February 2009 Archives

Here's what was featured in the March Edition of the Big Thrill.

Hot Off The Press
Click on a book title to read the feature story

• DANTE'S NUMBERS by David Hewson
• SQUAWK 7500 by Steve A. Reeves
• BAHAMA BURNOUT by Don Bruns
  
• THE DAKOTA CIPHER by William Dietrich
• DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE by Raymond Benson
• FAULT LINE by Barry Eisler
• THE OWL KILLERS by Karen Maitland
• HOLD BACK THE DARK by Eileen Carr
• SCREAM by Mike Dellosso
• WILD SORROW by Sandi Ault
• LETHALLY BLOND by Kate White
• OUT AT NIGHT by Susan Arnout Smith
• VOODOO LAWS by Jim Michael Hansen
• A DATE YOU CAN'T REFUSE by Harley Jane Kozak
• BUTCHER by Gary C. King
• PATIENT ZERO by Jonathan Maberry
• DEADLY SECRETS by M. William Phelps
• FURY CALLS by Caridad Pineiro
• MIXED BLOOD by Roger Smith
• THE KINGDOM COME by Don Helin
• DEAD-END ROAD by Richard Kunzmann
• STARVATION LAKE by Bryan Gruley
• SHATTER by Michael Robotham
• TRUE DETECTIVES by Jonathan Kellerman
• HEART OF ICE by Gregg Olsen
• MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE by Karen Harper
  
• A Between The Lines in-depth interview with bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler
• Plus International News from Russel McLean in the U.K. and Mike Nicol in South Africa
  

BUTCHER. They called him "Uncle Willie." At night, Robert "Willie" Pickton visited the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The women he picked up never came back... His goal: to kill an "even fifty."

For years, police built a long list of missing prostitutes, women at the edge of society. Some people claimed there was a serial killer. One detective lost his job for saying so. But investigators didn't have a single body...until someone found a skull sawed in half...

On land that had made his family millions, on a squalid pig farm near a school, a condo development and a Starbucks, Robert Pickton ran a house of horrors for decades. Friends, neighbors and community leaders came and went, while Pickton committed debauchery, torture, and bloodletting rivaling the worst on record. What he did to his victims was unspeakable. What he did to the bodies was unimaginable. How he got away with it is the most shocking crime of all...

Now, on April 7, 2009, Gary C. King, tells us the true story in his 13th true crime novel, BUTCHER. A freelance author and lecturer, Gary is regarded by readers and critics alike as one of the world's foremost crime writers, a reputation he has earned over the last 28 years with the publication of more than 400 articles in true crime magazines in the United States, Canada, and England. Big Thrill contributing editor, Christine Goff, was fortunate enough to catch up with the him.  Here's what King had to say.

From what I discovered, you began your career writing articles for true crime magazines.  What was your first story, and what drew you to write it?

My first story was about child murderer Manuel Cortez, who viciously murdered two young girls in Ashland, Oregon in the late 1970s.  It was a major story in the Pacific Northwest at the time and I, like many others, was appalled by what Cortez had done.  Wanting to try my hand at writing, I gave it a whirl and the story became TORTURED BY THE SADIST IN THE PRESS BOX!

It's March already, ladies and gents. February came and went in the blink of an eye. Your humble host received no love letters on the fourteenth, not even a gas bill. But I suppose people send me missives every other day of the year, so I'm not complaining. But I am, perhaps delusional.

Anyway, and so onto our look back the UK thriller-land as of February '09. Its been a relatively quiet month, but with the repackaging of a thriller legend, a few (perhaps unsurprising) facts and figures and a healthy dose of controversy, there were a few items to distract the hardened thriller fan from the fact that the UK had been literally brought to a standstill by this white fluffy stuff that fell from the sky earlier this year.

 And yes, last month's jokey headline was actually meant for April which is indeed the cruellest month, some say. Let's just say I had a small accident with a time machine, a pint of IPA and a keyboard...

The place to be for thriller lovers is New York in July. It'll be hot outside but inside ... it'll be hot, too! Hot bestsellers, hot topics, hot authors. Better than going to the beach with your favorite new thriller book! You can mingle with your favorite thriller authors instead.

A preliminary schedule is available now at www.thrillerfest.org. CraftFest, held July 8-9, 2009, is devoted to writers of all levels, including aspiring writers working on their first books. AgentFest, on the afternoon of July 9th, will thrill you in a different fashion if you're looking for an agent. Over forty top agents will be available to hear your pitch.

ThrillerFest begins Thursday evening, July 9th, with an opening reception. Free drinks, free munchies, and terrific mingling opportunities! Contributing to the heat will be Steve Martini, R.L. Stine, Lee Child, Joe Moore, M.J. Rose, Heather Graham, Shane Gericke, Douglas Preston, Joe Finder, Carla Neggers, Kathleen Antrim, David Hewson, Christine Kling, James Rollins, Gayle Lynds, Brad Meltzer, Dakota Banks, Michael Palmer, Karin Slaughter, and many more ITW authors! Friday's focus will be on our Spotlight Guests, Robin Cook and Katherine Neville. On Saturday, you'll eat breakfast with David Baldacci and listen as Steve Berry introduces debut thriller authors. On Saturday afternoon, 2009 ThrillerMaster David Morrell and 2008 ThrillerMaster Sandra Brown will be interviewed. If that's not hot enough for you, we'll turn up the heat and let 2006 ThrillerMaster Clive Cussler's co-authors roast him.

