Michael Mann writes Heat 2 for HarperCollins in crime debut

HarperCollins has snapped up the first crime novel from award-winning film director Michael Mann with author Meg Gardiner, returning to the world of his classic 1995 Los Angeles-set heist thriller "Heat". 

Shane Salerno at the Story Factory brokered the world rights agreement for Mann and it will be published by HarperFiction in the UK and William Morrow in the US. Heat 2 will publish in hardback, e-book and audio on 18th August 2022. The publisher said the trailer for the book has already received 1.8 million views. 

Heat 2 starts the day after the events of the film, with a wounded Chris Shiherlis—played by Val Kilmer in the original film—desperate to escape LA. The story moves between the six years preceding the heist and the years immediately after.  

“Moving from the streets of LA via the inner sanctums of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in a South American free trade zone to a massive drug cartel operation in Mexico, and eventually on to Southeast Asia, Heat 2 features brand new characters, full-blooded male and female criminals, and high-octane action sequences,” the publisher said.  

Mann said he approached the novel with the same precision and level of research he brings to his films: “My way of working with a project involves immersing into the culture of the subject and accumulating a lot of detailed first-hand impressions and information. I want to know and feel that culture and the lives of the people in it. Methods, attitudes, and family values. I like to navigate these environments and operate within them. There’s an authenticity discoverable there that I believe resonates with audiences as real and true.” 

Mann has had four Oscar nominations over his career, and won two Emmys for work that ranges from the Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro movie “Heat”, to “Thief”, “The Insider”, “Collateral”, “The Last of the Mohicans”, and “Ali”. He has also written or co-written the screenplays for those films.