July 2007 Archives

Wollie Shelley smells a wrongful death.  She may be a greeting card artist in L.A., moonlighting as a dating correspondent for a talk show, but when her friend and former boyfriend, David, a television producer, dies, she knows something is fatally amiss. 

David was terminally ill.  So why did he die by gunshot? Was his death a suicide? Assisted suicide? Or something else?   A prime suspect is Wollie’s best friend, Joey, a minor celebrity, who also dated David.

Motivated by love and a concern for justice, Wollie relies on her brain and the help of friends to solve the question, says Dead Ex author Harley Jane Kozak. “She has a fish-out-of-water sensibility, a complete lack of qualifications for solving crimes.”

Kozak, a Hollywood insider herself, is fascinated by how the world of celebrities and show business interacts with the criminal justice arena.  How does publicity influence the process? 

She has some insight on that.  As a rising star, she performed in many feature films including When Harry Met Sally and Parenthood, as well as soap operas such as The Guiding Light. 

Her transition from stage to pen evolved as part of her dramatic training. “I’m a compulsive writer. I used to write long, character biographies and essays when preparing for roles in plays. I’d write twenty-page letters to friends,” she says. “I guess I was a writer waiting to happen.”

Harley Jane Kozak started acting at the age of five.  After graduating from the New York University School of the Arts, she landed roles in feature films, soap operas and prime time television programs.  She turned to novel writing in her mid-30's.  Dead Ex is her third Wollie Shelley novel.  She lives in California and is currently working on more novels in this series. Read an excerpt of Dead Ex here.

Fourteen years ago, the seven-year-old son of Giorgio, an eminent archeologist, vanished in the tunnels beneath Rome’s ancient Circus Maximus.  Believing one of his students responsible, Giorgio beat the student to death.  The professor served a long sentence and was released, his child never found.

In David Hewson’s Seventh Sacrament—the fifth book in the Nic Costa series—Roman Inspector Nic Costa and his colleague, Leo Falcone, revive this mismanaged, cold case. 

Asking questions that should have been asked before, Costa and Falcone head back into the labyrinthine underworld of Rome, to the lost cult of Mithras, and to Giorgio.

“I became fascinated by underground Rome,” says bestseller Hewson.  “When I looked into the subject, it was impossible to get away from Mithras.”

Followers of Mithras, a religion that originated in Persia, adhered to a rigorous form of hierarchy. Practitioners were divided into seven levels, from novice to expert. To rise through the ranks, an ordeal or challenge had to be undertaken. 

“Many aspects of Mithraism—such as we know them—mirror practices in Christianity,” says Hewson. “Both had the idea of seven sacraments.”

Hewson’s enchantment with Rome began in childhood.  Raised in a children’s home in northern England, the charity library was filled with Victorian versions of Roman and Greek classics.  “The idea of the Mediterranean as a warm, human, exciting place was planted in me there, I guess,” he says.  “I still think the place (Rome) is the greatest city on earth, and I’m not a city man.”

David Hewson is the bestselling author of a dozen novels.  He started out as a journalist and worked for many years as a staff reporter in London for The Times and as a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times.  Born in Yorkshire, England, Hewson lives in the town of Wye in Southern England and has just signed on to write three more Nic Costa books.  Read an excerpt of Seventh Sacrament here.

Griff Burkett wants to make up for lost time. A former all-star quarterback imprisoned for throwing games and saving points gets caught and serves five years. But the hustler in him isn't tamed completely. When he's released, a multi-millionaire makes him an offer too good to reject: Impregnate the millionaire's wife--the old-fashioned way--and get paid a sum Griff can't refuse.

 "I thought this would be an interesting character," says Play Dirty author and New York Times bestseller Sandra Brown.  "Griff is someone who has betrayed his fellow teammates, his fans, the sport itself, while living every person's dream. Why would he risk it? Why would he throw it away?"

In Play Dirty, A big shocker occurs in the middle of the book that changes the whole direction of the book, she says.

Brown, who has written more than sixty novels, says all her characters are conjured up and are a product of her imagination. "Something starts niggling in my mind and determines whether it wants to be a book," she says. "Then I get excited all over again.  I've been working hard at it for more than thirty years.  My enthusiasm for writing, for telling stories has never dimmed."

Sandra Brown is a #1 New York Times bestselling author.  She has written nearly seventy novels, fifty-five of which have been NY Times bestsellers. Her novels have been translated into more than 30 languages.  Texan born and raised, Brown worked in television, including weather casting and feature reporting for the nationally syndicated program PM Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2007 Texas Medal of Arts Award for Literature. Click on this link and watch a short video about Play Dirty.

Burned out on life, Lee Henry Oswald wants to be left alone.  This former private investigator and veteran of the first Gulf war is working as a bartender in Dallas, living in an extended stay hotel after his house was destroyed in a fire.  But his peace-seeking fantasy is short-lived.  Two people desperately need his help.

“He’s someone who helps people out of jams,” says Crosshairs’ author Harry Hunsicker about his third Oswald thriller.

Anita Nazari, a contrary but brilliant medical researcher, is under threat of a shadowy-quasi-governmental operative.  In an unrelated case, Oswald’s old army buddy is dying from cancer caused by Gulf War Syndrome, a syndrome characterized by a set of non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, neurological problems, post-traumatic stress.  His friend’s problems stem back to exposure to an oil field fire during a mission he went on in Oswald’s place.

“Oswald is someone who can walk the line, who can work both sides of the law,” says Hunsicker. “He can’t escape what he’s destined to be.”

The story also deals with how we treat the environment. “We put a lot of poisons in the air—I’m not talking about the big industrial stuff,” says Hunsicker. “It’s the everyday household materials such as cleaning fluids and pesticides. I don’t think we understand what we’re doing to our environment.”

Harry Hunsicker is a fourth generation Texan from Dallas.  He works as a commercial real estate appraiser and speaks on creative writing when he’s not writing his next Lee Henry Oswald mystery.  His debut novel was nominated for a Shamus award, best first novel, in 2005.  Read an excerpt of Crosshairs here.

Alan Jacobson interviews James Patterson, recipient of ITW's second Thrillermaster award at Thrillfest in New York

Begin with the knowledge and expertise acquired by heading a major New York ad agency. Mix in two English degrees and a genuine love for writing, and you have the recipe for immense financial and critical success. James Patterson is the author of 36 novels, a body of work that has grossed 1.5 billion (yes, billion) dollars in worldwide sales. Impressive, yes. But more impressive is the man behind the novels.  

James Patterson signing at Thrillerfest: Photo Alan Jacobson

Jacobson: What's your take on the thriller genre today vs. where it was 10 or 20 years ago?



Patterson: The quality in general is way up, the bar is higher, the writing is better. What has been missing, though, has been those real breakthrough Day of the Jackal types. I don't come across many of those very often.



Jacobson: What do you enjoy most about the writing process?



Patterson: There are some writers who don't really like to write; they like to have finished a book. My style is pure storytelling, so it's not as laborious as it is for some. Somebody said "You're lucky if you find something you like to do and it's a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it." That's sort of my situation. I love to tell these stories. I've got a folder here with hundreds more to tell that I'll never have the time to write.



Jacobson: What's your typical writing day like?



Patterson: I pretty much write seven days a week. I write early in the morning, from 5 o'clock to 7, then about 10:30 to 11:30, and then usually late in the afternoon. I do it because I like to do it. I really look forward to going up and writing.



Jacobson: Have you ever written more than one novel at a time?



Patterson: I do nothing but work on more than one book at a time. Right now I'm finishing an Alex Cross; I'm outlining another Alex Cross; I'm finishing a Maximum Ride, my young adult series; I just outlined another Maximum Ride; I'm on the eighth draft of a love story I do once in a while; I just outlined another Women's Murder Club, number 8; and there are a couple other outlines I'm fooling around with. Since I work on a lot of projects at the same time, I can flit around. I never get stuck on a book because I tend to do a draft in a month/month-and-a-half. And I do seven or eight drafts. Because I'm working on a number of projects, I never got blocked.



Jacobson: How long are your outlines?



Patterson: Usually a paragraph a chapter, and I usually have 85% of the chapters in the outline. And it kind of fills in from there.



Jacobson: Do you ever change the outline as you go along?



Patterson: Always.



{mospagebreak}Jacobson: Do you usually know how each novel is going to end?



Patterson: I frequently don't know the ending. I know the pegs in the story, I know why I'm excited about the story, the emotions in the story. It's always something emotional for me, something that's like, "Oh, I can't wait to tell this story." That's how it'll always start. The whole thing for me is emotion, that's all it is. It's just a gut thing. That's why it's relatively easy for me to do what I do. It's a yea or nay. I feel it or I don't feel it.  



Jacobson: Earlier you mentioned emotion being a driving force. That's the case with your new novel, Cross, where Alex goes in search of his wife's killer. Was the time right to finally tell this story?



Patterson: It's something I wanted to do for a long time. And the reasons I didn't do it were, first, I didn't have a story that I liked, so I wasn't going to write the book—even though I wanted to solve that crime—I just didn't have anything I wanted to write about. Secondly, I'm just not going to go back there and spend 400 pages in the past. It's not my style. I need more things to mess around with. I need bells and whistles, fires and sirens. I like a lot of things to be going on at the same time. But also, for me, it's a very personal thing because I lost somebody in my thirties—a woman who I was living with developed a brain tumor—so that was another reason I was reluctant to get into it, because Cross's loss…comes out of my own loss. But I finally did it, and it was an emotional book for me to try to write.



