Volume 5, Issue 56: A Hit Is a Hit

"I make referrals all the time, Tony."

My upcoming novel, Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride, will be released on May 20. I believe you will like it. Today I’m going to tell you about it. I hope you will pre-order it.

Before we get into anything about the new book, I should probably just start with this:

Original source.

Yeah, we’re off to quite a start this week. To quote the great Jim Newell at Slate, “the bombardment will continue until there’s any hint it has a price.” I hope you are holding up.

All right. To the new book.

When my book Are We Winning? came out in 2010, the writer Chuck Klosterman provided me with a blurb I still chuckle about today:

Are We Winning? has got to be the best book about Midwestern fatherhood ever written by a childless man in Brooklyn.

There are many pivot points in a person’s life—marriages, divorces, funerals, the moment you realize you can only name, like, four bands at Lollapalooza—but if you’re a parent, you know that nothing is more seismic than when your first child is born. Everything that happened before then, stuff that seemed pretty freaking important at the time, immediately becomes prologue—mere backstory for the role you’ll be playing the rest of your life. Your life shifts, instantly, from something that belonged to you, in which you were the main character, into a quest in which you have a sole motivation: Keep this person safe and make their life a good one. I remember, the morning my first son William was born, talking to my mother on the phone. She told me, “Isn’t it amazing, how this thing that didn’t exist four hours ago is suddenly the most important thing in the world? How much you already love it?” There hasn’t been a day since, including the day William got a little brother whom I felt the exact same way about, that has been any less true. It’s all that matters—just like that.

That I once wrote a whole book about parenthood solely from the perspective of a son, without being a father myself, was part of Are We Winning?’s appeal, I hope. Part of the point of that book, which is really an ode to my own dad and the transcendent bonding power of sports itself, was that I wasn’t a father, that I was childless well into my thirties and thus felt much more like a son than an actual adult … but also about knowing that balance was about to flip, and soon. William was born 18 months after Are We Winning? came out, and (largely because, uh, no one bought Are We Winning?) I wouldn’t write another book for 10 years, not until How Lucky. Suffice it to say, a lot happened in those 10 years.

But it was inevitable that I would end up writing a book about parenthood after becoming an actual parent. That book is Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride, which comes out on May 20.

Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride tells the story of Lloyd McNeil, a police detective in Atlanta. He is the son of a famous, and controversial, police chief, but he is inherently mild in disposition: He believes that a good police officer is a reflection of his community rather than a commander of it, and he has spent his 20-year career quietly, even methodically, helping solve disputes, writing tickets, directing traffic during public events and trying to make the world a little bit better than it was when he woke up that morning. He’s amicably divorced, and he dotes on his 13-year-old son Bishop, whom he has vowed to be a more open and loving parent to than his father was to him.

Then Lloyd starts getting headaches. He visits a neurologist, who tells him he has glioblastoma, a brain tumor that will kill him in a matter of months. As he reels from the diagnosis and attempts to get his affairs in order, he realizes that he has very little financially to show for his years on the force. But then he discovers, while digging through police paperwork: If he’s killed in the line of duty, his pension, his union and his insurance will provide roughly 50 times more money for his son after he’s gone. So he makes a plan: He will throw himself into a series of insane, surely-fatal situations that will kill him, so that his son will be taken care of for life. But it turns out: It’s a lot more difficult to die than he thought it would be. And before you know it: He has become a civic hero. Which comes with all sorts of complications of its own.

Here’s the official plot description from the book jacket:

From the ALEX Award-winning and Edgar-nominated author of How Lucky, this twisty, funny and ultimately uplifting novel follows a father in a race against time to provide for his child.

Lloyd McNeil has just learned he has months to live. He also learns that his twenty years as a beat cop in Atlanta hasn’t earned him enough money to take care of his teenage son Bishop after he’s gone. But when Lloyd discovers his police benefits will increase exponentially if he dies in the line of duty, he comes up with a plan.

Lloyd begins to throw himself into one life-threatening situation after another to try to get himself killed and to provide for his son . . . but he keeps failing—and surviving. To his shock, his accidental heroics make him an inspirational icon in the community. But time is still running out for Lloyd to get his affairs in order, to teach Bishop the lessons he needs to be a good person, and to say goodbye.

Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride is a surprising, unforgettable blend of suspense, humor and compassion. It is a novel about what we leave behind and what we learn along the way, a big-hearted and stirring story about the depths of a father’s love for his son.

The book, like How Lucky (and unlike The Time Has Come), is told in the first-person, present tense, with Lloyd himself telling the story as it happens, as he experiences it. It is about many things, hopefully first of which, it’s about a compelling story that is fun and exciting to read. One of the goals for the book, after The Time Has Come— a book I’m very proud of but also a book that has a complex, somewhat difficult construction and requires many words to explain to someone who’s never heard of it what it’s about—was to have a straightforward, easy-to-understand plot: A cop is dying of a brain tumor and learns that his son will inherit more money if he dies in the line of duty, so he tries to get himself killed, keeps failing and becomes an unlikely civic hero.