On Saturday night, you'll bask in the glamor of our all-inclusive banquet package: a pre-banquet cocktail party, the banquet including the presentation of the Thriller Awards, and an exciting after-party.

Just like a visit to the beach, you'll go home with plenty of memories and photos galore, but you'll be missing one thing--sand in your clothes!

Note: Feeding Body & Mind will have several collection boxes at ThrillerFest, so don't leave home without your books to donate!"

Monthly Book Giveaway

Congratulations to Jonathan D. Bras, the winner of this month's BIG THRILL giveaway. Jonathan will receive an assortment of signed thrillers including Dead-End Road by Richard Kunzmann, The King of Thieves by Michael Jecks, Voodoo Laws by Jim Michael Hansen, The Island by Heather Graham, Chasing Smoke by Bill Cameron, First to Kill by Andrew Peterson, Magic's Design by Cat Adams, Wolf's Trap by W.D. Gagliani, Deadly Secrets by M. William Phelps, Wyoming Manhunt by Ann Voss Peterson, Cold Pursuit by Carla Neggers, Sudden Death by Allison Brennan, and Homicide in Hardcover by Kate Carlisle.

All subscribers to THE BIG THRILL webzine are automatically eligible for the monthly drawing. Click here to subscribe to the BIG THRILL email.

We've all heard the admonition "Write what you know." So how can you write about things like covert operations, martial arts and international thrills? Well, research, of course.

Or you can be Barry Eisler.

Trained as a lawyer, then a CIA covert op, Eisler has also been a business exec in Japan and, along the way, earned a black belt in Judo.

So his status as the bestselling writer of the John Rain thrillers seems to have been, well, nearly inevitable. Especially when you consider what attracted him as a kid.

"I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as 'forbidden knowledge'," Eisler explains. "Like methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know. When I was a kid I read a biography of Harry Houdini, and in the book a cop was quoted as saying, 'It's fortunate that Houdini never turned to a life a crime, because if he had he would have been difficult to catch and impossible to hold.' I remember thinking how cool it was that this man knew things that people weren't supposed to know, things that gave him special power. Anyway, since then I've amassed a small and unusual library on some of the foregoing and on other esoteric subjects, I spent three years in the CIA, I got pretty into a variety of martial arts."

When asked about the genesis of his new thriller, MIXED BLOOD, Roger Smith says, "The book started writing itself, somewhere in the back of my head, a long time ago."

As a teenager, growing up under apartheid in Johannesburg, South Africa, Smith watched white cops mow down black school kids during the 1976 uprising. A few years later he was drafted into a white army fighting a "meaningless bush war against older versions of those same kids."

"Disaster Zondi, MIXED BLOOD's Zulu investigator, is one of those kids twenty-five years on.  And my rogue cop, Rudi Barnard, is a relic from the apartheid era, roaming the badlands of Cape Town, still slaughtering people darker than himself."

Smith says that people think Cape Town mirrors -- or even surpasses -- the beauty of the south of France or California. But looks can be deceiving.

Don Bruns' sixth Mick Sever novel, Bahama Burnout, will be in stores this month. I have met Don a few times, and he is as much fun and as entertaining as one might expect. Here are some questions I had for him and his answers.

Your six titles relate to the locations of where your Mick Sever novels take place. I have some questions on your locale choices. How do you pick the locale of your story?

Michael...come on!  You live and write about Key West.  It's that simple.  Pick a place you want to spend time in...visit and do your research, then write about it.  Then try to deduct as much of the trip as possible. In the name of research. Jamaica Blue, Barbados Heat, South Beach Shakedown, St. Barts Breakdown, Bahama Burnout.  I had to do the research.  I hated it, but had to do it.

Since the music business is the background for Mick, how authentic are the problems/challenges Mick encounters in these various surroundings? (How dangerous is the music industry?)

Every story I've written about Mick Sever is based in reality.  St. Barts Breakdown was (very loosely) based on the Phil Spector story.  Bahama Burnout is based on a recording studio in Telluride, Colorado that burned to the ground.  South Beach Shakedown was based on a mob that controlled 60s and 70s singer Jackie Wilson.  Is there a criminal element in the music business?  You'd better believe it.  Is it dangerous?  Hell yes.

Is it possible that there will be a Mick Sever novel taking place on all the     Lesser Antilles? (And, if so, do you need help with the research, because I have     some free time on my hands and I don't eat much?)  

I've got three islands mapped out before the Lesser Antilles.  But if I need an assistant, you'll be the first person I'll call.  I like the cigars you carry with you.

Speaking of research, how much do you do concerning the location of your story and its music industry?

I want the reader to feel like they've visited the island.  I want to offer the reader a $3,000 vacation for just $24.95.  I visit the island (doing all the work for the reader) and try to give you a very romantic, factual, detailed look at the island and its inhabitants.

Now I have some questions about your writing and characters. All kidding aside, your books are well plotted and fast paced. How do you write them? Do you use an outline, index cards, or a storyboard? What is your     writing schedule like?

I don't outline, I don't use index cards, and I don't know how to storyboard.  I used to have a schedule, then I ran into contract deadlines.  I write to deadline. I have an idea where the story is going to go.  After visiting the island, I have a different idea of where the story is going to go.  And half way through the book the characters have their own idea of where the story is going to go.  Often times (as with most writers), I have to go back and add characters, scenes, and sometimes geography to support the tale's direction.  I have yet to find one author whose process replicates another author.  Everyone has their own process.