Jacobson: You usually create complex villains. How do you view the antagonist in Cross?



Patterson: I remember giving a speech at a high school once and the English teacher said that good novelists have to have compassion. And I tend to agree with that. A lot of modernists would say that's a flaw in a novelist, but I happen to believe in it. I have compassion for a lot of different kinds of people. It's even necessary to draw good in bad guys. One of the things about the bad guy in Cross is that it's a conflicted thing because to a certain extent he's a good husband and father. I like bad guys that are complex. I think the best ones usually are. Alex is a pretty white-hatted kind of guy—but he's a complicated white-hatted kind of guy. He always seems to be a pretty moral, ethical guy almost all of the time, but I also think he's complicated. I think there really are people like that. He's not perfect, but his basic approach to life is pretty moral.



Jacobson: Your dialogue, particularly as it pertains to African Americans, is stellar. How did you develop an ear for this?



Patterson: I grew up in Newburgh, a tough little town in upstate New York…and we had a large black population. We had a real inner city that was tough, and in the outskirts there were a lot of farm kids. We also had an Air Force base where kids had been all around the world. A black woman that worked there came and lived in our house for four years, and I got very close to her family. And that's sort of where the Cross family, or at least the aura of the Cross family, came from. And the family was old school—wise, good cooking, nice music, funny—I enjoyed being with them. And I love basketball, and in that city if you really wanted to play serious ball, you had to go and play with the black kids—it was just better basketball. So I spent most of my eighth grade through the senior year in high school in the tough parts of Newburgh.



Jacobson: What's the most difficult part of the writing process for you?

Patterson: The first draft. It's just all a mess. My first drafts are a writing disaster. Sometimes you see certain artists and you look at their first go round on a painting and you go, "This'll never be anything." If I didn't know better, I'd read one of my first drafts and tell myself to pack it in and learn to play a musical instrument. The nice thing about having done it a lot is that you get the confidence to know that eventually it will get somewhere where you'll be relatively satisfied with it.



Jacobson: What books and genres do you like to read?



Patterson: I read a lot of nonfiction, like Michael Lewis's books, and a lot of political nonfiction. I read Bill Clinton's book, Hillary's book, Bush's book, Molly Ivins's, most of the Woodward books, and a lot of stuff about Iraq. In mysteries and thrillers, I think the best for me, in terms of pure talent, is George Pelicanos. I think he's just stunning. I like Nelson DeMille, Michael Connelly, early Patricia Cornwell, John Sandford. And a lot of others. First Blood is one of my favorite thrillers.



Jacobson: Do you think movies have helped or harmed the thriller genre?



Patterson: The movie business on the thriller/mystery side is terrible, just a total disaster. Just the worst. They have forgotten what a thriller is supposed to do, which is to thrill. And they condescend to it, and they make everything a message movie now. I thought in the past couple years the Borne movies did a good job being thrillers, Red Eye did a good job, too, but for the most part I don't go to the movies to be depressed. Derailed: nice book, awful movie. [The studios] don't get that it's Friday night, and a lot of people have this four hour window to catch a movie and catch a meal. Life is hard, the week is hard. They just don’t want to be lectured at. Then they wonder why people won't go [to the movies] anymore. They think people don't want to see thrillers. They do want to see thrillers—but [the studios] are not doing thrillers. They're doing lecture movies. There's nothing profound; the deepest they get is half as deep as a good book on the same subject. As long as they keep making awful thrillers, it will hurt the thriller [book] business. And it has.



Jacobson: The publishing industry is, and has been, ill for several years. What do you see as the future of publishing?



Patterson: All the entertainment businesses are ill to some extent, and they're going to stay ill because there are so many distractions, there are so many things to do, like the Internet—it takes up a lot of time. I think there needs to be a concerted effort to get the word out better about books that are coming out. A movie like Son of Chucky 6 comes out and every newspaper in the country covers it. Why? It's not an important movie, it's not a good movie, and it won't even do that much business. Why would they cover that versus covering books every week? There's nowhere you can get news out about books. And there are so many people in the business—critics—who are beating the shit out of books. When [the newspapers and magazines] deal with movies, they're mainstream, but when they deal with books, they get haughty. It doesn't have anything to do with their readership, it just has to do with the kind of people they're bringing in to be "critics." It should be entertainment editors who get out the word, but they don't touch it because it's the domain of the book people, and the book people don't want to talk about thrillers.



Jacobson: Is there a future for ePublishing?



Patterson: With the internet, you can put your books out there, you can get an audience, even if it's not necessarily a large one, you can communicate and get feedback. So I think that's great, great for the ego and for learning. [How well it's executed] depends on the site. On some of them nobody will edit the quality. Look at the videos [YouTube]. For some reason, people will go on there for hours and hours watching other people's home videos. So same thing: if people want to go on and leaf through a bunch of short stories or novellas or novels, so be it. There are always going to be sites that are a little better organized with a higher level of quality.

Reporting on unsavory practices of a construction company in Miami, things turn deadly for journalist Carson Lynch when her house burns down and kills her nine-year old daughter.

Excessive drinking, a broken marriage, “her life is heading into the dregs,” says novelist Carolyn Haines, whose newest thriller, Revenant, takes place in the delta region of MI, pre-Katrina.  

Lynch relocates for a reporting job in Biloxi, MI and is first on the scene where five murdered women are found in a mass grave decades old.  There, beneath a parking lot near an infamous Biloxi nightclub, each woman is discovered wearing a bridal veil. Each victim is missing a ring finger.

Within days, two more bodies appear in similar fashion.

Revenant, which means return of the spirit, chases the question: Are the new murders the result of a copycat killer or the return of the original, serial killer?

Haines grew up in small town, Lucedale, MI.  “It was like Mayberry,” says Haines.  “My mother had polio and didn’t have a childhood so we rode bikes at night and even water bombed the police department once." In return, Haines says her yard was mysteriously toilet-papered by what appeared to be men in uniform on Halloween Eve.

Today, Haines has eight horses, nine cats, five large dogs—all rescue animals.  Animals are in every book.  “They figure prominently in the characters’ lives,” says Haines. 

Carolyn Haines is the author of six Sarah Booth Delaney’s Bone series. Before writing fiction, she worked as a journalist.  She first visited the Mississippi Delta region on assignment, covering Parchman State Prison. As a child, she grew up listening to her grandmother’s ghost stories. If you’d like to win a free copy of REVENANT, please send a wedding story to: revenant123@mindspring.com . It can be funny or romantic or both. It can be your story or your grandmother’s or your mother’s.  No length restriction.

Deep in the forests of Kentucky a girl is chained to a tree.  In Oklahoma, a young pre-school teacher is murdered in front of her students.  In the panhandle of Florida, a college undergrad is kidnapped from a night club. 

These seemingly un-related crimes catch the eye of the Cellar, the agency that polices the covert world. Special ops veteran Jack Gant and profiler Susan Golden try to unravel the web of deceit and death before it's too late.

"Thelma & Louise go clandestine."  Kirkus for BODYGUARD OF LIES

Robert Doherty is a pen name for Bob Mayer. USA Today bestselling author Bob Mayer has written 32 books ranging from military techno-thriller to political thriller to non-fiction to science fiction to romantic suspense. He has over two million books in print.

She's a food writer and he's a hitman named Shane (just Shane) and they've got big bad troubles.  They've got their hands full with greed, florists, treachery, flamingos, mayhem, mothers of the bride, and -- most dangerous of all -- each other.

Crusie & Mayer's second collaboration after NY Times best-seller DON'T LOOK DOWN. "Crusie + Mayer = a great time.  Don't miss it."  BookPage.

USA Today bestselling author Bob Mayer has written 32 books ranging from military techno-thriller to political thriller to non-fiction to science fiction to romantic suspense. He has over two million books in print.

Jennifer Crusie is the New York Times, USA Today and Publisher's Weekly bestselling author of sixteen novels, one book of literary criticism, miscellaneous articles, essays, and short stories, and the editor of two essay anthologies.

With each meaningless date and disappointing new boyfriend, Katie Porter is becoming more and more disillusioned. She can't seem to find a guy who really understands her. 

But somebody's already decided that she's "the one."....Combining his trademark razor-sharp dialogue, black humor and superb storytelling talent, THE FOLLOWER is Jason Starr's most suspenseful novel yet. 

"THE FOLLOWER is this generation's Looking for Mr. Goodbar and a crackling-hot beach read." -- The New York Post

"It's been years since a thriller grabbed me the way Jason Starr's THE FOLLOWER did. THE FOLLOWER puts Starr up there with some of the greats of psychological suspense--Patricia Highsmith, Ira Levin, Ruth Rendell, Peter Abrahams. I totally loved this book." -- Joseph Finder, author Paranoia and Power Play

Jason Starr is the Barry and Anthony Award winning author of eight novels published in ten languages. His latest thriller is THE FOLLOWER. 

From the first explosive chapter, you’re hooked on this near-future thriller and Kat Polinski, its new-style heroine. Kat breaks into an embassy in Washington DC to copy a highly-classified file, only to find five bloodied corpses and a gunman determined to make her number six.

Hours later, she learns her sister has been murdered as well. Nothing and no-one will stop Kat from hunting down the killer. But the closer she gets, the more she peels away layers of a post Nine Eleven world where fear is used to control and governments act above the law.

High-stakes, high-octane thriller...my kind of book -- Lee Child 



A complex, intelligent, skillfully-turned adventure story that will keep the reader spellbound.” -- Simon Winchester

Humphrey Hawksley is a foreign correspondent for the BBC. After leaving school at 17, he worked on cargo ships., railroads and charter sailboats before becoming a journalist and author.  