Once I had that concept, I could build on it. I could use that story as a clothesline to tell a story about a dad who, like many parents, is terrified about the world we may be leaving for our children, and about our inability to protect them. Throughout the story, Lloyd writes notes for Bishop to find after he is gone, titled The Ten Gentle Edicts of Lloyd McNeil, which contain advice both practical (don’t shave against the grain) and existential (do not live your life so that you end it alone). I tried to think: If I knew I was dying in three months, what would I do? Who would I tell? How frustrating would it be to try to get yourself killed but repeatedly fail at it? How would people react to someone trying to do so without knowing that they were trying to do so? What would I want to make sure my sons knew? What are the essential truths that would I want to leave them, and the world? The result, I hope, is something funny, sad, exciting and, if I did it right, uplifting. But I guess I’ll require you all to let me know if I pulled it off.

The book is also inspired by my experiences with glioblastoma, what it was like to witness, up close, both my uncle and a close family friend die from it. It’s also a look at how we view police, and how police view themselves: What it means to try to be a good cop, particularly when the world often looks for you to be anything but. It’s also meant to be a rollicking story: I tried to make this one as exciting, surprising and even scary as I could. And, it should be said, as heavy as some of these topics are, perhaps more than anything else, the book is funny: Lloyd is a smart, amusing character, even smarter and more amusing than he might realize, who is consistently bewildered by the situations he finds himself in and how little control he turns out to actually have. I think you will love him.

I will be talking a lot more about this book in the weeks to come, as anyone who subscribed to this newsletter during the releases of How Lucky and The Time Has Come can attest. I’ll try not to overdo it. But I’m excited about this book. I hope that you will be excited about it too.

I would also like you to be a part. You are, after all, loyal subscribers to this newsletter, a newsletter that informs all of my work and absolutely is a big reason this book exists in the first place. If literally half of the people who read this newsletter every week pre-ordered the book, it would make the NYT bestseller list instantly.

So let’s see if we can make that happen. This is, after all, a free newsletter. This is the only thing this newsletter will ever ask of you: You should buy the damned thing.

And: Perks! There are always perks.

As usual, anyone who pre-orders the book, sends over the receipt and does some sort of social media post about the book on launch day, May 20, or in the days leading up to launch day, will get a signed bookplate when the book comes out. But they will also be entered into a contest.

Two lucky (???) winners will receive, in the Severance parlance, a Will Leitch Music Dance Experience. That’s to say: I will hang out with you, doing whatever you want (as long as it is legal, does not require me to break any commandments and will not force me to do something emotionally corrosive, like wearing a Cubs hat), at some point in the ensuing year. We’ll watch a game! We’ll have a book event! I’ll mow your lawn! I’ll give your dad a massage! Whatever you want. All you have to do is include your idea in the email with your pre-order. We’ll randomly choose winners from acceptable entries shortly after the book comes out.

You don’t have to enter this contest to pre-order and/or get a bookplate. If you want to just send me the pre-order receipt and do the social media post without a specific request, you are very much encouraged to do so. But if you wanna like, hang out, if you’ve always dreamed of ordering me around, if you just need someone to walk your dog, this is your chance.

But either way: I do believe that if you like this newsletter, you will very much like this book. This is, obviously, not the last time we’ll be talking about Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride in this newsletter. This is just the kickoff. But this is the kickoff. So come be a part. Come meet Lloyd. You two will get along great.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. College Football Had a Great Year, But It’s All Downhill From Here, New York. It was always going to be fun the first time. What about what happens next?

2. MLB Season Preview: Best Rivalries in Each Division, MLB.com. Not Cardinals-Cubs, alas.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “Wolf Man” and “Back in Action,” and previewed the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Morning Lineup, I did Monday’s and Friday’s show.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“The inauguration of us,” Anand Giridharadas, The Ink. Probably time for people—myself very much included—to get real about what this all means.

It has always been tempting to think of Donald Trump as an infection. A rare bacterial strain that emerged out of nowhere (or Queens) and began to sicken the American body politic. To turn us meaner and nastier, to corrupt our institutions, to rig our systems, to divide us, to inflame our hatreds, to delude us, to engross us with lies, to make enemies of friends, to neglect, to grift, to leech a nation for profit.

…. If you subscribed to the bacterial delusion, you were constantly on the hunt for antibiotics. Maybe Bob Mueller was it. Maybe Merrick Garland was it. Maybe Jack Smith was it. Maybe this trial and this judge; maybe that one. Maybe this report. Yes, yes, this — this would be the end of him. But everything kept not being the end of him. Every antibiotic took its best shot. Nothing did it. Not the courts, not the Department of Justice, not special reports, not impeachment trials. Trump was the most resistant strain in history.

The truth that was harder to accept was staring at us all along: This man was not alien to us, a foreign invader. He was us, or at least a part of us. This wasn’t a bacterial infection. It was an autoimmune condition, parts of who we are flaring heatedly against other parts of who we are; a vicious battle within our own hearts; not a sectional conflict but an intracellular fight.

Also, this Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta piece about how much the Washington Commanders’ success as absolutely killing Daniel Snyder is as delicious as I just made it sound.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (Got some more of these out this week, stand by.)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“September,” Earth, Wind & Fire. So my son Wynn and I watched “Robot Dreams” together last week—on his recommendation, he loves the graphic novel—and it was, I have to say, wonderful. I cannot recommend it enough. Kids will love it. Parents—who will respond, I suspect, quite emotionally to its themes of lost love and old friendships—will be flattened by it. This song provides the crux of the movie, and Wynn now knows that if he puts it on, his father will start dancing.

The movie is on Disney Plus. Watch it. You won’t regret it. Here’s the trailer:

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section. Let this drive your listening, not the algorithm!

Also, there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

I got up this morning and ran a half marathon. It was very cold. I did stop and Mile 10 and say hi to these dorks.

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will