Episode 474: In The Seats With....Meg Gardiner and 'Heat 2'

This holiday season you can take a break from the screens and still get immersed in a movie we've all been waiting for...On this episode we are talking with New York Times Bestselling Author who got the pleasure of pairing up with a cinematic master for a sequel that has been decades in the making and that we never would have expected.  It's time for Heat 2.One day after the end of Heat, Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) is holed up in Koreatown, wounded, half delirious, and desperately trying to escape LA. Hunting him is LAPD detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Hours earlier, Hanna killed Shiherlis’s brother in arms Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) in a gunfight under the strobe lights at the foot of an LAX runway. Now Hanna’s determined to capture or kill Shiherlis, the last survivor of McCauley’s crew, before he ghosts out of the city.In 1988, seven years earlier, McCauley, Shiherlis, and their highline crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the US-Mexican border, and now in Chicago. Driven, daring, they’re pulling in money and living vivid lives. And Chicago homicide detective Vincent Hanna—a man unreconciled with his history—is following his calling, the pursuit of armed and dangerous men into the dark and wild places, hunting an ultraviolent gang of home invaders.Meanwhile, the fallout from McCauley’s scores and Hanna’s pursuit cause unexpected repercussions in a parallel narrative, driving through the years following Heat.A truly immersive experience and a must for any fans of the original film and this universe, you won't be able to put it down.We had the pleasure of sitting down with Meg to talk about who approached who on this project, what her job was working along side  Michael Mann and how important it was at the end of the day to make this a novel and not a screenplay.Heat 2 projects its dimensional and richly drawn men and women into whole new worlds—from the inner sanctums of rival crime syndicates in a South American free-trade zone to transnational criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia. The novel brings you intimately into these lives. In Michael Mann’s Heat universe, they will confront new adversaries in lethal circumstances beyond all boundaries.