Cryptopedia is an occult & paranormal dictionary.  It has chapters on ESP, UFOs, Parapsychology, Cryptozoology, Wiccan, Angels and Demons, New Age and more.  A great resource for writers!



Jonathan Maberry is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man's Song and Vampire Universe.  He is a Board Member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, an active ITW and MWA member, a speaker for the National Writers Union, and a founding partner of The Writers Corner USA (www.writerscornerusa.com).



David F. Kramer is a writer, editor, and website designer.  He is the editor of Cryptopedia Magazine, vice-president of the NJ-PA Chapter of the Horror Writers Association, web editor for The Legal Intelligencer, and former editor/publisher of the horror magazine Reaper’s Harvest.

Carter Thompson, an unassuming yet clearly disturbed billionaire with a political vendetta, chooses weather manipulation as his weapon of revenge.  He creates Hurricane Simone, the biggest storm in recorded history.

When she hits New York City, skyscrapers will fall, subways and tunnels will flood , and most of the city will disappear under thirty feet of water. It’s up to meteorologist Kate Sherman and CIA weatherman Jake Baxter to try to stop Simone using a secret U.S. Navy weapon. The only catch is that it must be deployed inside the hurricane.

“Category 7 is a superb thriller of a disaster untold until now.  A rare insight to what might and could very well happen in the future.  Suspenseful and shocking.” -- Clive Cussler, author of Dragon



“…a scheme worthy of a cat-stroking James Bond villain. …Fast-paced storytelling … A satisfying … thriller about fooling with Mother Nature.” -- Kirkus Reviews

BILL EVANS is a nationally-known meteorologist based at WABC 7 in New York City, where he is Senior Meteorologist for Eyewitness News in the Morning and Eyewitness at Noon. As the senior on-air weather personality, Bill has written and produced numerous documentaries on hurricanes and severe weather. In the course of his research, he has flown in “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft during major storms.



MARIANNA JAMESON is the author of Big Trouble and My Hero. Her extensive experience writing for the aerospace, defense, and software industries allows her to bring an insider's edge to Category 7.

 

To err is human...and deadly. Forensic pathologist and physician, Dr Anya Crichton is on the trail of a violent serial rapist- who is becoming more brutal with each attack.

The latest victims have  been stabbed to death. As the community demands justice, Anya faces the greatest dilemma of her career. If the police\'s prime suspect is innocent, her forensic evidence will destroy a respected pathologist\'s reputation. If Anya is wrong, she has ensured not only that a seasoned killer goes free, but that he remains unstoppable. Only the killer knows a mistake has been made. One that is about to prove fatal...

"Kathryn Fox has created a forensic physician readers of Patricia Cornwell will adore." -- James Patterson

"A tour de force...Lock your doors and read this book." -- NY Times Bestseller Linda Fairstein

Kathryn Fox is a medical practitioner with a special interest in forensic medicine. Her best selling debut novel, MALICIOUS INTENT, received international accalim and was awarded the Davitt award for best adult fiction. Kathryn currently lives in Sydney, Australia.

When a band of backwoods hunters crash the opening-night dinner at Hammond Aerospace's remote executive retreat, the executives suddenly find themselves held hostage by armed men who will do anything, to anyone, to get their hands on the largest ransom in history. Now, terrified and desperate and cut off from the rest of the world, the captives are at the mercy of hard men with guns who may not be what they seem.

The only one who can save them is junior executive Jake Landry, who wasn't even supposed to be there...

Joseph Finder is the bestselling author of seven novels, including HIGH CRIMES, PARANOIA, COMPANY MAN and the Thriller-nominated KILLER INSTINCT. 

 

A new chapter begins in the bestselling Nightcreature series.  In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia a beautiful mayor and a mysterious stranger must join forces to save a sleepy little town and its people. As an eclipse approaches, the secrets of the hidden moon will come to light, and a deadly enemy will be revealed.

“Handeland knows how to keep her novels fresh and scary, while keeping the heroes some of the best...pretty much perfect.” -- Romance Reader at Heart



"No one delivers better thrills than Handeland." -- Romantic Times

Lori Handeland spent years waitressing, teaching and managing a photography studio before selling her first novel in 1993.  She is the recipient of many industry awards, most recently the RITA award from Romance Writers of America for her novel BLUE MOON, which was named Best Paranormal of 2004.



Lori lives in Wisconsin with her contractor husband, two teenaged sons and a yellow lab named Elwood.  She can be reached through her web site www.lorihandeland.com  There you can join her Full Moon Club and receive a monthly e-newsletter with spooky werewolf lore, fun full moon facts, recipes, excerpts and more.

Crisscrossing Europe, Max and Emily piece together the shocking clues to an insidious international terrorism plot. With no turning back, and no one to trust but each other, they put their lives on the line and their true feelings to the test  . . . and get ready to take the heat.

Scorching passion, gritty danger, and testosterone-fueled action blend flawlessly together in the latest addition to Adair’s hot and suspenseful Men of T-FLAC series. -- John Charles, Booklist



There is no stop to the action in White Heat. It starts a couple pages into the book, and does not let up until the final scene, and neither did my interest wane. I was engrossed from the very beginning. -- Kathy Andrico, ReaderToReader.com



Ms. Adair skillfully weaves an exciting tale of explosive action sprinkled with twisty surprises around a sensual love story . . . -- Debbie Jett

New York Times author Cherry Adair took nearly ten years to become an overnight success.  Armed with a solid career plan and strategies to implement her dream, she’s become a bestselling author. Her innovative action-adventure novels have appeared on numerous bestsellers lists, won dozens of awards and garnered praise from reviewers and fans alike. With the creation of her kick butt anti-terrorist group, T-FLAC, years before action adventure romances were popular, Cherry carved a niche for herself with her sexy, sassy, fast-paced, action adventure novels.  She lives on the shores of a lake in Western Washington with a view of Mt. Rainier and her abundant gardens. There she dreams up ways to torture her characters into discovering that we all need love and the human connection. 

Forensics and Fiction: Clever, Intriguing, and Downright Odd Questions From Crime Writers is a fascinating of collection of medical and forensic story questions from crime writers with clear, concise, and often humorous answers by D. P. Lyle, MD.

“Fascinating...precise and clearly stated. Dr. Lyle has an unerring ability to diagnose what it is writers need to know.” -- Jan Burke. Edgar Award-winning author of the Irene Kelly series



“Every crime-fiction author’s best friend...as essential to my library as my Strunk and White.” -- Hallie Ephron, author of Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel



“Terrific...will jump start your imagination about all kinds of ingenious crimes, crime-solving techniques, and plot twists.” -- Matt Witten, Supervising Producer for Fox TV’s House

D. P. Lyle, MD is the Macavity Award winning and Edgar® Award nominated author of the non-fiction books, Murder and Mayhem and Forensics For Dummies, and the thrillers, Devil’s Playground and Double Blind. His next two books are: Forensics and Fiction, due August, 2007 from St. Martins/Thomas Dunne, and The Book of Forensics, a part of the Howdunnit series from Writers Digest Books, due May, 2008. He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of popular television shows such as Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Peacemakers, Cold Case, House, Medium, and 1-800-Missing.

When two young women are murdered on the streets of New York, exactly one year apart, Detective Ellie Hatcher is called up for a special assignment on the homicide task force. The killer has left behind a clue connecting the two cases to First Date, a popular online dating service, and Flann McIlroy, an eccentric, publicity-seeking homicide detective, is convinced that only Ellie can help him pursue his terrifying theory: someone is using the lure of the Internet and the promise of love to launch a killing spree against the women of New York City. 

When the First Date killer begins to mimic a serial killer from Ellie\'s own haunted past, Ellie knows the game has become personal. Both hunter and prey, she must find the killer before he claims his next victim -- who could very well be her.

"Burke ... is a terrific web spinner. She knows when and how to drop clues to keep readers at her mercy." -- Entertainment Weekly (a "Must List" pick)



".. intricately-plotted, fast-paced ... Holds the reader's attention from first word to last, and begs for a sequel." -- Kirkus Reviews

A former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair Burke is a professor at Hofstra Law School, where she teaches criminal law and procedure.  The daughter of acclaimed crime writer James Lee Burke, she graduated with distinction from Stanford Law School, completed a judicial clerkship with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and serves as a legal and trial commentator for various radio and television programs. She lives in New York City with her husband and their french bulldog Duffer. 

When television producer David Zetrakis is found dead with a gunshot wound to the head, L.A. greeting card artist Wollie Shelley is sad. When Wollie’s best friend Joey—who once, like Wollie, dated the guy—is tried in the press for the murder and found guilty, Wollie is mad. And when Joey inherits a two-million dollar Klimt painting, making her the prime suspect in the eyes of the LAPD as well, Wollie does what anyone would do for her best friend: takes on killers, cops, and paparazzi, despite a lack of credentials, physical courage, or automatic weapons.

“A Greek mythology twist and crackling insider insight into the fascinating soap opera world enhance this clever whodunit.” -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)



“DEAD EX is a wicked-smart, scalpel-sharp jewel of a book. Harley Jane Kozak brings an insider\'s eye to the denizens lurking in Hollywood, and skewers them with laugh-out-loud results. I loved it!” -- Robert Crais

Harley Jane Kozak is a former actor whose screen credits include Parenthood, The Favor, and Arachnophobia. She is the Agatha, Anthony, and MaCavity award-winning author of DATING DEAD MEN and DATING IS MURDER. She lives with her family in Topanga Canyon, California. Most importantly, she sings with the Killer Thriller Band. 