Devoted to her troubled clients, clinical psychologist Aimee Gannon never thought she'd be entangled in a murder investigation. But a middle-of-the-night phone call from the Sacramento PD delivers a shock: Aimee's rebellious seventeen-year-old patient Taylor Dawkin could be a suspect in the gruesome murder of her own parents. Traumatized by the events of that fatal night, Taylor is left catatonic...and Aimee is desperate to reach beyond her silence to uncover the truth.

Detective Josh Wolf needs Aimee's help to decipher the clues behind a pattern of rectangles and circles that Taylor drew in blood at the crime scene. Unfortunately, he can't keep his mind off the beautiful psychologist -- those long legs, that irritating stubborn streak. But he can't afford a moment's distraction: After Aimee is attacked, she and Josh must race to uncover Taylor's terrifying secret...before the deadly shadows of the past strike again.

"Fueled with a turbo-charged narrative drive, a strong plot and psychological complexity . . ." -- New York Times bestselling author John Lescroat

"Gripping suspense, taut characterization, and a heart-pounder of a plot." -- National bestselling author Roxanne St. Claire

"Eileen Carr blends smooth romance and fine observation with an intriguingly twisted plot for romantic suspense with a kick." -- USA Today bestselling author Virginia Kantra

Eileen Carr lives and writes in northern California. She is the mother of two teenaged boys who are growing at alarming rates and has been engaged to a wonderful and patient if commitment-shy man for over four years without setting a date. Clearly, they're a match made in heaven. As Eileen Rendahl, Eileen has written four chick-lit novels. Occasionally someone gives her an award for one of them. She appreciates that very much.

David Hewson's name is synonymous with literate, international intrigue.  He has written eight novels, seven starring his Roman detective, Nic Costa.  His previous Costa novel, THE GARDEN OF EVIL, was chosen as the best mystery of 2008 by the American Library Association Reading List, which highlights the best in genre fiction.  Hewson discussed his new novel, DANTE'S NUMBERS, and his writing.

How did the character of Nic Costa originate?
 
I wanted someone original, the opposite of the usual thriller/crime protagonist. So Nic is young, a little naive, full of integrity - a good 'ordinary' man, not a middle-aged melancholic alcoholic who can't pass a bar or hold down a relationship. Heroism in ordinary people is much more interesting than heroism in heroes.

What sparked the idea for Dante's Numbers?
  
I'd been wanting to do something about Dante and the movie industry for a while. The original idea was for it to be set entirely in Rome. But then I got invited to Book Passage to teach at their mystery writers' conference in Marin County and spent a week in San Francisco afterwards finishing The Garden of Evil. It struck me that my team would find that place interesting, then I realized I was living on the set of Vertigo which meshed in beautifully with the theme of obsessive lost love that I was trying to extract from Dante. So the book now begins in Rome but shifts a third of the way through to San Francisco and stays there till the end.

Colorado author Jim Michael Hansen recently published Voodoo Laws, the seventh novel in his Bryson Coventry series (Dark Star Publishing).  Once again, Hansen provides his readers with a fast-paced hard-boiled thriller, only this time he electrifies the tension with an unhealthy jolt of the occult.  The many characters--the good, the bad, and the victims--are drawn into a collusion course of mayhem and bloodshed.

A full-time attorney specializing in employment law, OSHA, and civil litigation, Hansen took time out of his busy schedule for this interview:

What an interesting combination of plot devices: tattoos and voodoo. Explain why you wrote about them.

The Laws books are hard-edged thrillers featuring Denver homicide detective Bryson Coventry. Each book is independent of the others, so they can be read in any order. Voodoo Laws is the 7th book in the series. I'm adamantly committed to making each book as different from the preceding ones as possible. As I get higher up in the series, the question becomes, What have I not done so far? The answer in this case was, Voodoo. Thus the book literally started out with one and only one word--Voodoo--and grew from there.

One of the bad guys in the book is a hitman for a New Orleans voodoo priestess, i.e., someone who makes the death curses come true. While that one activity might have been enough to carry him throughout the book, I like to play it safe by giving all my characters, both good and bad, lots of dimensions, activities and sub-plots. In this particular case, I added another layer to him by having him get a number of tattoos several years ago, all of women being murdered. Each tattoo was inked on by a beautiful tattoo artist. He is now killing them in the same manner as the tattoo they gave him. Although this tattoo theme is only a minor sub-plot, it really tends to amp things up.

Dead-End Road is the third in Richard Kunzmann's series set in South Africa featuring the detective duo Harry Mason and Jacob Tshabalala.  In Dead End Road, Harry Mason has rejoined the South African Police Service and moved over to the specialized Serious and Violent Crimes unit. Assigned to investigate the slaying of a minor politician and his family in a township west of Johannesburg, Harry soon uncovers a secretive and violent vigilante group known as 'The Guardians'. When Harry is gunned down during a dawn raid on a remote village and a bomb is detonated in the judicial heartland of Johannesburg, it is his former police partner and long-time friend, Detective Jacob Tshabalala, who takes matters into his own hands. Tshabalala's inquiries expose a splinter faction of vigilantes operating within the police service whose connections stretch all the way into parliament itself. Like Richard's first two books Bloody Harvests and Salamander Cotton, Dead End Road is a gritty thriller that provides an unflinching portrayal of contemporary South Africa.

What does Dead End Road illuminate about the characters Harry Mason and Jacob Tshabalala and how does it build upon the relationship forged between them in the first two books - Bloody Harvests and Salamander Cotton?

