By Basil Sands
Howdy folks, let me introduce you to crime writer Sean Lynch, whose hard-core, fast-paced debut novel WOUNDED PREY becomes available May 28th from Exhibit A Books.
Sean was born and raised in the billowing green corn seas of Iowa, served as an infantryman in the U.S. Army, attended college on the GI Bill and received a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Sociology and Criminology. He spent nearly three decades in various positions, including patrol officer and commander of the Detective Division.
He began writing as a rookie cop to relieve stress and as an outlet to process the unique experience of being a rural Iowa kid working a police beat in urban California.
Tell us about your debut novel WOUNDED PREY.
It’s a novel of the hunt. It’s about the slaying of a dragon, really. I wanted to write a story about real people, and how they come to grips with encountering a monster; not a police procedural where Dragnet-inspired enforcers of the law doggedly seek justice. WOUNDED PREY is about trauma, and the journey towards redemption. It’s about making things right. In many ways it’s a contemporary western. But it’s a bloody tale, and the hunt in WOUNDED PREY reflects the ‘eye for an eye’ perspective of those personally touched by the monster, instead of merely assigned to apprehend him.
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By Cathy Clamp
Edgar award winning writer David Housewright is known for consistently engrossing mysteries, and the tenth installment in his popular Rushmore McKenzie series is no exception. Even though Minnesota ex-cop McKenzie really doesn’t need the money from taking jobs, he misses putting bad guys behind bars where they belong. So when the ATF approaches him and ask him to help find a cache of stolen firearms, he can’t help but say yes. But things take an awkward turn when instead of the band of vicious crime lords he was expecting to find taking the guns, the thieves are part of a struggling family, including retirees who lost their life savings who have little to lose in their attempt to survive. In typical Housewright style, things go from bad to hilariously worse as McKenzie begins to care what happens to the family when real crime lords, along with crooked cops, want in on the scheme. Taking on the serious subjects of gun running and corporate downsizing while blending in deft humor and action, this book satisfies on multiple levels.
Big Thrill editor Cathy Clamp sat down with the two time winner of the Minnesota Book Award to talk about his inspiration and what’s next in the series:
You’re digging right into the headlines for the topic of this book. What sparked your interest in writing about this subject?
While touring a book, I met an elderly man in a small town in the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. He had done quite well for himself and was looking forward to his retirement. The plan was the sell his house and use the proceeds to buy a house in a bigger city. But when the time came, he found he couldn’t get anyone to buy his house - a four bedroom house and he was willing to sell it for $40,000 yet there were no takers. That’s because all the jobs had moved away and what few people who were left in town couldn’t find work – the community had a high school built for 2,000 yet had only 160 students attending.
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By Ian Walkley
Jarkko Sipila is a Finnish author and journalist. He has reported on Finnish crime for more than 20 years, has written 15 books, and co-wrote a TV-series based on the Takamäki books. The Ilta-Sanomat describes Sipila as “One of the great Finnish crime novelists.” His style is strong on action and realism, and through his complex characters and story lines he explores current topics surrounding life in contemporary Finland.
COLD TRAIL is Sipila’s fourth in his prize-winning Helsinki Homicide series, and joins NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, AGAINST THE WALL, and VENGEANCE, which are all available in English. COLD TRAIL is a story about Timo Repo, who escapes from prison where he was serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife. Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamäki and his team have the task of finding Repo. But why has he escaped? Generally one-time offenders are not considered particularly dangerous, but does Repo have revenge on his mind, and if so on whom?
The series protagonist, Detective Kari Takamaki, is a professional cop and family man. We’re used to reading about cops with flawed characters. How did you develop Takamaki’s character?
I created Takamaki around 2000 and at that time I had worked as a crime reporter for ten years. Of course I had met dozens of policemen and knew quite a few very well. Of course there are problems among policemen and –women. You see alcoholism, divorces, family problems, misuse of drugs etc, but you never see all the problems in a same person. In those cases he or she would be on a sick leave or forced to quit the job.
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Past horrors bleed into a present-day nightmare
Fifteen years ago, a psychotic killer abducted seventeen-year-old Melissa Walker. For 83 days she was raped, tortured, and then left for dead in a deserted churchyard . . . but she was still alive.
Melissa begins a new life as homicide inspector Sabrina Vaughn. With a new face and a new name, it’s her job to hunt down murderers—a job she does very well. But when Michael O’Shea, a childhood acquaintance with a suspicious past, suddenly finds her, he brings to life the nightmare Sabrina has long since buried.
Believing his sister was recently murdered by the same monster who attacked Sabrina, Michael is dead set on getting his revenge—using Sabrina as bait.
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By Connie (Corcoran) Wilson
Adrian McKinty is the real deal. McKinty blurs the line between genre writing and literary fiction with his thriller mystery series about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET is the second book in that series, and Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus novels, said, “I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET blew my bloody doors off!”