When a John Doe with a bayonet wound in his chest is discovered in a Washington, D.C. alley, Dr. Alexandra Blake of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology uses cutting edge genetic technologies to link him to a high stakes international business transaction.  But her homicide investigation is interrupted when a political firestorm erupts over the AFIP’s possession of human skulls brought back from Vietnam thirty years earlier by American servicemen.  When the John Doe case and a decades-old war crime intersect, Alex suddenly finds that she’s a target and the White House itself is under fire.

"Outstanding." -- Publishers Weekly starred review.

"Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, watch out!" -- Library Journal

"Blending elements of forensic-powered mystery, psychological suspense and a Ludlumesque espionage thriller, Andrews' newest is a page-turner…. It's highly recommended."  -- Chicago Tribune

Lori Andrews is the author of THE SILENT ASSASSIN and SEQUENCE, thrillers involving Dr. Alexandra (“Alex”) Blake, a geneticist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.  A frequent guest on Nightline, 60 Minutes, CBS Morning News, and Oprah, Lori is a law professor and expert on genetics, called in by groups ranging from the emirate of Dubai to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.  She’s taught at Princeton, written for a television legal drama, and published 10 nonfiction books.  The National Law Journal listed her as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America.

Tensions are high and the dangers multiply, as New York City bartender and man-about-the-mean streets Brian McNulty, always a sucker for the plight of the little guy, joins forces with a motley crew of workers from the old Savoy Hotel to tackle a cheating union bureaucrat and a corrupt, tyrannical hotel boss.

Keeping the goons off his back and away from his son Kevin is more than enough motivation for McNulty to put his not especially well-honed detective skills to work in the service of justice. Not surprisingly, neither justice nor McNulty himself fare very well in the endeavor, but as in past escapades, his dogged determination and willingness to see life without illusion bring the case to closure and McNulty face to face once more with unyielding and unpleasant truth.

Con Lehane’s mysteries about a genial Irish-American bartender named Brian McNulty are as cruelly charming as those Irish saloon storytellers who make sure you’re laughing before they flatten you with the sad stories of their lives. Running true to form, DEATH AT THE OLD HOTEL (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95) opens in the still-carefree days of the early 1990s at a hotel bar on Midtown Manhattan’s far west side.



It’s December, and everyone’s in a Christmas mood. But holiday spirits take a dive when the nasty manager unfairly fires a waitress and Brian, proud son of an old Commie organizer and a devoted union man, finds himself leading a strike. Goaded by his friend and fellow bartender, Barney Saunders, “a wild, young Irishman” of irresistible appeal, this big-hearted hero tries to prove a connection between the manager and a crooked union boss, and before you know it, two people are shot dead — and everyone on the picket line is a suspect.



For all the sentimental trimmings he hangs on this tale, Lehane has an honest feel for the working-class life of New York. And he’s clear-eyed about those crimes of the heart that have nothing to do with class.“ -- Marilyn Stasio, NYT



A fierce novel in the Irish sense...it may well prove to be the definitive Irish American saga. A dark emerald, lit by old glory...a true masterpiece of slow burn.” -- Ken Bruen, author of The Priest



"Forget the glitterati, the Eurotrash and the robber barons. Brian McNulty is my kind of New Yorker, and Con Lehane writes about the New York I love." -- SJ Rozan, author of In This Rain

Con Lehane’s third bartender Brian McNulty mystery, Death at the Old Hotel, in which he puts his background as a former bartender and a one-time union organizerto good use, was published in June. The first in the series, Beware the Solitary Drinker, was a 2002 Publisher’s Weekly Best Mystery Novel. The second, What Goes Around Comes Around, was likened to Lawrence Block’s early Matt Scudder mysteries by George Pelecanos and others.

Ever wonder what your favorite authors authors sound like in person? Now you can find out. The Big Thrill's roving reporter Jeff Ayers (right) has been out and about with his microphone and digital recorder at the world's biggest thriller festival ambushing his author targets in the corridors of the New York Grand Hyatt.

What kind of a bag did he get? How about Lee Child, Lisa Gardner, Joe Finder and Jim Rollins for a starters...

One of Jeff's first targets was Lee Child... 

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Here's Lisa Gardner talking about her work...

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James Rollins just hit the New York Times bestseller list at number four with The Judas Strain. So how, Jeff wondered, did that feel?

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Joseph Finder, one of the shortlisted authors for the Thriller of the Year award, was also in front of the mike.

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Our persistent reporter with the microphone also managed to track down...

Vince Flynn

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Brett Battles

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Bill Cameron

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Shane Gericke

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Jack Du Brul

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Justin Scott

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Kyle Mills

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Rick Mofina

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PJ Parrish 

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Kyle Mills

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Jason Pinter

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Tom Grace

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Thanks for all your hard work, Jeff!

Dan Reles has a new house, a beautiful wife, a son, and a  great career as head of Austin Homicide. That is, until Dan’s ex-con father—a Mafia legbreaker who’s spent the last twenty years on the run—shows up on Dan’s doorstep with an escaped prostitute and a stolen car, and Dan gets caught on the wrong end of a mob vendetta.

Sam Zelig is the last of the Jewish mob bosses, a giant of a man with boundless rage and a passion for pain—other people’s pain. Zelig chases the old man  to Austin to retrieve his stolen girl and extract his pound of flesh. But when Dan’s father won’t hand over the girl,  Sam Z takes the city itself hostage, forcing Dan to run the gauntlet: a trial by fire and water, a hail of bullets, a bridge embankment, and one very angry woodchipper.

Dan has to choose between his new family, his father, and the town he’s sworn to protect.



Part Damon Runyon, part James Ellroy, Michael Simon paints “an authentic noir landscape and peoples it with equally authentic characters—tarnished cops and haunted hookers,” writing with a rhythm and a soulfulness that raise the bar on  crime fiction. The fiery result is what Thomas Kelly, author of Empire Rising, called “a great rollicking yarn about good guys and bad guys in many splendid shades of gray.” Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland  and Paradise Alley called it “a terrific detective story, smart, dark, and acidly funny.” And Stuart Kaminsky says, “Michael Simon is a masterful teller of tales.”

Fast paced and suspenseful, THE LAST JEW STANDING thrills to the very last minute.



Michael Simon is a former actor and Texas probation officer. He has taught at Brooklyn College and New York University. He lives in New York City. 

BBC World Affairs Correspondent and thriller writer Humphrey Hawksley on the challenge of the political thriller in the 21st century.

PAUSE, IF YOU CAN, for a toast to two larger than life figures who are offering international thriller writers their most fertile ground for years.

 

Tin pot dictators, red-eyed drug barons and corporate greed have never quite delivered the canvas of the Cold War and Second World War. An assassin killing for terrorists and gangsters does not have the same chill as one on the payroll of a government.

 

The post-Nine Eleven landscape stays on the cusp of promise, but hasn’t yet produced a magic ingredient that weaves fiction around Islamic intrigue, the Patriot Act and suicide bombers.  So, six years on, there’s yet to be created a universal figure to succeed James Bond, George Smiley, Modesty Blaise, or – for the tail end of the Cold War -- Jack Ryan.

 

The characters are there and waiting. Now, Hu Jintao of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia, both keepers of a nuclear missile code, are poised to deliver a fitting canvas should Charlie Fox, Jack Rain, Jack Reacher and others choose to use it.

Soviet jackboots (and their Nazi predecessors) created an apocalyptic backdrop in which the enemy had a vision to conquer and build something unpalatably different. Great non-fiction writers such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, together with polarizing leaders like Richard Nixon and Margaret Thatcher, helped complement the characters of Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko and Le Carre’s Karla. 

The War on Terror is evolving in a far messier way, partly because at the end of the day the stakes are not as high. While Al Qaeda might again attack Manhattan, and even use a dirty bomb to do it, we cannot envisage a green crescent flag flying above the White House in the way we could the Hammer and Sickle. Nor can we picture Times Square lit up with Islamic TV shows and its sidewalks patrolled by black-robed religious police, as J. Edgar Hoover once imagined Marxist cadres smashing down the white picket fence to usurp the American dream. 

 

A great hero is only as interesting as his antagonist and, essentially, most readers do not empathize with Islamic terrorists and what they want to achieve. Nor do they think they will win. While in its competitive genesis the Soviet Union created Sputnik 1, the first man-made object to orbit Earth, Al Qaeda has failed even to make its own explosives or the vehicles it uses as weapons. Its motivation is one of the self-made victim out for revenge. The goal is to destroy. The result is poverty, random killing and mindless slogans.

 

It is precisely because of the bleakness of the Islamic scenario, that we have been  transfixed by the Polonium-210 murder of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.  First, it was a ruthless and sophisticated assassination with ripples that went to the heart of the Russian government. And second, the trail of Polonium nuclear dust took us through London’s most fashionable bars and restaurants where the clientele are beautiful and dangerous, and the barmen would happily mix James Bond a martini (however he wants it) in exchange for a lavish tip and a droll one-liner.

 

Set that against a trail through squalid Palestinian refugee camps to colorless Afghan caves, mix it with humorless conversation, bad food, an absence of exotic characters, and an enemy who believes to win is to die, and you’re in a setting where most readers don’t want to go with people they don’t want to meet.

 

But now rival nations are positioning themselves for a long game in which the Middle East and the struggle within Islam will become a proxy war of grander designs. Terror may remain a backdrop, but it doesn’t have to be the all.  New power blocks that threaten our comfortable lives are being formed in Moscow, Beijing and Brazilia, all with exotic playgrounds from which to create magnetic characters.

