that I actually got any sort of insight or clues towards where the show will go next season, which I assume is the motivation for many people in reading the book. Then again, given how slowly the show is developing story lines, stuff from the book may become pertinent later. I just hope it's before, say, season five.