Praise such as “McKinty is a big new talent” (THE DAILY TELEGRAPH) and “McKinty’s literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation’s leading talents” (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY) make it clear that readers are in for a treat when they select a McKinty novel. The first book in The Troubles series, THE COLD, COLD GROUND was expertly done. Sean Duffy (a “peeler,” or policeman, in the slang McKinty uses with such familiarity) has once again intrigued us in the second novel, with the convoluted plot of I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET, the first book’s follow-up.
I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET was published by Prometheus Books in May of 2013. Sean Duffy, crime-fighting policeman, finds a torso in a suitcase. The torso turns out to be all that’s left of an American tourist who once served in the U.S. military. In time, Duffy turns up at the doorstep of a beautiful, flame-haired, twenty-something widow, whose husband died at the hands of an IRA assassination team just a few months prior. Duffy is bound and determined to pursue the case, no matter what. Set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland’s most tumultuous of times, readers are taken back to the eighties, when John DeLorean was going to bring Northern Ireland’s economy back by establishing his futuristic auto company in that troubled land.
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By 
Thomas Pluck
It’s 1967 and Moe Prager’s girlfriend has been beaten into a coma and left to die on a Brooklyn street. The same day, someone tries to run down his best friend. Moe, a college student, sets out to find the people behind these attacks, but is surprised at every turn as he pieces together the connection between the local mob, a radical student group, and an undercover cop. All roads, it seems, lead to ONION STREET.
Reed Farrel Coleman has been called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the “noir poet laureate” in the HUFFINGTON POST. He is the author of sixteen novels, three time recipient of the Shamus Award and a two-time Edgar Award nominee, winner of the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards and a founding member of MWA U.
Hi, Reed. For readers who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Moe Prager, give us the lowdown on him, and what he’s up against in ONION STREET.
Moe is both what you’d expect from a hard-boiled ex-cop turned PI and nothing you would expect from one. He’s a deep thinker and has a longstanding struggle with the subjects of God and religion. He has aged through the course of the series and undergone all sorts of growth, change, and tragedy. I thought it was a good time to tell the story of how he went from being an aimless college student in the late ‘60s to a cop. And that’s where we find Moe in ONION STREET. Unlike in the earlier books, this is Moe with no law enforcement experience. We watch him come to grips with the harsh realities of crime.
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By George Ebey
James Thompson is the author of three previous novels in his explosive Finnish-based crime series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara. Now he is back with his fourth installment, HELSINKI BLOOD.
This time around, Inspector Vaara is recovering from the physical and emotional toll of solving his previous case when he’s approached with a plea: an Estonian woman begs him to find her daughter, Loviise, a young woman with Down syndrome who was promised work and a better life in Finland . . . and has since disappeared.
One more missing girl is a drop in the barrel for a police department that is understaffed and overburdened, but for Kari, the case is personal: it’s a chance for redemption, to help the victims his failed black-ops unit was intended to save, and to prove to his estranged wife, Kate, that he’s still the man he once was. His search will lead him from the glittering world of Helsinki’s high-class clubs to the darkest circles of Finland’s underground trade in trafficked women . . . and straight into the path of Loviise’s captors, who may be some of the most untouchable people in the country.
I recently got in touch with Jim who provided plenty of insight in the world of HELSINKI BLOOD and what it takes to write a great crime story.
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It takes courage for a best-selling author to change up their writing, but it can pay off big. In THE PERFECT GHOST, award winning author Linda Barnes steps outside the box to take the mystery thriller to another level.
The story centers on Em Moore who is co-writing a celebrity biography with her charismatic partner, Teddy. Teddy does all the socializing, interviewing and negotiating for both of them. Being extremely shy and timid, Em is understandably devastated when Teddy dies in a car accident. As the author points out, Em is not your typical thriller heroine.
“She’s a recluse, a non-partier, the ultimate wallflower,” Barnes says. “A clever perfectionist, she is protagonist if not heroine.”
Teddy’s death leaves Em alone in a world she doesn’t understand. To try to cope with her loss, Em decides to honor Teddy’s memory the only way she knows – by finishing their current book — an “autobiography” of renowned film director Garrett Malcolm. His character brings us around to the spectral title.
“The title has a double meaning,” Barnes says, “referring both to the profession of the protagonist, a ghostwriter by trade, and to the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the role played by another main character, the actor-director-screenwriter, Garrett Malcolm.”
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By Terri Didomenico
CONFLUENCE is Stephen J. Gordon’s second novel featuring his hero Gidon Aronson that follows his debut novel, IN THE NAME OF GOD.
In both novels, we find Gidon going about his daily life—running his martial arts dojo and substitute teaching at a local private school. On the surface it appears to be a rather normal life. Fortunately for some people, like a visiting Israeli diplomat or a young rabbi’s family, his specialized training leaps to the forefront when needed.