 

Far from taking Russia backwards with his more uncompromising foreign policy, President Vladimir Putin is positioning his nation as a rejuvenated global power.  His oil and gas reserves enable him to manipulate Europe’s energy supply. His hand is seen tampering with Europe’s new democracies from Estonia to Ukraine. His brand new SS-27 Topol-M mobile nuclear missile arsenal challenges America’s defense shield, and far from being an ally against Islamic terror he is beginning to exploit it.

Putin is overseeing the creation of Iran’s Busher reactor, that is at the heart of the crisis over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Russia has also just announced that it will build a nuclear reactor in Myanmar, or Burma, run by one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, and a country where China also has a massive military and intelligence presence.

 

China, too, is becoming confident enough to project itself in a way that is alarming the United States. Already, it has played a duplicitous role with Islamic violence. Without China, Pakistan, which spawns many of the terror groups, would probably implode. China bankrolls Pakistan’s army and supplies its  equipment. It has helped Pakistan build nuclear weapons and has encouraged the Islamic insurgency in Kashmir in order to keep India embattled.

 

China also uses despotic North Korea in its Pacific power game with Japan and the United States, with no coincidence that Pakistan and North Korea trade nuclear technology.

 

Both Russia and China are now wealthy with predatory, sophisticated economies run by highly-skilled patriots who, as often not, are armed with degrees from Ivy League business school. While Russia flexes the muscles of its fossil fuels, China’s influence runs deep into the US and global economies. It holds some US$500 billion in US Treasury debt and supplies pretty much everything we buy from Walmart and other big chain stores. From underwear to airliners, the Chinese Communist Party holds sway over the American way of life.

 

China is bankrolling corrupt African leaders and pouring billions of dollars into Latin America, where Venezuela and Cuba are leading a left-wing alliance to  challenge the United States. In both those arenas, China’s totalitarian will may soon be coming face to face with America’s values of freedom.

 

These rich pickings offer up again that metaphysical battle between good and evil, with enough no-man’s land for moral uncertainties, and a high-stakes end-game of nuclear cat and mouse.

 

Indeed, for the international thriller writer, it is water in a Jihadist desert.

 

Therefore, the toast I propose is to the charismatic President Vladimir Putin of Russia and the elliptical Hu Jintao of China, both big leaders with big, rattling ideas.

 

And should there be a drop left in glasses, we may toast a third -- the diminutive former rampaging student activist and now President  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  of Iran.  He has placed nuclear apocalypse back on the table, and, as much as he is able, has included high diplomacy, cunning and touch of empire-building to fulfill his ambitions.

 

Those authors with multi-book contracts hinged on the post-Nine Eleven Middle East will need him.

 

Humphrey Hawksley’s thriller, The History Book, introducing new-style heroine Kat Polinski, is published by Grand Central on August 16th.  Humphrey is a Foreign Correspondent whose reports can be seen on BBC World and BBC America.  He will be a Thriller Fest panelist ‘Honor among Thieves’ Friday July 13th 3:00-3:50 pm How do bad heroes and heroines live with themselves?

 

The creator of the Morgan Snow sex therapist series has added a new string to her bow. Here she talks about her latest work, which ranges from ancient Rome to the modern day.

M.J., you’ve had an interesting career in the publishing world. In fact, you’ve broken a lot of the rules—yet you’ve made being a rebel work for you. Let’s talk about your big new book that all of New York is buzzing, and then I want to talk a little about the past.
    
Your latest novel, THE REINCARNATIONIST, which goes on sale Aug. 28, was one of the big buzz books at BEA recently. It’s a break from your former books.

Question: Tell us what the story is about.

THE REINCARNATIONIST is equal parts modern-day thriller, historical fiction and love story.  With one foot in present-day Rome and New York and another in Rome some 1,600 years ago. Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist’s bomb, only to be haunted by near hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest. Memories descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.

A trail of present-day murders takes him deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of “memory tools” whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India.  The stones’ promise to “assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation” sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.  
Josh, like most of my readers, is a skeptic. And the book is his search to understand what is happening to him. The questions of who we are cannot be asked without first asking who we were. And I’ve tried to answer that using my own research into reincarnation theory - as well as the tenets and writings of those who have studied and believed in reincarnation over thousands of years.

Question: Is this the first in a series of books?

Yes, there are three planned so far.

Question: What prompted this novel? What was the seed of inspiration for this story?

It’s an idea I’ve been working on since my mother died ten years ago this summer… and at the same time most of my life.

As the family story goes, when I was three years old I told my great grandfather specifics about the home he’d left in Russia and he claimed there was no way I could have known those things unless I’d been there in a past life.

He was convinced and convinced my mother, that I was reincarnated.

She became interesed in the subject, eventually transferred that interest to me and I’ve studied the subject off and on for most of my adult life.

In my research I discovered we were in good company: Reincarnationists throughout history include: Carl Jung, Rudyard Kipling, Einstein, Ben Franklin, Napoleon, Mark Twain, General George Patton, Louisa May Alcott, Tolstoy, Henry Ford, Goethe, the Baal Shem Tov, Nietzsche, Gandhi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Schweitzer, Walt Whitman, Wordsworth, Levi ibn Habib (the Ralbah), Rumi, Thoreau, Socrates, Jesus Christ in the Gnostic Gospels, Voltaire, Josephus, Balzac, Gauguin, Pythagoras, Kabbalists, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians

In fact there currently over 26 million people who are believers.

 I’ve even created a blog as a hub for "reincarnationists" to find news related to reincarnation, read reviews of books on the subject, and discover links to other blogs and websites on reincarnation and related intriguing topics.
www.reincarnationist.org/wordpress/

Question: Do you write in both third person and first? Do you have a preference? If so, which and why?

The choice depends on the book. In some of my previous novels, first offered an intimacy I felt the book needed. With this novel, crossing centuries and continents, I needed a bigger voice and third offered that. {mospagebreak}

Question: In doing the research for this book, you’ve spoken with some top dogs in related fields such as past life regression. Tell us a little about the research you did. Got any good anecdotes?

Well, I “found out” my ex-husband had me buried alive with him – apparently I was his slave in Egypt in a past live. And there’s no question about it, in this life he was definitely trying to bury me alive with him again.

Question:  Your past series featuring sex therapist Dr. Morgan Snow has been lauded for your handling of sensual material. Reviewers have praised the way you write “sensuality, passion, intimacy, and the erotic.” These elements played a major role in these books. What drew you into this terrain?

To me character and plot are intertwined. The same way that sex and the rest of your life is intertwined. So if I’m true to the characters I’m writing about, I explore their sexuality as well as the other parts of their personalities and psychology.

In some novels – like the Snow series -  sexuality played a greater role because Morgan is a sex therapist. In THE REINCARNATIONIST, sex doesn’t play a big role at all.  

Question: Your first book, LIP SERVICE, was self-published, and went on to be the first self-published novel sold to the Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club. It was also the first novel sold and marketed on the internet and the first novel that started as an e-book to be picked up by a mainstream publisher. What drove you to self –publish?

I had an agent –the wonderful Loretta Barrett who is still my agent - but she’d been unable to place my first two novels. While there were editors who loved the writing and the characters, both books crossed too many genres for marketing departments to be comfortable with them.

But I was in advertising and I didn’t agree the cross genre issue was an issue at all.

I never intended to “self-publish”, what I did was to go online and market one of the books for a few months in an effort to test market it and prove that the cross genre issue wasn’t really a problem.

Just as I was wrapping up the test and getting results for  Loretta to take back to editors, the Double Book Club/Literary Guild called and made an offer. It was really an amazing time. {mospagebreak}

Question: You’ve had a very successful career in big-time advertising. You were creative director of Rosenfeld Sirowitz and Lawson. What made you give up the glitz, glamour and steady paycheck of advertising for the lonely job of writing?

Give it up? You’re kidding. A friend of mine jokes that my getting published was like becoming a Russian Princess on the eve of the Russian Revolution. I left advertising to write fiction full time only to discover that to stay alive as a novelist I had to get back into advertising and learn about marketing my novels. Which is what led to me starting a marketing company for authors – the first – AuthorBuzz.com

Question: What role does theme play in your books?

I can’t write with out a carefully identified theme. I may never tell anyone what it is, but I need to know it even before I know the plot.  I want my novels to entertain first and foremost but it important for me to leave the reader with questions to think about, with something that haunts them after they’ve turned the last page.

Question: Who do you read for pleasure? Who do you read to learn from?

The first time I read every book it’s for pleasure. When I want to learn something, I read the books I loved reading over again to figure out why.

To keep this from turning into a four page list of names, I’ll stick to the mystery/suspense genre. I’ve loved and learned (sounds like a song) from H. Rider Haggard, David Morrell, Lee Child, Carol O’Connell, Daphne Du Maurier, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Doug Preston & Lincoln Child, Jeff Deaver, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilke Collins, Katherine Neville, Robert Goddard… and on and on and on. I hate mentioning so few. My bookshelves are bursting. I can’t leave out Laura Lippman whose character development is stellar and Barry Eisler who writes about place as well as any one out there. (Not to mention his sex scenes.)

Question: What words of wisdom from a writer have stuck with you through the years?

When I was 18 years old I met Ayn Rand after a lecture she gave at Sarah Lawrence college. I told her she’d inspired me to become a writer.

“Good,” she said, “become a writer. But first become a thinker.”