Harry Mason is a brooding police officer whose heart is in the right place, even if he often reacts impulsively to challenges. He's also an outsider looking in, a British national whose parents moved to South Africa to escape a tragedy in Harry's early life. Jacob on the other hand is steeped in South Africa's history: he's from a conservative traditional Zulu family, which still believes in the old ways of animism - or ancestral worship, for want of a better description. Jacob has also offended his family by rejecting the sangoma (medicine man) training he was supposed to embark on as the first born son, instead becoming a faithful Christian.

It's this dichotomy between the two men that tells the larger story of South Africa as it evolves in the years after apartheid. In Bloody Harvests we discover what makes Harry such a haunted individual and experience the incredible tragedy which leads to his quitting the police force, while we're also exposed to Jacob's difficult family life. Salamander Cotton has much to do with Harry picking up the pieces left over from the first book, though one doesn't need to read the books in any particular order. Dead End Road shifts the focus on Jacob and his relationship with his father, while also putting a very difficult question to him: how far does law enforcement allow ordinary citizens to take the law into their own hands, when police officers know they are outgunned and outnumbered, with little hope of reinforcements?

Since the release of her first novel in 2007, WILD INDIGO, author Sandi Ault has wowed reviewers and thrilled readers with her stories featuring tough protagonist Jamaica Wild and her pet wolf, Mountain. WILD INDIGO was the first-ever debut novel to be nominated for the special Edgar, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and it was the first debut to win the honored prize. The accolades continued with WILD INFERNO, which Publishers Weekly and Library Journal named one of the Best Books of 2008.

Now, Sandi continues to take the West by storm with the third novel in her WILD Mystery Series, WILD SORROW, being released this month. In WILD SORROW, Jamaica and her wolf Mountain come across an old Indian School while tracking a wounded mountain lion on a desolate canyon rim. When Jamaica is forced to take refuge in the school because of an approaching snowstorm, she discovers the desecrated body of an elderly Anglo woman. What started as a search for a mountain lion quickly becomes much more, and Jamaica soon finds herself struggling to battle threats both natural and man-made as she is stalked and terrorized by the unidentified killer.

Sandi graciously answered some questions for The Big Thrill about her novels and her interesting life.

What was the inspiration for your WILD Mystery Series?

I am smitten by the living culture of the Pueblo Indians, the wild beauty of northern New Mexico and all of the Four Corners area, and I adore wolves. It was fun to put them all together in a series. In truth, though, I also have a more sobering mission in this series. I hurry as fast as I can to capture the vanishing West. I think we live on a knife-edge and may not have the opportunity to see Native Americans living in traditional ways, wolves in the wild, or untamed spaces for much longer. For example: the last traditional ritual I attended at one of the pueblos, all the Indians had cell phones.

Contributing editor Johathan Maberry interviewed bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman about his new thriller, True Detectives.

For readers who might not yet have read Bones, give us the lowdown on Moses Reed and Aaron Fox.

Moe and Aaron, introduced in Bones are half-brothers, same mom (who's a serial marrier) different fathers. One's a rookie LAPD homicide detective, the other ex-LAPD and now a high-end Beverly Hills P.I. Each is faced with the same baffling murder and neither can close it alone.  But first they need to make sure they don't kill each other first.

Will Alex Delaware make a guest appearance in True Detectives?

Alex plays a small but definitive role, supplying a crucial insight about a suspect that shifts the investigation in a new direction.  Smart guy that he is.

The novel explores the corrupt side of the Hollywood lifestyle.  Did you draw on any real-life scandals for the book?

No, it's way too much fun to make stuff up.  I've lived in L.A. for most of my life and continue to believe that it's the one of the best - and arguably the best - setting for crime novels.  Tremendous disparity between the haves and the have-nots, the influence of the film business (euphemistically referred to as "the industry.") And good weather combines to create a terrific level of criminal opportunity.

Your books have been variously described as 'thrillers', "suspense' and 'mysteries'.  What label do you feel best fits True Detectives?

Never paid much attention to labels.  I think of myself as writing novels whose stories are catalyzed by crime.  To my mind, all good fiction needs a strong degree of mystery, in that the reader has to be sufficiently curious to turn the page.  Crime novels, or whatever you choose to call them, use murder and such as propellants.

Kate White is one busy lady. Besides being editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine, which includes overseeing Cosmo Radio, Cosmo.com and Cosmo Books, she's also a New York Times bestselling author. Her latest thriller, available in paperback this month, lands Bailey Weggins on the set of a new TV show appropriately entitled Morgue, where she investigates the disappearance of a young actor. As White's true crime writer delves into the glamorous and crazy world of TV, she soon finds herself in the middle of a real killer story. And also in jeopardy, in the line of fire. When Bailey realizes that someone's stalking her, she has no choice but to solve the case quickly--lest she herself become the inspiration for Morgue's next episode.

Publishers Weekly describes LETHALLY BLOND as
"sharper than a stiletto heel, funnier than a bad dye job and full of fuchsia herrings ... White keeps the reader guessing whodunit to the end." The New York Sun
 praises the novel as "a sexy whodunit."

The inspiration for LETHALLY BLOND came from White's own life. "When my son was thirteen, we were at our weekend home in Pennsylvania, which bordered a wooded area. Late on a Saturday in winter, as it was growing dark and beginning to snow hard, I realized my son wasn't in the house. We found something he'd been playing with at the edge of the woods and a few footprints. The dog was gone as well. But eventually the dog came back and my son didn't. We searched the woods for hours and finally found him. But it was terrifying. It made me want to write about someone who goes missing. As for the TV part, my husband is a former news anchor who is now an actor and I've always been fascinated by his work." She adds, "fortunately I was able to use some of my work contacts to get on the set of a crime show not unlike Morgue. It was fabulous. And then there's the pure fun of just making stuff up."