This is the double-edged sword Gidon deals with. He is learning to live with the consequences of his life as an elite member of the Israeli special forces and finding that living a quiet life is harder than anticipated. In both books, as Gidon tracks the perpetrators, he finds the assaults have roots in Israel and the United States, particularly his hometown of Baltimore.
Gordon had specific goals in mind when he created Gidon. “It’s important to note the hero is not Israeli. He’s an American who moved to Israel to serve in the army and help a country that has meaning to him and is surrounded by enemies. On the world stage, Israel and her people are, really, the good guys routinely fighting an extremist enemy.
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Sometimes the darkest moments of our lives give us the brightest chance at our redemption.
Estranged from his wife and daughter, former undercover cop Mark Mallen has spent the last four years in a haze of heroin. And when his best friend from the academy, Eric Russ, is murdered, all the evidence points to Mallen as the prime suspect.
Now Mallen’s former colleagues on the force are turning up the heat and Russ’s survivors are in desperate need of answers. But if he wants to serve justice to the real killer, Mallen knows he’ll have to get clean. Turning a life around is murder for a junkie, especially when two low-life thugs want him dead. Bruised, battered, and written off by nearly everyone, Mallen must make amends for his damaged past and restore hope for a better future.
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By J.N. Duncan
I’d like to welcome Thomas Perry, the best-selling author of twenty-one novels, including POISON FLOWER and THE BUTCHER’S BOY, which won the Edgar Award. METZGER’S DOG, STRIP and THE INFORMANT were all named NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKS, and VANISHING ACT was named by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association as one of their “100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century.” With a Ph.D. in English and work as a writer/producer in television, Mr. Perry brings a unique background to the writing of his intense, suspenseful stories. Let’s get to the good stuff.
Give us a quick rundown on what THE BOYFRIEND is about.
Summary of THE BOYFRIEND: Jack Till, a retired LAPD homicide detective, now works as a private detective, taking routine cases, mainly because of his love for his 24-year-old daughter, Holly. She has Down syndrome and lives in a house she shares with several friends from the school she attended. Till is trying to build savings to help fund her life after he’s gone. When the parents of a murdered girl about her age want to pay him well to look into the case, he accepts. The police department has given up on the case because the victim had been working as an escort, advertising on-line, when she was shot in her apartment. It could have been a robbery, an argument with a customer, a jealous rival, or almost anything. She was in a risky way of life, and sometimes that ends badly. Till begins to ask questions, and finds that she was one of several young women, all strawberry blondes, murdered in that way in different cities recently. He finds that the world of prostitution has changed in the few years since he retired, and now he must learn to navigate in that unfamiliar world and find the killer. When he does, the man turns out to be something much more deadly than he imagines.
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By Don Helin
In her latest novel, THE BOOK OF KILLOWEN, Erin Hart unleashes a plot so powerful that Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN and WHAT WE SAW AT NIGHT says, “Can the arcane science and lore of the Irish ‘bog people,’ who often died alone and in agony, be fuel for a mystery that actually does what THE DA VINCI CODE tried to do? A thousand times yes, if Erin Hart’s storytelling witchery is at work. Intelligent, eerie, utterly compelling.”
After a year away from working in the field, archaeologist Cormac Maguire and pathologist Nora Gavin are back in the bogs, investigating a ninth-century body found buried in the trunk of a car. They discover that the ancient corpse is not alone—pinned beneath it is the body of Benedict Kavanagh, missing for mere months and familiar to television viewers as a philosopher who enjoyed destroying his opponents in debate. Both men were viciously murdered, but centuries apart—so how did they end up buried together in the bog?
While on the case, Cormac and Nora lodge at Killowen, a nearby artists’ colony and organic farm and sanctuary for eccentric souls. Digging deeper into the older crime, they become entangled in high-stakes intrigue encompassing Kavanagh’s death while surrounded by suspects in his ghastly murder. It seems that everyone at Killowen has some secret to protect.
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By Ethan Cross
Sara J. Henry’s book, LEARNING TO SWIM, won the 2012 Anthony Award and 2012 Agatha Award for best first novel and the 2012 Mary Higgins Clark Award, was an Emerging Author pick at Target, and was a finalist for the Barry and Macavity awards. The BOSTON GLOBE named it one of the best crime novels of the year: “Compulsively readable, this is all about what we do for love.” And now its sequel, A COLD AND LONELY PLACE, has cemented her status as a “powerful new voice” in literary mystery.
Freelance writer Troy Chance is snapping photos of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival ice palace when the ice-cutting machine falls silent. Encased in the ice is the shadowy outline of a body – someone she knows. A COLD AND LONELY PLACE follows Troy on a powerful emotional journey as she discovers the damage left by long-hidden secrets, and catches a glimpse of what might have been.