Question: And finally, what do the initials M.J. stand for?

My real name is Melisse. Rhymes with police. It’s a French herb. The problem with it is no one knows how to pronounce it and when people see it written they assume it’s misspelled and correct it to Melissa. Which is a nice name but not my name. When I published LIP SERVICE, I didn’t want to deal with the mispronunciation thing or the misspelling thing. A friend told me if I was going to pick a pen name chose one that had some meaning, that would “feel” right.

My mom had been the one person who believed that I really would get published one day but by the time that day came she’d died. So I took the J from her name, Jacqueline and the M from my name and  became M.J. Much easier to spell. And I like that her name is on the cover of all my books. Which brings us back to reincarnation in a way, doesn’t it?

Carolyn Haines is the author of PENUMBRA, named one of the top 5 mysteries of 2006 by LIBRARY JOURNAL; and this summer, HAM BONES, a Mississippi Delta Mystery, and REVENANT, a new thriller set on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Carolyn Haines talks to Aileen Baron, whose real-life work as an archaeologist has provided the background for her international thrillers.

Aileen, you’ve had a very exciting life. First let me present a few of the facts. You lived in Jerusalem with your husband, who was a biochemist. You raised your children, and after your husband’s death, you went back to school and eventually earned a Ph.D. in archaeology/anthropology and taught for twenty years at California State University at Fullerton.



During that time, you were an NEH scholar working on digs throughout the Middle East, and you were also director of the CSU research campus at the Hebrew University.



Those are some pretty impressive credentials and exemplifies the old adage—write about what you know. Except that your first two novels are historical mysteries.



In the first book featuring Lily Sampson, the setting is 1938 Palestine. The second Lily Sampson book is set during the invasion of Northern Africa during WWII. So you’ve combined a setting you’ve explored as a working archaeologist, a character who seeks answers, and a murder to solve.

Answer:

Lily is an archaeologist, so I’m able to use some of the digging experience as well as archaeology in the books. For my first Lily Sampson mystery, A FLY HAS A HUNDRED EYES, the director of the archaeological site where Lily works is killed. The story is based, in part on the real murder of a British archaeologist who was killed, during the British Mandate of Palestine in 1938 on his way to the opening of the Rockefeller Museum. The police never bothered to find out who killed him. The story going around among archaeologists was that he was so nasty, so stingy, that nobody cared. It became a sort of standing joke among archaeologists, and my students would tell me “Don’t work us too hard, or we’ll pull a Starkey on you.”  



When I began writing my first mystery, it seemed like the ideal basis for the plot, and I built the story around it.  As I did additional research for the novel, I discovered that terrorist activities at the time were as bad as, if not worse than, today, so the mystery took on a political slant.



I used the memoirs of an archaeologist who worked for the OSS in Morocco as the liaison between Morocco and the Allied headquarters in Gibraltar in the second book of the series, THE TORCH OF TANGIER. During WW II, people as diverse as Julia Child and a number of anthropologists and archaeologists, such as Cora Dubois and Nelson Glueck were recruited by the OSS.



Lily works for the OSS on preparations for Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, after Franco’s Spain took over the international city of Tangier and denied her archaeological team access to their excavations in the suburbs of Tangier at the Caves of Hercules that overlook the Straits of Gibraltar.



I’m working on the third book in the series now, which will take Lily to Transjordan, where she is supposed to do an archaeological survey for the OSS.



Question:

In your latest mystery, THE GOLD OF THRACE, which will be out this July from Poisoned Pen Press, you’re introducing a new protagonist, Tamar Saticoy. Would you mind talking a bit about the differences between Tamar and Lily, and also why you’ve decided to write about a contemporary setting. What hooked you into this particular story? Was the “seed of the story” character based or plot based or was setting or theme where it began?



Answer:

THE GOLD OF THRACE is a tale of the intrigue and deceit in the antiquities trade.

A friend of mine, the Director of Antiquities of Turkey, upset by artifacts disappearing from archaeological sites, including a mosaic floor that had been rolled up and stolen overnight, suggested that as long as I was writing mysteries, I should write one about the antiquities trade. Most of these stolen items end up in the lucrative antiquities market and are sold to collectors and museums. This was the germ of the novel. The idea was particularly timely in view of the scandals at the Getty and at Sotheby’s.

 

I had once been engaged to an antiquities dealer in Switzerland, and had some idea of how these things worked. My Turkish friend had told me that artifacts from Turkey were smuggled through Bulgaria on their way to markets in Switzerland and Berlin.



I went to Bulgaria to do additional research and discovered that the country was in a severe economic depression. When the Russians left after the fall of the USSR, they took the economy with them. Sofia had been rebuilt by the Russians with the broad boulevards and blocks of gloomy housing that the communists are so fond of, and now balconies were hanging from poorly built apartment buildings, roofs were sagging. Unemployment was at 50%, and the only way to make a living was by smuggling. I was intrigued by the archaeological evidence of the Thracians, an ancient civilization contemporary with Classical Greece and centered on the western shore of the Black Sea from Asia Minor to the Danube. Byzantium was founded by the Thracians. They were famous for their horsemanship and their gold workmanship, and according to their Bulgarian descendants, their good looks. Thracians have a prominent part in Greek mythology. Orpheus, the father of songs, who could charm wild beasts, inspire trees and rocks to dance, and change the course of rivers was Thracian. The Golden Fleece of the Argonauts was in reality Thracian gold.

The Bulgarian archaeologists that I talked to told me that Turkish artifacts were indeed smuggled through Bulgaria on the way to the centers of the antiquity trade, but cautioned that there was a window of time when most of it took place, after the Russians left in 1989, but before the Serbian-Croatian conflicts prevented the traffic going through former Yugoslavia. Lily would have been in her late seventies or eighties by then, so I needed a new protagonist.



The story begins with thefts from archaeological excavations in Turkey (including the theft of a mosaic floor from Tamar’s site) and takes us through Bulgaria, to Switzerland, France, and as far afield as The Hague.



Tamar is more sophisticated than Lily, partly because times have changed. I got the idea for the secondary plot in the story that centers around Thracian gold from a scandal that took place in the 1980’s in Turkey. The archaeologist involved in the scandal, also suspected of questionable digging practices is now persona non grata in Turkey.  The character of Chatham is based in part on that archaeologist and in part on the venal curator of a museum that I had the misfortune to meet.



{mospagebreak}Question:

The first thing you wrote was a short story. Do you still write in the short form, and what do you like best about the long form?



Answer:



I began writing after I retired from teaching archeology at California State University, Fullerton and gave a few courses in the extension at the University of California, Irvine. They encourage their lecturers to take courses in other departments, and since they have a famous writing program, I enrolled in two writing classes in the extension--a short story class and a mystery class.

 

For the short story class I wrote a story called Petrie’s Head. The idea for the story came from archaeological lore and my experiences at the Albright Archaeological Institute of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem during my NEH year.



Sir William Flinders-Petrie is famous as the genius who single-handedly invented modern archaeology. He was also a nut. He went to Egypt to measure pyramids in 1882, and found that they were poorly dated, so he developed a series of sequence dates from tomb lots that could establish dates for Egyptian archaeology. The method, called a Petrie matrix, is used to this day. He then went to Palestine, and cross-dated the Palestinian material by using Egyptian artifacts found in excavations there. 



He taught at University College, London. When he retired, he moved to the American School of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, where living was cheap, the sky was blue, and beds had inner spring mattresses. He was convinced that he was so brilliant that his head was growing. When he died in 1942, he willed his head with all of its miraculous knowledge to the Medical School at the University College, London.  The Director of the American School duly cut off his head, put it in a hatbox on the mantel in the director’s house to send to London, and buried the rest of him in the Protestant cemetery on Mt. Zion.



The United States had just entered WW II and the director got a cable from Washington telling him to come immediately. Because of the travel restrictions of the war, it took him two months to get to Washington—through South America, up through Central America, and finally to Washington. When he got there, they told him to turn around and go back and do an archaeological survey of Transjordan for the OSS. After four months absence, he returned to Jerusalem, and Petrie’s head was gone.



Looking for Petrie’s head became a standard archaeological joke. When I was at the American School in 1983, we received a clipping from the Illustrated London Times with a picture of a head, severed at the neck, which looked like Petrie as a young man. The caption under the picture read WHO IS THIS MAN?



And that was the basis for the story.



I don’t usually write short stories because they take me about as long to write as a novel if I want to do them right. I know that might be my own idiosyncrasy, but I feel that short stories are a special kind of art form, just as poetry is, and they take a different kind of competence and mind set.

 

Question:

What tools do you use in your writing that spring directly from your training and experience as an archeologist?



Answer:



First of all, as you can see, there are all kinds of ready-made stories about archaeologists that can form the basis for a novel or short story.  Most of all, my experience as an archaeologist has helped guide my research, so that I know where to look for what I need.

 

When I research an area for a book, I look over the local site reports and write ahead to the curators of the local museums, and ask to view some of their collections. We go to lunch, and I pick up strange tales as they cue me in to the local archaeological gossip.  When I did the research for the latest book, THE GOLD OF THRACE, for example, I went to Bulgaria and spoke to archaeologists in Sofia and Varna, a city with evidence of ancient Thracian occupation and a museum with Thracian gold.



{mospagebreak}Question:

Has your education and training given you any advantages as a novelist?



Answer:

At first, it was a disadvantage. Scholarly papers are written in the passive and scholarly speak uses a speculative vocabulary and distances itself from the reader. It took me almost a year to break that habit in my writing.



