Justin Scott of Newtown is a writer of more than 30 historic adventure thrillers, including the “The Shipkiller," the Ben Abbott mystery series, and 10 best sellers co-authored with Clive Cussler on the Isaac Bell series. One of Scott’s pen names is Paul Garrison which he has used for the Paul Janson series based on a Robert Ludlum character. He also writes as J.S. Blazer. He has twice been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

For his latest novel —“The Sister Queens,” which published on Feb. 6 — his hero is none other than William Shakespeare who in 1600, as England teeters on the brink of civil war, writes a new play not only to save his own life, but the throne, too. 

Scott recently chatted with us about his new book and why it took him 27 years to finish it. 

You’ve co-written books Clive Cussler as well as many on your own. How does Shakespeare compare to the action adventure heroes of those books?

Here he is not an action hero, but rather the unwilling participant in an action story. When you have a playwright as the main character you don’t have the option of him fighting back because he’s not equipped to battle violently. He’s not a military veteran. So here he’s dependent on his wits but he does take chances, but he doesn’t dominate physically. However, he is surrounded by friends who do get into action, like fellow playwright and poet Ben Jonson (who was a fierce fighting soldier with the English regiments) and those who need to keep Shakespeare alive to have the play written.

In “The Sister Queens,” the play is quite literally “the thing” — in this case the climax of the novel.

It was a lot less intimidating than creating Shakespeare as a character because the "new" play he writes is basically the big chase scene of an adventure novel, something the reader has…|CONTINUED|