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By John Rabb
Author Hilary Davidson comes out with her third book EVIL IN ALL ITS DISGUISES. Hilary is published by Forge books, and her first book THE DAMAGE DONE won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel and the Crimespree award for Best First Novel. Lily Moore is Hilary’s character in all three of her books. Lily is a successful travel writer and is thrust into a deadly situation when her younger sister Claudia is found dead in a bathtub on the anniversary of their mother’s suicide, in THE DAMAGE DONE. In February 2012 THE NEXT ONE TO FALL was the second book in the Lily Moore series. Hilary’s background is as a travel writer and got her start in journalism in 1995, being an intern for HARPER’S MAGAZINE. Hilary’s is no stranger to writing books, having published 18 nonfiction books (17 of them for Frommer’s Travel Guides). It is however great for thriller fans that she has moved over to write fiction. The time has come now to check out a little more within EVIL IN ALL ITS DISGUISES:
Lily Moore joins a group of journalists for an all-expenses-paid press junket to Acapulco. Lily begins to suspect something rotten under her hotel’s opulent façade, but she is not the only one. Skye McDermott, another journalist on the trip, asks Lily for help with an article she’s working on about fraud and corruption in the hotel industry. After Sky disappears suddenly, Lily suspects that her friend is in grave danger. The hotel’s staff insists that everything is fine and refuses to contact the police. Only after Lily tries and fails to leave the Hotel Ceron, does she discover the truth: the journalists are prisoners in a gilded cage. Too late, Lily realizes that she has been maneuvered into a role of bait in a vicious, vengeful plot. Faced with unthinkable choices, Lily must summon all her strength to survive, confront the past she’s still running from, and save other lives.
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I first met Leighton Gage when we were debuting as part of the inaugural First Thrills gang – ITW’s cyber crèche for the wide-eyed, wet-eared newbie authors who have crawled over broken glass to dip their toes in the wild rapids of traditional publishing. Of course, unless you’re very lucky, becoming a debut author means you’re already a hardened veteran of the life of hard knocks — and Leighton and I are no exceptions.
This month marks the appearance of PERFECT HATRED, the sixth in his Chief Inspector Mario Silva series. His work has garnered favorable mentions in THE NEW YORK TIMES, a lengthy article of praise in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and starred reviews from PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY, BOOKLIST and LIBRARY JOURNAL.
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By Rick Reed
Robert S. Levinson is the bestselling author of nine prior crime-thriller novels. His short stories appear frequently in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. He is a Derringer award winner, Shamus award nominee, has won the Ellery Queen Readers Award recognition three times, and is regularly included in “year’s best” anthologies. His nonfiction has appeared in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Written By Magazine of the Writers Guild of America-West, Westways, and Los Angeles Magazine. He has served four years on Mystery Writers of America’s (MWA) national board of directors, as well as wrote and produced two MWA annual “Edgar Awards” shows and two International Thriller Writers “Thriller Awards” shows. Now, all of that talent shines in his newest novel, PHONY TINSEL, to be released in February 2013, by Five Star Publishing.
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Canadian Christopher G. Moore is the creator of the award-winning Vincent Calvino Private Eye series (13 novels) and the author of the Land of Smiles Trilogy. In his former life, he studied at Oxford University and taught law at the University of British Columbia. In 1988, he came to Thailand. Twenty-five years on and 24 novels, one collection of short stories and three non-fiction titles, and three anthologies edited, he remains in Bangkok and far from having exhausted the rich Southeast Asian literary materials. His novels have been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Turkish, Polish, Russian, Norwegian and Thai.
The German edition of Moore’s third Vincent Calvino novel, ZERO HOUR IN PHNOM PENH, won the German Critics Award (Deutsche KrimiPreis) for International Crime Fiction in 2004 and the Spanish edition of the same novel won the Premier Special Director’s Book Award SemanaNegra (Spain) in 2007. The second Calvino novel, ASIA HAND, won the Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback in 2011.
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By Terry DiDomenico
A man sits in his study. There is no noise except the sound of tapping as his fingers move across the keyboard. There is an uneven flow to the rhythm – a hesitation here, a burst there.
It is here, after his day job is finished, after dinner with his family, that David Jackson, author of MARKED, does what he dreamed about: writing the kind of novels that fascinated him as a youth.
In talking about what books left the greatest impression on him and influenced his writing career, he said, “It would have to be one of Ed McBain’s books probably COP HATER – the first of the 87th Precinct mysteries which isn’t necessarily the best of the bunch but it was such a huge influence on me in terms of the type of crime story I wanted to read and later the type I wanted to write.”
And that’s exactly what this British born writer has done with his series that features first generation Irish-American New York City cop Callum Doyle.
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Ted Reckoning: The story behind FEAR COLLECTOR
I was almost a victim of Ted Bundy.