Debut author Don Helin brings a wealth of personal experience to his debut novel, THY KINGDOM COME. Helin spent a career in the military, serving in the U.S., Vietnam and Germany, which he then followed up as a Washington, DC lobbyist. In THY KINGDOM COME, Colonel Sam Thorpe is a member of the Pentagon's elite anti-terrorist task force investigating a white supremacist militia in central Pennsylvania calling itself The Patriots.

Helin says, "Thorpe uncovers a plot to steal nuclear material to make dirty bombs. Sam also discovers a surprising link to the French Separatist Movement in Quebec."

Undercover with The Patriots, Thorpe's task is to smuggle a chemistry professor from Montreal with the know-how to steal nuclear material and build bombs into the United States. His sole contact with the authorities is FBI undercover agent Alex Prescot, "a kick-ass woman with spiked blond hair and a personality to match."

In Mike Dellosso's latest novel, Scream, whenever a man hears otherworldly screaming during a phone call, the person on the other end of the phone dies.  But when he acts to try and prevent the deaths, he gets another call. This one is from his estranged wife, and the screaming starts...

With lightning pacing and clear high stakes, it's clear why Scream was named Best Christian Thriller of 2009.

You've mentioned that spiritual themes are important to you as a writer. What is the spiritual experience you hope readers will have while reading Scream?

I just want the reader to start the whole process of thinking about eternity. Look, the reality is that we are all going to die. That's an appointment you can't cancel. So what happens after that? I believe there are two choices, heaven or hell. I want the reader to think about that. Because thinking about that directly affects the way we live now and the decisions we make now.

I recently tangled with colon cancer and this truth was never more real to me than when I peeked around life's corner and saw that hooded guy lurking in the shadows.

Scream has been described as having "one of the wickedest villains this side of a nightmare." What scares you? What's your strategy for scaring your readers?
 
What scares me are people with no conscience or a warped conscience. People who have their own idea of right and wrong and justice. They don't play by the same rules the rest of us do.

My strategy for scaring readers is to make my villain as believable as possible, to cause the reader to travel the spectrum of emotions toward him, from anger and fear to pity and sympathy. This keeps the reader off-balance and nurtures a sense of uneasiness about the villain. It also leads the reader to identify with the villain in ways, to recognize there's a potential for wickedness in all of us.

Helter Skelter author Vincent Bugliosi calls M. William Phelps "one of America's finest true-crime writers," and Radio America states Phelps is "the nation's leading authority on the mind of the female murderer." Phelps is the author of 12 books and has appeared on dozens of national radio and television programs, including Court TV, The Discovery Channel, ABC's Good Morning America, Biography Channel, History Channel, Fox News Channel, USA Radio Network, and ABC News Radio.

Contributing editor Janice Gable Bashman chats with M. William Phelps about his latest book, Deadly Secrets, and his upcoming thriller.

Tell us about Deadly Secrets and why it's such a fascinating read.

When you have the local police lieutenant's wife murdered in the parking lot of her church after choir practice, a few nights before Halloween, by a woman she's been having lesbian relations with, you have to scratch your head ... I could not have made this up, and if I did, no one would believe me. And, wouldn't you know, the story takes place the town of Pleasant Valley.

Dawn Silvernail, the killer whose crime is profiled in Deadly Secrets, refused to speak to reporters about the case but granted you exclusive interviews. Why do you think she trusted you with her story?

Because she knew I would give her a voice, and tell her complete story for the first time. No one had offered Dawn this opportunity. Charm helps. I spent some time flattering Dawn, making her feel comfortable with me. She was a bit standoffish. She was in a prison with a woman I had written about previously who told her not to trust me. I had to remind Dawn that she was taking the advice of a woman who had murdered four of her children, mummified their remains, and carried them around in boxes for 25 years.

Having already worked on the Alaskan pipeline and appeared as a television anchor, an NPR essayist and an answer in a board game, Susan Arnout Smith turned her talents to writing. Smith's first thriller, THE TIMER GAME, has been called "explosive and terrifying" and "intelligent and literate." Her second Grace Descanso novel, OUT AT NIGHT, was just released by St. Martin's/Minotaur, and we had a chance to talk to her.

You were born in Anchorage, grew up in Colorado and then returned to Alaska. What brought you back?
 
Bright lights, small city.  An Alaskan cousin, living in Fairbanks, called and told me that if I ever wanted to break into television, (I had a degree in print journalism), I should come to Fairbanks, because everybody was leaving in droves to work on the trans-Alaska pipeline.  I went to Fairbanks, worked in television. . .and left to take a job on the pipeline.

I know that you now live in Southern California. Finally get cold?

Oh, yeah.  With the wind chill factor, that first winter in Fairbanks, it was minus seventy-two.  We'd keep our car motors running when we went grocery shopping, so that the engines wouldn't crack. I breathed through the scarf.  It's not natural, breathing through the scarf, unless you're holding up people at gunpoint. After the pipeline, I moved to Anchorage, where I learned all about damp.  And then I married a nice San Diego man and wised up. 

