Mafia Fiasco

In Fresh Disasters, Stuart Wood's intractable detective, Stone Barrington, who has appeared in nine novels, is at it again, this time embroiled in Manhattan's Mafia underworld. Dealing with Herbie Fisher, the bane of Stone's existence, what should have been a throwaway case leads to a mob boss with a notoriously bad temper.

Fortunately, the case also brings some romance Stone's way. But as Stone gets deeper into the heart of trouble, he wonders if he can disentangle himself before he ends up as his friend Dino likes to put it "at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay with a concrete block up his ass."

Woods usually writes two novels a year but this year he has three coming out, including another Stone Barrington book in the fall called Shoot Him If He Runs, a line, says Woods, that he lifted from an old Blues song.

A licensed pilot who flies about 125 hours a year, Woods prefers to fly himself on his book tours. "I fly alone most of the time, unless the dog comes with me. (He has a Labrador Retriever.) I don't like airports," he says. "I like to land and have a car waiting for me."

Want to know what Woods thinks about his characters? Read an extensive Q&A, which Woods compiled from reader emails. About Stone Barrington he writes: "I know only one NYPD detective and I didn't meet him until after the first Stone novel, New York Dead, had been written. I don't know any lawyers like Stone, either, and he really is not me, although there are a few similarities."

Click here to read an excerpt from Fresh Disasters.

Stuart Woods is a bestselling author of more than thirty novels. He grew up in a small southern town in Georgia and has lived oversees in Germany, Ireland and England. His first novel, Chiefs, established Woods as a novelist. The book won the Edgar Allan Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America, and he was later nominated again for Palindrome. More recently he was awarded France's Prix de Literature Policiere, for Imperfect Strangers. Currently, he divides his time between Florida, Maine and New York.