KR: Can you give us a sneak preview of Unknown Means?

EB: Evelyn suffers from sleep deprivation as one murder follows on the heels of another.  On top of that, she can't even figure out how the killer is getting to his victims (who live in very high-security buildings), much less who he is.

KR: Evelyn James's personal life as a single mother is an important element of Unknown Means, isn't it?

EB: I want to show her personal life, because the forensic scientists on TV don't seem to have one. Real CSIs have lives outside of work. It's not a job that stops at 5 pm every day. Many a dinner out or party have been cut short because the pager goes off.

KR: In its review of your first book, Trace Evidence, Publisher's Weekly gave you a so-so review.  Now PW has done an about-face, calling Unknown Means a "welcome return" for Evelyn James and sprinkling its review with words like "gripping," "vivid," and "harrowing."  Do you have any idea of how they came to their senses?

EB: No idea. I figure it's a different reviewer. Or my writing got a little less flowery because I wrote the second one faster, and the reviewer appreciated my getting to the point.

KR: Patricia Cornwell pioneered thrillers with a forensic scientist hero.  Yours seem to go in a different direction, don't they?

EB: I want my heroine to have Kay Scarpetta's toughness and knowledge of forensics. But I want my heroine to be ordinary. She's not some genius who jets off to lecture to the FBI. She's a grunt who has to do the dirty work.  

KR: Obviously, Unknown Means is meant to entertain readers and judging from early reviews it does great at that.  Is there something more you're trying to get across?

EB: I have no deep, intellectual agenda. If my book entertains someone while lying on a beach and then they throw it out, I'm great.

KR: Okay, let's say Hollywood calls and says they want to do a film based on your books, but they just don't know whom to cast as Evelyn James.  You have any recommendations?

EB: Julianne Moore. No second choice, just Julianne Moore.

KR: How do you juggle the real-life demands of being a forensic scientist, novelist, and wife?  Is there anything you would do to change your life?

EB: I'd have the day last 36 hours instead of 24.

KR: Is your day job just like a CSI show?

EB: Ha ha.  You're kidding, right?  No?

Okay, well, about 95% of my job these days is sitting at a desk looking at fingerprints on a computer. Booooorring. But it sometimes solves crimes. Even at the coroner's office, I looked at victim's clothing, then evidence, and sometimes never heard another word about the case. Most victims and suspects are not rich, beautiful and interesting. Most crime scenes are not pretty. Most crimes are not complicated. Someone got mad at someone else, and bam. Blood, and I get stuck at a crime scene all night.

KR: What's next after Unknown Means?

EB: Takeover, coming in winter/spring 2009, deals with a robbery/hostage situation at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland. The cops hole up in the Cleveland Public Library across the street, where I spent many hours when working downtown.

Elizabeth Becka spent the happiest five years of her life in a morgue, as a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, until her husband moved them to Cape Coral, Florida. Now she works as a latent print/crime scene examiner for the local PD. Elizabeth is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists, the International Assoc. for Identification, and the International Assoc. of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts.
 
Trace Evidence was published in the US (Hyperion) Germany, Netherlands, France, United Kingdom and Spain. The sequel, Unknown Means will be available February 5, 2008.

Keith Raffel wrote DOT DEAD, “without question the most impressive mystery debut of the year” according to Bookreporter.com. Former counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, he is currently finishing up TWO GRAVES, a political thriller set – where else? – in Washington, D.C.