Three bodies, three different towns. Each victim was a sorority girl, pretty, privileged, and brutally murdered. There are no fingerprints, no clues. He is scrupulously careful, craving those exquisite seconds when the light fades from his victim's eyes. But the rush never lasts, and the killing won't stop. Not until one special woman has been made to suffer.

"Gregg Olsen will have you on the edge of your seat with excitement." -- Lee Child

"Olsen deftly juggles multiple plot lines." -- Publishers Weekly

"Compelling, engrossing...an absorbing, enjoyable read." -- Romantic Times

Throughout his career, Gregg Olsen has demonstrated an ability to create a detailed narrative that offers readers fascinating insights into the lives of people caught in extraordinary circumstances.

Award-winning author Gregg Olsen has been a guest on dozens of national and local television shows, including educational programs for the History Channel, Learning Channel, and Discovery Channel. He has also appeared on Good Morning America, The Early Show, FOX News; CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, Deborah Norville Tonight, MSNBC's Special Edition, Entertainment Tonight, 48 Hours, I-Detective, Fame for 15, Crier Live, Leeza, Sally Jessy Raphael, Inside Edition, Extra, Access Hollywood, Evening Magazine, Northwest Afternoon, AM Northwest, MSNBC's Headliners and Legends with Matt Lauer, and A&E's Biography.

In addition, the New York Times bestselling author has been featured in Redbook, USA Today, People, Salon magazine, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times and the New York Post. A native of Seattle, he lives in Olalla, Washington (near Seattle).

Gregg has won awards for his writing from the Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi), National Federation of Presswomen (a National first place) and some awards from Public Relations Society of America and Society for Technical Communications. The Deep Dark was named Idaho Book of the Year by the Idaho Library Association and was one of two finalists for the Western Writers of America Spur Award in the category of Contemporary Nonfiction.

Contributing editor Mark Combes chats with Raymond Benson about his upcoming thriller DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE.

You've written several stand alone novels, yet Spike makes a comeback in DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE.  What about him makes you want to keep going with him?  Why a series now?

Spike Berenger and his Rockin' Security team are such fun characters that they cry out to rock on!  The whole idea of doing books with play-on-rock-album-titles lends itself to a series as well.  Of course, there's no guarantee that the books will continue--it all depends on sales, blah blah blah--but sure, I'd like to keep them going.  I'm able to put a lot of *me* into the books, because I'm a musician and longtime rock music aficionado.  Spike's tastes in music are pretty much the same as mine.

DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE is a thriller, but isn't it true there's a lot of humor in it?

Yes, the tongue is firmly in cheek.  Not only do I have fun with the book titles (A HARD DAY'S DEATH, DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE), but instead of a "Table of Contents" I have a "Track Listing," and instead of "Acknowledgments" I have "Liner Notes."  Real rock stars make cameo appearances, and all the characters throw around rock trivia in the dialogue.  In the new book there's even a fictional family tree diagram of rock musicians at the front (a la the underground "Canterbury" school of progressive music that was big in the 70s).  Anyone who's into this stuff will get a kick out of it.  But readers who aren't into music will enjoy the story and characters.

Investigative journalist. Ghost writer. Novelist. That was the path Michael Robotham took to get where he is right now: taking his place among the ranks of the top thriller writers in the world. And of those three things, Robotham says writing novels is the most difficult.

"The tyranny of the blank screen is much more frightening than having hours of interview transcripts and research to work with."  

Even so, his time as a ghost writer contributed to the strength of voice we hear in his four novels to date.

"The secret to ghostwriting is to capture the 'voice' of a subject so that not even their closest friends or family will recognise the unseen hand at work," says Robotham. "My approach to writing fiction is exactly the same. Joe O'Loughlin is as real to me as Geri Halliwell or anyone else I've worked with. He lives inside my head and whispers in my ear."

Readers first met psychologist Joe O'Loughlin in Suspect, the book The Observer called "An auspicious debut." Since, according to Robotham's Web site, Suspect was chosen by "the world's largest consortium of book clubs as only the fifth 'International Book of the Month,' making it the top recommendation to 28 million book club members in fifteen countries," it was an auspicious debut, indeed, launching Robotham on a course that has included accolade after accolade and earning Joe O'Loughlin a place in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of fans.

Contributing editor Keith Raffel recently interviewed Karen Maitland, author of the upcoming medieval thriller THE OWL KILLERS.

Your COMPANY OF LIARS garnered terrific reviews.  Is The Owl Killers a sequel?  What should we expect?

THE OWL KILLERS isn't a sequel, although sharp-eyed readers will spot a brief cameo appearance of one of the characters from COMPANY OF LIARS. That novel was about a group of strangers thrown together as they flee across medieval England trying to stay one step ahead of the plague. In contrast THE OWL KILLERS story all takes place in an isolated village from which the characters can't escape.

THE OWL KILLERS has many of the same elements as COMPANY OF LIARS - murder, the supernatural, dark secrets of the characters and of course, the deadly conflict between the Christian and pagan worlds, darkness and light. Although good is not always on the side that readers might expect.

By the time of The Owl Killers, hadn't England been Christian for 500 years or more?  Were there really still pagans around in the fourteenth century?

Pagan practices were forced underground, but they certainly didn't die out. Laws passed in the early Middle Ages, such forbidding the eating of horse meat, had nothing to do with a concern for horses, but were a vain attempt to stamp out the worship of Thor, whose followers used to eat a ceremonial meal of horse flesh as part of their worship.