My sister dated Ted Bundy. Briefly.
I’m pretty sure that Ted Bundy followed me in his VW.
As a crime writer from the Pacific Northwest, I’ve heard those – and other claims – more times than I could really count. The last one came from a banker just last week. A mere mention of Ted Bundy’s name always brings a shudder.
Sometimes, oddly, even a boast.
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The first bomb cracked the Hilton like an egg; the second gutted the lobby of the Marriott; and the third peeled the front off the Grand Hyatt. Three massive explosions, all at American hotels, and all within a few horrifying seconds. Hundreds are dead and thousands are injured. Singapore is bleeding.
Inspector Samuel Tay is a senior inspector in the Special Investigation Section of Singapore CID, but he is frozen out of this investigation from the beginning. He’s made serious enemies in Singapore’s Internal Security Department, and he has even more enemies at the American embassy, so Tay is assigned routine cases while his colleagues join with the CIA and the FBI in a feverish search for the bombers.
Three days after the explosions, the smell of death still sticky in the city’s air, Tay is sent to a run-down apartment near the Malaysian border where two children have found the body of a Caucasian male with a broken neck. Tay feels an immediate connection with the dead man, although he knows he has ever seen him before.
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All fiction, no matter how fantastical, is rooted in the experiences of the writer. We bring something of ourselves into every short story or novel we write. In my Lieutenant Lucinda Pierce novels, I gravitated, without conscious thought, to issues that were significant to me. In previous books, I’ve touched on mental illness, suicide, parental responsibility, social obligation, elderly dementia and missing persons.
In WRONG TURN, the sixth, and latest, book in the series, Pierce grapples with claims of wrongful conviction. I stumbled into awareness and knowledge about these travesties of justice through my involvement in the case of Julie Rea, who was serving a 65-year-sentence for the murder of her 10-year-old son, Joel Kirkpatrick. In an interview I conducted with serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells for my true crime book, THROUGH THE WINDOW, he confessed to that murder.
The prosecutor made a number of comments to the media that convinced me it would be fruitless to provide the information about the confession to him. I was also aware that Sells was a master manipulator who could deceive anyone—including me. I had to make a decision: do I risk my credibility by including that crime in my book? Or would it be wiser not to disclose any of that information and avoid the scrutiny that would accompany those revelations?
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By Derek Gunn
The Crime genre is very popular at the moment and, as with most popular genres, it is a very busy one. It is difficult to get noticed on the shelves when there are so many books vying for our attention. Yes, we have Amazon sending us notifications of books similar to any we might have bought and, of course, on-line blogs and magazines that critique, review and generally inform us about the next big thing. Among this deluge of information it is hard to choose which new author to read next. My assignment this month is Judith Cutler. Judith is a very busy lady with five on-going series to her a credit.If there is one thing that gets me to sit up and take notice it is an author who has steadily built up a following and created their characters over a period of time. I had not read Judith before I must admit, however, this is more my loss than hers. The main series feature amateur sleuth Sophie Rivers, Chief Superintendent Fran Harman or Detective Sergeant Kate Power. All the novels revolve around her native Birmingham.
Like many writers I have talked to, Judith starting writing early in life in Grammar School and then life got in the way and it wasn’t until she was in her thirties that an illness gave her the time and the distraction to take a pen back up and begin to write again. Of course, the path to publication was not an easy one – it rarely is but she persisted and finally the first of the Sophie Rivers novels was released. Since then Judith has been unstoppable creating new characters and engrossing stories ever since.
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Not every novelist works alone, but not every novelist can collaborate. Here to tell me how it can work, and about their new novel THE DIAMOND SEEKERS, please welcome Jack Everett and David Coles.
Thank you, Jack and David!
Reviews for THE DIAMOND SEEKERS are rolling in:
“This is my first Everett/Coles tale, but I dare say…not my last. Their writing is exquisite and fascinating. If you need a good book to curl up with, read THE DIAMOND SEEKERS. You won’t regret a second!” Terri Ann Armstrong, author of HOW TO PLANT A BODY
“This book has more twists and turns than a mountain road.” Ruth Ann Hixson
“This is a fantastic thriller that caught and held my attention from the first page.” Lynn Worton
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By Gary Kriss
Lee Weeks has been a cocktail waitress, a nightclub hostess, an au pair, a disc jockey, an English teacher and a personal fitness trainer. Now she’s about to become a woman.
And while she’s committed to the transition, it’s not necessarily an easy one for this mother of two grown children, who’s spent the last four years as a man.
Make that “as a Mann” –Johnny Mann, an inspector in Hong Kong’s Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, whose deeds Weeks chronicled in four bestselling novels. But when Weeks’s new novel, DEAD OF WINTER (Simon & Schuster), hits the shelves in a few days, Mann is nowhere to be found. Instead there’s a new sheriff in town—Ebony Willis, a Detective Constable in London’s Metropolitan Police Service and the lead character in Weeks’s new series.