Museum catalogues, on the other hand, are full of purple passages that mean very little (e.g. “These remarkable people are steeped in ritual.”) I had to recover from that too. But as a result of writing labels for museum exhibits, where twenty-five words or less must describe the function, history and place of origin of an artifact, I don’t waste words. So I end up with great descriptions, thin books, and what my editor has called a “spare writing style”.



Question:

Would you mind sharing one of the “finds” you discovered while working on-site, and has this particular experience been used in one of your books?



Answer:

When I was digging at Gezer in Israel, we came across the skeleton of a young woman who had been trapped in a burning building in the destruction of the city during an enemy raid.  I used that experience in my first book, A FLY HAS A HUNDRED EYES.



Question:

What’s the most difficult element of writing for you (such as character development, plotting, structure, focus—something along those lines) and what’s the easiest? Would you talk a little about both?



Answer:

I have the greatest difficulty plotting and, especially, throwing in a few red herrings. I also find violent scenes the most difficult to write, and do endless rewrites until I get them right.



I feel that a good mystery should begin with a bang. Since I don’t write police procedurals, I don’t begin with a dead body. I start, instead, with a scene that is related to the theme of the book. I began A FLY HAS A HUNDRED EYES, for example, with Lily on the balcony of the archaeological museum at the YMCA watching a bloody riot on the street below. In the first chapter of THE TORCH OF TANGIER, Lily follows a pair of German spies through the streets of Tangier, and discovers them sneaking into her hotel room. THE GOLD OF THRACE begins with a murder and theft at Ephesus, and then switches to the Tamar’s site where she discovers that a mosaic floor from a Roman villa has disappeared overnight. 

I find description and dialogue the easiest to write. I think that a few key words in a description can evoke a more vivid account than a detailed laundry list to describe a scene.

 

I try to outline a book before I write, but scenes keep popping into my head and I write them down before they get away. That may be why I find plotting the most difficult, and description and dialogue the easiest.



Question:

You’ve chosen to write THE GOLD OF THRACE in third person. Why?

Answer:

I wrote the short story, Petrie’s Head, in the first person because I find it easier to be humorous in the first person. I wrote the first two books in the Lily Sampson series in Lily’s point of view in the third person, partly because the first person is associated in my mind with police procedurals. I suspect that if I wrote it in the first person, Lily would be a very different character, indeed.

 

THE GOLD OF THRACE is more of a thriller. I used multiple third person point of view to heighten the suspense, alternating mostly between Tamar and the sleazy Chatham, but also wrote from the point of view of other characters. (Only one POV per chapter, however.)  I hope it works.



Question:

 In my books, all of the characters have something of me in them. IS Tamar anything like you?



Answer:

I think what you say may be true of all writers. I know that Tamar is like me in many ways, especially in her assessment of things. And she is an archaeologist, after all. I hope that I have little in common with the villains. But I don’t think I could write about them with any verisimilitude if we had nothing in common.



Question:

What’s up next for Tamar? And for you?



Answer:

I’m doing the research for the next Lily Sampson book, and writing the occasional scene. I haven’t worked out the full plot and cast of characters. I have an amorphous plan for Tamar’s next book, but it’s still hovering in my head. I’ll get to it after I finish Lily’s next book.

 

Is James Rollins the only world bestseller who's also a veterinary surgeon? Where does an alligator figure in his career? And what do you need to know about his latest book The Judas Strain? Here, in his own words, are the answers...

It all started when my sister received an alligator for a birthday present…a gift from her boyfriend at the time.  Subsequently and not surprisingly, they broke up shortly thereafter.  She got sole custody of the alligator, which ended up in a fish tank on my dresser.  Her only instruction:  “It eats live goldfish.”  Such music to a young boy’s ears!  In fact, it was my ticket to elementary school stardom.  I became a third-grade P.T. Barnum.  It also heralded my future career as both a biologist and a veterinarian.

But that’s getting ahead of the story.  I was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1961.  My father was a foreman at a Libby’s canning plant.  My mother stayed home and had children…many, many children.  Being Polish and Roman Catholic, I believe there was some requirement:  less than five children, and the secret of Kielbasa would be taken from you.  So I was born the third of seven children, and of that litter, I was the only true storyteller of the family (what my mother called “The Liar”).  My early work consisted of convincing my younger brothers that the new ventriloquist doll I got for Christmas would come alive at midnight and hunt for fresh blood…which led to many sleepless night and wet beds.   Or revealing to my baby sister that our family were really Martians—except for her, of course, as she was our adopted human pet. 



I still pay their therapy bills, but it was worth it.



And I did eventually survive childhood.  I even got accepted to veterinary school at the University of Missouri and settled out in Sacramento, California.  I started my own practice and ran it for two decades.  I even have the scars to prove it.  But I also could not ignore that twisted little corner of my mind, that demented little storyteller who terrorized young children.  I needed a new audience.  So I began to write.  I wrote much short fiction—truly bad short fiction, stories which are buried in my backyard and will never see the light of day  (unless some future archaeologist discovers them and declares them to be verifiable proof that this century was devoid of literary merit).



But I persevered (i.e., I wouldn’t take no for an answer).  I eventually wrote my first book, found an agent, and to my personal case of “shock and awe,” Avon Books bought it.  Thus began my dual career—as both veterinarian and author.  I often get asked, “As an author, why don’t you write about a veterinarian, like James Herriot, or about animals, like Marley and Me?”  My answer was simple.  “Not enough people die in those books.” 

Presently I do write full time, having weaned myself off my veterinary career.  Though one Sunday a month, I do volunteer my time and surgical skills to spaying and neutering animals for the local shelter—basically it’s eight hours of removing genitalia.  Otherwise, I continue to write novels that are equal parts historical mysteries, scientific thrillers, and action adventures.  And yes, many people do die.



And yes, I have dogs…way too many dogs.  I blame my mother. For more dirt, please check out my website:  www.jamesrollins.com 

The Judas Strain

Deep in the Indian Ocean, a terrifying plague washes to shore--but this is only a harbinger of the true doom to follow.  In its deadly wake, all life on the planet is threatened.



Aboard a cruise liner turned into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis, operatives for SIGMA Force, seek some answer to the strange disease.  But others see only profit amid the madness.  In a savage coup, a shadowy terrorist organization hijacks the vessel, turning the ship into a floating bio-weapons lab.   



A world away, Commander Gray Pierce finds his Fourth of July celebration interrupted as a beautiful assassin crashes his party.  Wounded, hunted, she carries the first clue to a possible cure, one tied to a mystery involving the medieval explorer, Marco Polo.



Pursued by a relentless madman, the pair race to follow the explorer’s centuries-old trail through Venetian tombs, Byzantine cathedrals, and jungle-encrusted ruins. Gray finds the path leads to a most unexpected answer:  to a mystery buried in our genetic code, one with possible links to a cryptic thirteenth-century language known as angelic script.



Yet, as the worldwide pandemic grows, Gray Pierce begins to fear he is being led astray by those closest to him.  Can he trust his newest ally?  Or will she prove to be another Judas?

The Story behind the Story.  Where did the story come from?

It all started from a seed of an historical mystery, one concerning Marco Polo, the famous Venetian explorer.  Marco Polo, along with his father and uncle, spent almost two decades in China.  Upon the trio’s return voyage, Kublai Khan granted the Polos fourteen ships and six hundred men to escort them home.  But when they arrived in Italy, the returning Polos were down to two ships and eighteen men.  What happened to the rest of the escort?  Marco hinted at some mysterious tragedy, but he refused to ever say exactly what transpired…even on his deathbed.  Such a mystery I thought would make great fodder for a thriller.  What if what destroyed Marco’s fleet were to arise again today? 

Dire Secrets Lurk in the Language of Angels



Ancient Ruins Guard a Wellspring of Horror



Legendary Explorer’s Journal Hides a Shattering Truth



TWISTED GENETIC CODES PROTECT

A MYSTERY LIKE NO OTHER



THE JUDAS STRAIN....in stores JULY 2nd

 

What the critics are saying:

“Rollins has fine-tuned the formula to precision: characters rendered in broad strokes, punchy dialogue, short paragraphs that propel us headlong through the story...it's impossible not to be swept up by their energy and excitement”

Booklist on The Judas Strain

“There’s no time to catch your breath...Relentless action in spectacular places”

Kirkus Reviews on The Judas Strain

What the author is saying:

"I agree."

A fascination for the odd and the obscure drives my writing.  I’m always on the lookout for strange but real occurrences that would make for a really interesting story.  When I discovered the unusual business world of viatical settlements, lightning struck and I knew I had a novel.



So what are viatical settlements and what makes them so special?   In a sense, they’re a reverse insurance arrangement.  If you own a life insurance policy and you want to cash it in, you go to a viatical settlement agent who will find someone to buy it.  The buyer will give you pennies on the dollar for your policy and take over the monthly dues on your life insurance.  In return, they will become the beneficiary when you die.  The closer you are to the grave, the bigger the payout.

Viatical settlements were aimed at the elderly and the terminally ill to cover final expenses and make their last days comfortable, but the industry really took off in the late 80’s and 90’s when HMOs weren’t covering AIDS and HIV patients.  Patients needed money for treatment and viatical settlements provided the perfect vehicle for that.  The industry hit the skids in the late 90’s when breakthroughs in AIDS drugs extended life expectancies and the payout times increased.