Many ordinary people, especially those in farming communities, continued to practise the old religions, whilst at the same time attending church services. We also have records of the local people in the Middle Ages physically throwing the vicars out of their parish churches and setting up their own very weird sects. Cunning women, whom many people went to for cures, continued to be guardians of the old religions and folk magic. And even in more recent times, Queen Victoria herself sent for a 'toadsman' to try to cure the Prince of Wales of his fever by using folk-magic when the doctors had failed.

In COMPANY OF LIARS, I set a scene at a 'beggars wedding', a very ancient and barbaric pagan custom which was still widespread the Middle Ages. At a talk recently I told the audience that the last recorded case of this had taken place in 19th Century Poland, but afterwards someone told me that a 'beggars wedding' had been conducted only a few years ago in Cambridgeshire, and when a reporter asked the people who attended why they'd come, their reply was - because it brings good luck! Paganism is never far below the surface even today.

All last month my local beach was a wild zone after southeast trade winds tore across the peninsula.  The tide line was strewn with dead cormorants, smashed gannets and broken seal pups that had succumbed to the choppy seas.  I mention this natural mayhem because the cover of the book we've all been waiting for - the first ever South African anthology of crime fiction, Bad Company - shows another (wild in the feral sense) side of Cape Town.  It depicts Table Bay with the ghostly harbour in the foreground and a bad moon rising.

Now Cape Town is one of those tourist destinations that the BBC (bless them) said was a must-see before you die.  And it is a beautiful city what with its Table Mountain, white sandy beaches, good restaurants, winelands, and fairly relaxed attitude to most things.  There is a flip side to this Cape Town, however.  One that is grim and poverty stricken and dangerous to those who live on its gritty windblown flats.  It is perhaps because of this contrast that Cape Town dominates our nascent crime fiction as the setting of choice.  It is also where many of the thriller writers live although that's surely coincidental.

So putting Cape Town on the cover of Bad Company was a good idea.  Because if anything - and from the little I've read of the stories - one thing the writers do is show up the disjunctions in what we like to call the Mother City.  But the reach is further than that.  As the book's editor, Joanne Hichens writes in her introduction: 'The crimes that the stories in this anthology revolve around are of the more personal kind, as opposed to crimes against humanity, or political crimes. And of the seventeen stories, guns feature in only around a third - which is interesting considering our out-of-control gun culture. Between these covers, there are all sorts of ways of killing.

Sometimes blind dates lead to disaster. Sometimes they lead to a life of happiness. And sometimes--if one of the participants is Harley Jane Kozak--it leads to a novel.

The fourth installment of her Wollie Shelley series, A DATE YOU CAN'T REFUSE, is being released by Crown Books in March.

"On an airplane several years ago I amused myself by counting my blind dates," said Kozak, who grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Los Angeles. "It turns out I've had over 50. I used the most dreadful ones in my first novel, Dating Dead Men, wherein Wollie dates 40 men in 60 days as part of a scientific research project. My editor loved that element of the mysteries."

In A DATE YOU CAN'T REFUSE, Shelley, a greeting card designer, gets roped into another odd job: a "social coach" for an L.A. media company. It's not an attractive job, but the FBI contacts her and lets her know that turning it down isn't an option. And when a corpse--already gnawed by a coyote--shows up in the compound where she works, she realizes that her work will involve much darker secrets than how to look good on TV.

It doesn't surprise anyone who knows Jonathan Maberry that his new bio-terror thriller, PATIENT ZERO, has already garnered high praise from writers like Peter Straub, David Morrell and Joe R. Lansdale.  Jonathan Maberry has already found success as a horror writer, winning multiple Stoker awards for both fiction and non-fiction and securing a reputation as a writer whose work Stuart Kaminsky describes as "vivid, threatening and beautiful."

In PATIENT ZERO, Maberry introduces Joe Ledger, who combines the martial skills of an action hero with the troubled past and vulnerabilities of the classic noir protagonist. Joe is a Baltimore cop recruited by a secret government agency to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a plague that can turn people into murderous zombies, a harrowing device Joseph Finder calls "Night of the Living Dead meets Michael Crichton."

Since 1979, Jonathan Maberry has written thousands of articles, seventeen nonfiction books and seven novels, as well as plays, poetry, comics and forays into new media and webcasts. He's currently writing DRAGON FACTORY, the next installment of the Joe Ledger series, and editing Thrill Ride, a serial graphic novel for ITW showcasing the work of some of the biggest names in thriller writing.  He's also the only writer I know who's a member of the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame, which means he knows how to make those scenes of hand-to-hand combat harrowing and frighteningly accurate.

I caught up with Jonathan at the local Starbucks that is his writing home; so much so that he credits the place in the acknowledgements of his latest book.

PATIENT ZERO is being described as a bio-terror thriller, but it actually pays homage to a number of different genres. How do you categorize the novel?

I call PATIENT ZERO a bioterrorism thriller for convenience sake, but you're right in that it crosses a lot of genre lines.  In fact, Ken Bruen labeled it a 'neo-noir thriller', the first of its kind.  That's probably right on the money.  The backbone of the story is the classic thriller: a race against the clock to stop bad guys from doing something really, really bad, and in this case they want to release an unstoppable pathogen.  But the hero is a cop and he breaks the case down using a police procedural approach.  That isn't often done in thrillers.  Plus, the plague turns people into zombies, so you have a bit of the horror genre and the medical thriller genre as well.

PATIENT ZERO does have other elements in it as well.  When the hero, Joe Ledger, leads Echo Team on the missions in the novel the books moves a bit into the arena of the military thriller. If PATIENT ZERO needs a simpler label, I'm going to just call it a 'thriller'. That'll do.