“Johnny Mann’s life as a policeman working in Hong Kong came to an end in the last book KISS & DIE,” Week says. “It seemed like an ideal time to establish a new set of characters UK based. A part of me also wanted a new challenge. I wanted to create a new series where the story – the plot – is everything, where each story stands alone and my murder squad is embroiled in it.”
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By Jeremy Burns
Max Allan Collins is one of the most prolific mystery authors writing today. With a decades-long career spanning multiple genres and formats, Collins has proven himself to an immensely talented author. He recently took time out from his extraordinarily busy writing schedule to tell THE BIG THRILL about the latest entry in his hit Nathan Heller detective series, TARGET LANCER.
Tell us about your new thriller, TARGET LANCER.
TARGET LANCER looks at a little known aspect of the Kennedy assassination and uses solid historical research as a platform for a thriller, with some mystery novel elements…which is pretty much the standard approach of a Nate Heller novel, though the Heller novels do not exactly have a standard approach, since each historical crime or mystery I explore has its own challenges and parameters.
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By Basil Sands
What would you do if you came home after a night out partying with friends and saw a hooded man staring at you from inside your own living room? Well, it depends on whether or not your cousin is a former FBI agent with an attitude or not.
Meet Keye Street, ex- FBI Profiler, recovering alcoholic, and Private Investigator with a sweet tooth and a hard attitude.
Let’s chat with Amanda Kyle Williams, author of STRANGER IN THE ROOM, sequel to THE STRANGER YOU SEEK.
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Whether you’re looking for a new mystery, an intriguing caper story or a taut thriller by a writer who has something to say about today’s society, you’ll want to check out Gary Phillips’ the WARLORD OF WILLOW RIDGE. This ambitious novel has it all.
Willow Ridge is an exclusive gated community, or at least it was before the recession left homeowners at the ends of their financial ropes. Now two rival gangs are at odds, there’s drug manufacturing going on, while white collar criminal behavior percolates below the surface as well.
Into this setting of passion, betrayal and potential violence wanders O’Connor, a down-on-his-luck career criminal looking for a place to lie low. O’Connor is the kind of guy who’s always looking for an angle, not really looking to hurt someone. Still, even the author admits that his protagonist is not really a hero.
“O’Connor is neither all bad nor all good,” Phillips says. “He does what’s necessary, though contrasted against some of the other people he encounters in the book I don’t think he comes off looking too shabby.”
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By J. H. Bográn
In AN INCONSEQUENTIAL MURDER, the murder of a young systems engineer seems inconsequential: just another death in the brutal “Drug Wars” going on in Mexico. But, detective Guillermo Lombardo’s investigation reveals that there is much more to the case. He finds that there is another “war” going on. It is between those that would have drugs legalized and those that oppose the move; and it is just as deadly as the war between the drug cartels.
What inspired the premise for AN INCONSEQUENTIAL MURDER?
Some years ago, I knew a young engineer who was in charge of software acquisitions for the State University in Monterrey, Mexico. He was also a systems engineer who did various jobs at the University’s large, central computing site. He left the computing site late one night and never got home. His body was found, by the railroad tracks that cross the central part of the city, early the next morning. He had been badly beaten and then left on the track. He was beheaded by a freight train that came into the city around 4:00 AM. The motive for the murder, the killer, or killers of the young man were never discovered. I also knew quite well his cousin who was a friend of mine and the head of the University’s Central Computing site. He was also perplexed by his cousin’s murder and said he had no clue what could have motivated it. The murdered man was, by all accounts, a nice, quiet, hard-working family man. Robbery was ruled out because nothing had been taken from the body. A real mystery.
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A former superintendent with Thames Valley Police, David Hodges is an accomplished crime thriller writer, with five novels and an autobiography published. His debut novel, FLASHPOINT, won critical media acclaim and was followed by a second novel, BURNOUT. His last three novels, SLICE, FIRETRAP and now REQUIEM are all published by Robert Hale. This month he chats with The Big Thrill about REQUIEM and why his character’s motivations are the most terrifying part of his stories.
Why did you choose your title REQUIEM?
Several reasons actually. In the first place, the psychotic killer involved in the story was originally a funeral director, so REQUIEM seemed appropriate. Secondly, and more importantly, this novel is a sequel to the one before, entitled FIRETRAP, and as this is the concluding part, with the killer returning in an attempt to murder the woman police officer who thwarted his plans in FIRETRAP, REQUIEM seemed appropriate here also.
What is the story behind the cover for the book? Where do those stairs lead?
The cover of the book depicts the monument which stands on top of Glastonbury Tor. Glastonbury is an integral part of the Somerset Levels where the story is set and the book cover is intended to symbolise, not only the area, but the chilling mystery of the place. The steps themselves climb the hill towards the Tor.