I saw the beauty and the beast in this arrangement.  Viaticals give people a second shot at life, or at least a comfortable end, allowing them to live out their life worry free.  On the other hand, viatical settlements are a truly ghoulish proposal.  Some companies ran late-night advertisements telling people how they could make money quick.  See a 25% return on your money in 12 months or less.  To the investor, that sounds great.  But to achieve that return, someone has to die.  There is no way to ignore the fact that the policy buyer is profiteering off the dead.



I came across viatical settlements on a TV news magazine show.  The feature was well done.  The story covered all the parties involved in one of these arrangements.  They interviewed a person with HIV who had sold their life insurance as well as a retired couple who had purchased several policies through a middleman who arranged the sales.  It was great to see a person who’d had one foot over the threshold of death’s door come back from the brink after selling his policy.  It was shocking watching the retired couple that had sunk their retirement fund into viatical settlements.  They displayed vehement disgust for the people they’d paid good money to who hadn’t had the good graces to die as predicted.



The news clip ended with a kicker and it was that kicker that really grabbed my attention.  The middleman is supposed to keep the identities of the buyer and seller confidential.  The man with HIV who’d sold his life insurance produced a birthday card.  It had arrived unsigned on his last birthday.  The message was simple and to the point.  It said: Why aren’t you dead yet?

 

I couldn’t let this go.  There was a book here.  Viatical settlements presented a very interesting concept.  Criminals aren’t the only ones with a price on their heads.  Everyone is worth more dead than alive, thanks to their life insurance.  And what if the beneficiaries can’t afford to wait to inherit?  A murder would lead someone to the beneficiary, but an accidental death wouldn’t.



For ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN I stretched the rules concerning viatical settlements a bit to create a cat and mouse thriller.  I made rules surrounding viaticals much more far ranging.  Essentially, anyone could qualify.  In the book, Josh Michaels takes a bribe to pay for his newborn child’s medical expenses.  His secretary blackmails him when she learns of the bribe.  To pay her off, Josh sells his life insurance policy.  Years later, when the bribe, the blackmail and the policy sale are long forgotten, he’s driving home when he’s forced off the road by another vehicle into a river.  Instead of helping Josh, the driver gives him the thumbs-down gesture and drives off.  Josh survives the accident and learns he’s not the only having accidents.  The one thing these people have in common is that they’ve all made a viatical settlement in their past.   



Usually, truth is stranger than fiction, and I love that, but if I can get a hold of it, I’ll make that fiction a little stranger. 

ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN is published by Dorchester Publishing. Simon Wood (www.simonwood.net) is a California transplant from England.  In the last seven years, he's had over 140 stories and articles published. He's the author of WORKING STIFFS and ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN. His next, PAYING THE PIPER, hits bookshelves in November. 

Here in the UK the book business has gone absolutely potty over the latest, and last, Harry Potter book. Everywhere you look, the book is being sold at half its recommended retail price, or even less! If you were an alien visitor newly arrived on Earth, or someone whose been in a coma for the last eight years, you'd assume this 'Harry Potter' book had turned out to be the industry's biggest flop, with hundreds of thousands of copies facing the mulching machine unless they can find an owner.



Au contraire.

A recent article on how the last Harry Potter book, despite being phenomenally popular, is making no one any money at all, shows how bleedin' ludicrous things have gotten in the world of publishing in the UK. With this last installment of HP, it should jolly well be feast time for booksellers - selling the book by the wheelbarrow for loads of loverly profit. Instead, everybody seems to be competing with each other to hand copies of it over to the public...at the cheapest price, and the greatest loss.



How did this industry allow itself to get so silly?



By comparison, lets take a look at how some other industries cope with a hot product that everyone wants.



Video games: The Wii, Nintendo's latest console is taking the world by storm; everyone wants to grab a Wii. But, do we see GAME giving the console away at a below-than-wholesale-price? Nope. Instead, they're making a nice healthy 50% margin there. And in fact, in Tokyo, where demand is ridiculously high, retailers are charging for well over the RRP for the console.



Movies: the Lord of the Rings trilogy were the must-see movie three years in a row. Did cinemas suddenly decide to halve the price of entry to see the movies? Of course not.



Music: iPods....everyone wants one. Are they being given away at half price? Ahem...no.



So why is it booksellers are shooting themselves in the foot? Well...the loss leader theory is usually trotted out in answer. Which goes along the lines of...Joe Punter comes in to buy his Harry Potter book, and whilst he's there making his purchase, he's supposed to be seduced by all the other books lying on those central tables around him and spend loads of luverly dosh on a stack of novels he wouldn't otherwise have considered buying.



Hmmmm. Not sure that's actually happening.



Joe Punter isn't doing that. Joe Punter has come in specifically to get his fix of Potter, will grab it, pay for it and bolt back home to read it. In actual fact, he's not even likely to put a single solitary foot inside a book store to buy it anyway - preferring instead to grab it whilst shopping with mum at Tescos. Or he'll just order it online from Amazon.



So surely, the smart thing for a bricks-n-mortar bookseller to do, is to stock a few copies of the latest Potter, (after all, you can't not). Stock say...a dozen hardcover versions, sell them at the RRP and simply accept you aren't going to shift hundreds. Which is fine...let someone else lose money on two hundred units of product sold below cost, and have a little snigger at their expense...suckers. See, I'm really not convinced by the loss leader argument that booksellers are putting forward. I've got a deep suspicion that your average Potter fan is not that much of a book worm. Nor for that matter is your average Dan Brown fan. I suspect they're the one-book-a-year-beside-the-pool type of customer.



Now...why the hell is this trade bothering to chase people like that? Does one book a year from each member of this category of customer really amount to that much money in the coffers? Especially, I might add, when they're getting the book virtually given to them?



*sigh*

Alex lives a nomadic existence with his wife Frances, and son Jacob. For now they're living in Norwich, UK. He spent the first ten years out of college in the music business chasing record deals and the next 12 years in the computer games business as a graphic artist and eventually a games designer.



His debut novel A THOUSAND SUNS is an ITW nominee for Best Debut, and his second book LAST LIGHT is due out in July in hardback.



www.alexscarrow.blogspot.com

www.scarrow.co.uk

Karen Tintori, who with Jill Gregory co-authored THE BOOK OF NAMES, their internationally bestselling debut thriller, also has a solo hardcover release from St. Martin's this year. UNTO THE DAUGHTERS: The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family comes out this July.

Part family memoir, part true-crime, it is chilling tale about family "honor." PW calls it "poignant ... a harrowing tale of sorrow and shame."

It is the story of a secret great-aunt, erased from the family for more than 80 years after she was brutally murdered in 1920s Detroit and all of her belongings were destroyed. Tintori discovered her in an obliterated entry on the family passport while exploring family genealogy, then spent over a decade ferreting out the truth of what had happened to Francesca.

"Switching back and forth between rural Sicily and early 20th century Detroit, UNTO THE DAUGHTERS reads like a nonfiction version of the film Godfather II - if it had been told from the point of view of a female Corleone. In exploring her own family's secret history, Karen Tintori gives voice not just to her victimized aunt but to all Italian-American daughters and wives silenced by the power of omerta. Half gripping true-crime story, half moving family memoir, UNTO THE DAUGHTERS is both fascinating and frightening, packed with telling details and obscure lklore that help bring the suffocating world of a Mafia family to life." --Eleni Gage, author of North of Ithaka: A Granddaughter Returns to Greece and Discovers Her Roots.

Karen Tintori is an internationally bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction whose novels, written with Jill Gregory, have been translated into eighteen languages. Their SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE became a CBS-TV Movie-of-the-Week. Her critically acclaimed solo work, TRAPPED: The 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster, was among the Chicago Tribune's 2002 Favorite Books and has been optioned for film. TRAPPED, along with her July, 2007 release from St. Martin's, UNTO THE DAUGHTERS, will be taught in Italian American Studies at the Harvard Extension School. Tintori has a B.A. in journalism from Wayne State University, lives in Michigan, and holds dual U.S.-Italian citizenship. Visit her at www.karentintori.com.

 

Part family memoir, part true-crime, it is chilling tale about family "honor." PW calls it "poignant ... a harrowing tale of sorrow and shame."

It is the story of a secret great-aunt, erased from the family for more than 80 years after she was brutally murdered in 1920s Detroit and all of her belongings were destroyed. Tintori discovered her in an obliterated entry on the family passport while exploring family genealogy, then spent over a decade ferreting out the truth of what had happened to Francesca.

"Switching back and forth between rural Sicily and early 20th century Detroit, UNTO THE DAUGHTERS reads like a nonfiction version of the film Godfather II - if it had been told from the point of view of a female Corleone. In exploring her own family's secret history, Karen Tintori gives voice not just to her victimized aunt but to all Italian-American daughters and wives silenced by the power of omerta. Half gripping true-crime story, half moving family memoir, UNTO THE DAUGHTERS is both fascinating and frightening, packed with telling details and obscure lklore that help bring the suffocating world of a Mafia family to life." --Eleni Gage, author of North of Ithaka: A Granddaughter Returns to Greece and Discovers Her Roots.

Karen Tintori is an internationally bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction whose novels, written with Jill Gregory, have been translated into eighteen languages. Their SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE became a CBS-TV Movie-of-the-Week. Her critically acclaimed solo work, TRAPPED: The 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster, was among the Chicago Tribune's 2002 Favorite Books and has been optioned for film. TRAPPED, along with her July, 2007 release from St. Martin's, UNTO THE DAUGHTERS, will be taught in Italian American Studies at the Harvard Extension School. Tintori has a B.A. in journalism from Wayne State University, lives in Michigan, and holds dual U.S.-Italian citizenship. Visit her at www.karentintori.com.