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Can fans of ABC's Lost (tonight, 9 ET/PT) find clues in Bad Twin, a just-published novel with mysterious links to the hit TV show?
Maybe. And if so, it boosts the popular fan theory that the island on which the cast is stranded is purgatory. Fueling the supposition: The author's name, Gary Troup (a nom de plume), is an anagram for "purgatory."
But buying the book might simply be buying into a marketing campaign by ABC sister company Hyperion Books. The novel is obviously a creation that ties into the hit drama -- and the fervent fan base that searches for clues to the castaways' predicament. But it is not known whether the show's writers or producers helped craft the tale and whether it has substantive links to the series.
The publisher isn't talking; requests to discuss Bad Twin over the past few months have been deflected. But the Lost ties can be tantalizing nonetheless.
In the Feb. 8 episode, the character Hurley is seen reading the Bad Twin manuscript, found among the wreckage of Oceanic Air Flight 815.
On the cover of the new book, under Troup's name, it reads "His Final Novel Before Disappearing on Oceanic Flight 815." On the back is a note from Hyperion explaining that Troup has been missing since the jetliner disappeared and that "reason tells us that the author and his fellow travelers cannot have survived this disaster."
The book jacket also lists another Troup book, The Valenzetti Equation, apparently about a mathematical equation that can predict the apocalypse. The Valenzetti Equation can't be found for sale, but the equation is discussed on valenzettifoundation.org, a site that links to the website for the fictional Oceanic Air (oceanic-air.com).
The plotline has no apparent link to Lost. It is a traditionally told mystery about private detective Paul Artisan hired by the wealthy Cliff Widmore to find his missing twin, Zander. There are, however, details of interest to Lost fans:
*There is a reference to the 17th-century British philosopher John Locke, who shares a name with one of Lost's main characters.
*A sloop in the novel is named "Escape Hatch." "The hatch" is a mysterious bunker where part of Lost's action takes place.
*Much of Bad Twin takes place on islands real and imagined: Manhattan, Cuba, Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef and the fictional Peconiquot Island.
*At one point, Manny Weissman, Artisan's mentor, says, "Life is complicated ... It isn't like a string of numbers, you add them up, there's only one solution." A string of numbers -- 4, 8, 15, 16, 42 -- and what they might stand for is one of Lost's mysteries.
*Weissman also talks about purgatory in Dante's Divine Comedy: "The stakes could not be higher. There's suffering, but unlike on earth, the suffering isn't senseless and random. It has meaning and purpose ... Destinies balance on a knife edge. The slightest slip dooms you to perdition."
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