Why is Kate Hamblin such an inspiration to write about? Why do readers relate to her?
I wanted a woman police heroine instead of the usual male hero. But I wanted someone who was ordinary and, in some ways, flawed, as we all are. So Kate is, hopefully, a young woman –quite vulnerable in some ways – who female readers should be able to identify with. I also wanted to create a character without the usual sexist hang-ups – yes, a woman who is very attractive, but also one who is equal to and, in many cases better than, her male colleagues. BUT, and a very big BUT, not the sort of feminist icon with butch tendencies who can trounce any man etc etc, as we see so often in fiction, where women tend to be patronised. I am not making a statement with Kate; she is just a very good determined police officer and whether she is a man or woman is irrelevant. I think readers will relate to her for the reasons I have given.
How can you write stories about such a psychotic person like Twister and sleep at night? Does Twister haunt you?
I am someone who never sleeps well at night, but not because I hear strange noises or fear someone, like Twister, targeting me, but because my brain seems to be more acute in the small hours and ideas come to me so fast that it is difficult to remember them when I wake up in the morning. I think my sleeplessness stems from my time on shift as a police officer; you never entirely recover from shift-work, especially night turn.
As to the character of Twister, I have a vivid imagination and thirty years experience in the police force dealing with criminals, some of who have been on a par with Twister. He doesn’t haunt my dreams, but he is very real to me. I see him as a real person and one to be very frightened of. Like most psychopaths, he is a man just like any other on the surface – not some bulging eyed maniac – and you could be sitting next to him on a bus or train and not know it. In FIRETRAP I show him viciously assaulting someone to extract information and then tenderly wiping away the blood from their broken nose afterwards. He is a contradiction in terms – a person who is cold and has no empathy with anyone, yet observes the niceties and does things in a clinical practical way (ie. I have broken your nose, but the blood must be causing you some discomfort, so I will wipe it away for you) In short, he is the sort of man who would torture a person out of objective interest and enjoy the buzz. Not a man to take tea with!!!
I know you can’t give the book away, but how sick does Twister get in REQUIEM
Depends what you mean by ‘sick’??? The suggestion throughout is that he is not sexually competent in the normal sense of the word, but finds the act of murder very arousing. In REQUIEM, in particular, he comes very close to sexual arousal at the thought of what he is going to do to Kate, but that is all. The end he has in store for her is sick, but not in a sexual sense. I don’t deal in perversion or gratuitous violence in my novels. Yes, there IS violent death and I try to make the method of despatch in each book different, but this is a means to an end and I don’t dwell on things. Twister is a dangerous psychotic character, driven by homicidal desires – an inadequate sociopath, who is not only very cunning, but totally amoral and without conscience. For me, it is the character of the man rather than what he actually does that is the most terrifying aspect of the story.
When writing your thrillers what is the one objective you hope to achieve in every book and why?
Thrillers are first and foremost about entertainment. People like to be frightened by things that they know are only fictional – ghost stories are a classic example. So my primary objective is to entertain; to frighten my readers, to make them sit upright in bed if they hear a door creak or a tin can roll across the patio. But to entertain, it is essential that you hold the reader’s interest, so making the book a good page-turner is equally vital. I read novels sometimes so heavy with procedure and explanations that I begin to wonder whether the author is more interested in trying to impress the reader with his knowledge about a particular subject than giving them a good read. I am very keen to ensure that the background to my books is accurate, even though the plots are entirely fictitious. Having been a serving police officer, obviously it is very important to me that the police procedure at crime scenes etc is portrayed as accurately as possible and I get very annoyed when I read crime books or see crime films on television where the author has not done his or her homework properly.
But having said that, I try not to get too involved in procedure or it spoils the impact of the story, so though it is there, I tend to gloss over it and concentrate on the action, at times also adopting some degree of poetic licence if it is appropriate. When I pick up a crime book to read, I want to be led on a fast moving journey, where I reach the end of a chapter and just have to read on because I want to know what happens next. If I have to turn back to check some fact or a particular character or end up looking to see how many pages I have yet to read to the end of the chapter, the author has lost it for me and I try very hard to ensure my novels don’t fall into this trap.
Somerset is a huge inspiration for your novels. Why do you hold so much value to setting?
My last two novels have been set on the Somerset Levels and for a number of reasons. Most obviously it is because I live here myself, so research is made easier and an authentic background can be created through local knowledge. Secondly, I believe that readers like to read stories set in real places, particularly places in which they live or work. You have only to look at Colin Dexter with his Oxford based Inspector Morse series, Ian Rankin who sets his novels in Edinburgh and Peter James who favours a Brighton patch, to see how popular this strategy is. But, most important of all, the Somerset Levels, with its wild open countryside, dense mists swirling across marshes criss-crossed by a latticework of rhynes (or man-made drains); its haunting – almost primeval – atmosphere and its association with witchcraft and Mediaeval history, is an ideal place for murder, mystery and suspense. In such a beautiful evocative part of Somerset, what writer could not but be inspired?
