MILE-HIGH MAYHEM

In a recent Saturday morning, at a prearranged time, I called a number in the United States and began talking to a house plant named Ronald. Ronald lives in a one-bedroom condo in Phoenix, Arizona, with his siblings, Betsy, Wild Thing and Frodo, and their owner, Torri Newman, or TJ, as she prefers to be called. Newman says, as I get occasional views of Ronald, the apartment and a ceiling fan until I push the right button on my phone, that it has been a long Covid lockdown and the houseplants “became my friends, my family”.

We are talking because Newman’s debut thriller, , has just been released. She has, with that first novel, landed a seven-figure, two-book contract and the thriller has been optioned for an additional seven-figure film deal. “Joyously surreal,” is