Four years ago, overcome by hunger, Blake Richards took too much from a young woman, and turned her to save her life. Now Meghan Thomas is like him, a vampire...and their initial attraction has turned to anger and distrust. She hates what he has made her, but when a vicious killer threatens Manhattan's vampire community, Meghan has no choice but to turn to him--her sire.

Blake is reckless and brash. Meghan is young and untried. Alone, they are no match for the killer. But with the fates of humans and vampires alike depending on them, their only hope is to trust in their blood bond....

FURY CALLS (4.5) by Caridad Pineiro: When a vampire couple kills each other at the restaurant where she cooks, vampire chef Meghan Thomas teams up with Blake Richards -- the man she hates for creating her undead life -- to find out what made the pair kill each other in bloodlust. Determined to turn Meghan's hatred of him into love, Blake gets a job at the restaurant and resolves to be a better person (vampire). But his resolve is tested when Meghan questions his loyalty. Piñeiro infuses her vampires with very human feelings, making her paranormal story seem realistic. It's a great read! -- Alexandra Kay, Romantic Times Book Club

Caridad Pineiro is the USA TODAY and NY Times bestselling author of over twenty novels. In 2007, a year marked by six releases from Harlequin and Pocket Books, Caridad was selected as the 2007 Golden Apple Author of the Year by the New York City Romance Writers. Caridad's novels have been lauded as the Best Short Contemporary Romance of 2001 in the NJ Romance Writers Golden Leaf Contest, Top Fantasy Books of 2005 and 2006 by CATALINA Magazine and Top Nocturne of 2006 by Cataromance. Caridad has appeared on various television shows, such as the FOX News Early Edition in New York, and articles featuring her novels have been published in several leading newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Daily News, LATINA and the Star Ledger. For more information on Caridad, please visit www.caridad.com or www.thecallingvampirenovels.com.

Bryant Gruley's debut, STARVATION LAKE, is generating strong pre-pub buzz for a grim and compelling tale of newspapers, hockey and small towns.

When a down-and-out reporter returns to his home town in Michigan and is caught up in a murderous mystery involving a legendary hockey coach, he and the townsfolk face secrets that change the way they look at themselves, their neighbors, and a sport they love.

Both Publisher's Weekly and Booklist gave STARVATION LAKE starred reviews and compared Gruley's debut to Dennis Lehane's MYSTIC RIVER.  It's also been chosen for the March Indie Next List by IndieBound, and selected as a Killer Book by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
 
STARVATION LAKE is about small town secrets. Why do you think readers crave such tales?

Because we love seeing the scarred and bloody underbelly of anything that's generally exalted in our national consciousness, as small towns are. Reading these sorts of tales, people in small towns can feel like there's more to life than having Friday dinner at the Bob Evans restaurant, and people in big towns can reassure themselves that they don't hold a monopoly on creepiness and evil.

Tell us about your hero, Gus Carpenter, and why there's been such a strong reaction to him.

Gus is your average likable guy. He loves his Mom. He appreciates a good fried bologna sandwich. He drinks Blue Ribbon. He's devoted to his childhood pal, Soupy. But he's endearing, too, because he's flawed. He cost Starvation Lake a shot at a state championship, then went away to redeem himself in Detroit--and committed a much larger mistake that forced him to come home, humiliated. Gus's struggle to forgive himself is common to many of us who live with regrets small and large.

This month it's my privilege to be featuring William Dietrich and his new historical thriller, THE DAKOTA CIPHER.  Here's a snapshot of this exciting new book:

Ethan Gage is back for his third adventure, on the run to America after a tumultuous tryst with Napoleon Bonaparte's married sister.  A Norwegian ally enlists him in a hunt for a legendary Norse artifact, and newly-inaugurated Thomas Jefferson asks Ethan to see if woolly mammoths still survive on the frontier.  A titled temptress, a doughty French voyageur, unfriendly Indians and a grizzly bear keep things lively as Gage finds himself an unlikely explorer and hero! At stake is the vast Louisiana Territory.

It has me wondering how a Norse artifact could possibly be related to the Louisiana Territory.  I'm intrigued and can't wait to find out!

I asked Dietrich how it all started -- how he became a novelist.  "I grew up writing fiction for fun but didn't think I had the skill or insight to make a living at it.  Journalism, on the other hand, paid: 25 cents a column inch for my first stringer job! But while I loved newspaper reporting, I never lost the hankering to write a novel.  A mid-life bout with cancer (cured), career restlessness, and two trips to Antarctica as a newspaper reporter resulted in a butt kick to actually risk fiction.  An editor at Warner named Rick Horgan said, 'Your plot (for 'Ice Reich') won't work as it is but I like your writing, so if you come up with a plot fix by an editorial meeting tomorrow we might buy it.' I did, they did, and here I am."

Dietrich's modesty is evident.  A plot fix in one day?  One day?  That's no easy trick.  For most writers, it would be next to impossible.  It shows determination and guts -- traits reflected in Ethan Gage.  Don't be surprised, there's a lot of William Dietrich in his main character with some fundamental differences.  To name a few, Dietrich doesn't gamble, he's a family man instead of a womanizer, a writer instead of a warrior, and judicious instead of impulsive.  They say opposites attack...  Remember, Gage is character of late eighteenth century, so being a womanizer, a warrior, and impulsive sounds about right to me.  As crazy as it sounds, those traits don't take anything away from Ethan's charm.