What is (Twister’s) fascination with Kate?
It is two years since Twister disappeared after blasting two police detectives to death with an incendiary device and embarking on a murderous rampage across the Somerset Levels (FIRETRAP) But now, in REQUIEM, he returns to take his revenge on Kate, who is the one person who escaped his clutches all that time ago. In his cold calculating mind, he sees her as unfinished business, which hurts his pride, and he has devised a particularly unpleasant, but spectacular end for her. Yet he is in no hurry to make his move – he wants some fun first. And Twister’s idea of fun is the last thing Kate or anyone else would want.
Since you were a former police superintendent and now you write crime fiction with cops as main characters, would you ever consider writing anything else and why?
I have always liked good old-fashioned mystery – screams in the night, fog, sinister shadows in the moonlight! I grew up on this sort of story with Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu, the tales of Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond and Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. But my real love has always been Victorian gothic style thrillers and I have been an avid follower particularly of Sherlock Holmes stories for as long as I can remember. When I started writing at the age of 11, it was heavily influenced by the gothic style and when I got to my teens, I concentrated on this genre for several years before joining the police, but got nowhere. I created a particular character who still lives in my head and sometimes I think he is a real person and I hope one day to bring him into the light. Thirty years in the police put a stop to my writing ambitions due to the nature of the work, but when I retired I started writing again, producing a series of thrillers which were published one after the other. These were all modern style police thrillers because it was easier to write what I knew about. However, I would dearly love to complete the gothic Victorian mystery that is now two-thirds written and one day I hope I will realize my ambition in this respect. At present though, I am having too much fun and success writing modern thrillers, so long may it continue.
When your family read your stories do they ask if any of it had ever happened to you? If so, would you share an instance in which a scene or story was true to life?
My family have never asked this question, funnily enough. My wife, Elizabeth, doesn’t read this sort of crime fiction and my two children simply read my novels and comment on what they think of them. However, readers often ask me this question and I can only say what I tell them: all my stories are entirely fictitious and I would not refer to an incident I dealt with in reality in the police. Nevertheless, it is true to say that bits of different incidents have helped me to formulate accurate background material for my plots (eg. crime scene forensic work etc), but nothing specific comes to mind. Having said that, my characters – both police and non-police – are sometimes composites of different people I knew. People watching is a vital requirement for all writers and when I create a character, it has to seem real to me in my mind, so it is inevitable that I sometimes think of someone I knew and the characteristics he or she exhibited. But again, I would never create a fictional character from a recognizable real person; it would not be appropriate.
Where can your books be obtained and do you have another novel in the pipeline?
All my books are currently available on Amazon or can be purchased through any of the usual commercial outlets. The latest crime novels, SLICE, FIRETRAP and REQUIEM can also be obtained via the website of the publisher, Robert Hale Ltd, with REQUIEM due out in October this year.
SLICE, FIRETRAP, and my autobiography on my thirty year career as a police officer, REFLECTIONS IN BLUE, are also now available on Kindle.
I have nearly completed my fifth novel, BLAST, which will be offered to my publisher at the end of this year, hopefully for publication in 2013. BLAST is another crime thriller, set this time in London and the south-west of England, in Cornwall.
*****
Former superintendent with Thames Valley Police, David Hodges is an accomplished crime thriller writer, with five novels so far published, plus an autobiography. His debut novel, FLASHPOINT, won critical media acclaim and was followed by a second novel, BURNOUT. His last three novels, SLICE, FIRETRAP and now REQUIEM are all published by Robert Hale. He is a family man, with two daughters and four grandchildren, and lives on the edge of the Somerset Levels with his wife, Elizabeth, where he can fully indulge his passion for crime writing.
By Josie Brown
Most protagonists have to deal with one murderous sicko. In THE PROPHET, Ethan Cross’s second novel in his Shepherd series, not only does Special Agent Marcus Williams deal with Francis Ackerman, a serial killer who lives to be his nemesis, he must also stop a new killer, the Anarchist, before he drugs and kidnaps another female victim, then burns her alive at the behest of “the Prophet,” a mysterious figure who wields control over a twisted brotherhood.
Mindboggling? You betcha. Rest assured there is a method to the madness of Cross’s finely woven plot, which began with a book-length outline…
How did the plot concept for THE PROPHET come to you?
Well, I was visited by three ghosts and…sorry, that’s a different story. With THE PROPHET, I wanted to touch on the world of doomsday cults and the abuse of power wielded by the charismatic leaders of such groups but also on the impact of abuse and how the sins of the parents affect their children. Throw in some gun fights and explosions, and you’ve got yourself a story!
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THE BIG THRILL:…