March 2009 Archives

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

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

• THE CHAMELEON CONSPIRACY by Haggai Carmon
• BEASTS OF PREY by Rob Marsh
• BETRAYALS by Carla Neggers
• DEADLOCK by Robert Liparulo
• DINING WITH DEVILS by Gordon Aalborg
• ILLEGAL by Paul Levine
• WRONGFUL DEATH by Robert Dugoni
• PROBABLE CLAWS by Clea Simon
• PLEA OF INSANITY by Jilliane Hoffman
• SUDDEN DEATH by Allison Brennan
• TRIPLE CROSS by Mark T. Sullivan
• LAST GASP by Carla Cassidy
• THE LANGUAGE OF BEES by Laurie R. King
• SCREEN SHOT by John Darrin
• NIGHTWALKER by Heather Graham
• LORDS OF CORRUPTION by Kyle Mills
• MALICE by Lisa Jackson
• FATHER'S DAY by Keith Gilman
• A Between The Lines in-depth interview with bestselling thriller author Carla Neggers
• Plus International News from Mike Nicol in South Africa

Writers, of course, come from an infinite variety of backgrounds. I know a successful author who did not read books growing up. Others read voraciously, or started writing stories as soon as they could form letters with crayons.

But I have never met a writer who started writing in a tree. Until New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers.

"I grew up in the country with six brothers and sisters," Neggers says, "and we all loved to climb trees. I'd grab a pad and pen and scoot up to my favorite branch in a sugar maple and sit up there and write. It was a great place to be on my own with my muse! I suspect it says that I have a zest for adventure and don't like to be tied to a computer. And that I can write anywhere, anytime. I also used to write on a rock in the middle of a brook."

Neggers, like many romantic suspense writers today, cut her teeth on category romances. This was, for her, an invaluable learning experience.

"Not only did I learn a lot, I met some wonderful people and worked with some fantastic editors. In terms of the craft of writing, I learned more about how 'internal' conflict -- within and between characters -- can drive and enrich a story. I also unleashed my sense of humor. Most of my category romances are funny books!"

International Thriller Writers announces the formation of our new Social Networks Committee headed by chair Sheila English. Sheila will direct the efforts to establish, expand and maintain the ITW Internet footprint in the social networks arena. Already online are ITW's Facebook, MySpace and Twitter pages. We encourage our subscribers and members to visit these sites and take part in our ongoing program to establish and build relationships between ITW members and thriller fans worldwide.

Sheila Clover English is CEO of Circle of Seven Productions and Executive Producer of Reader's Entertainment TV. She is a member of the Downloadable Media Association, the Internet Content Syndication Council and the Silver Telly Council.

Sheila is a multi-award winning producer, copy writer and director of book commercials, including top awards from the prestigious Telly Awards, Davey Awards, Cameo Awards, EMPixx Awards and The Black Quill Awards. Her most recent award was for Excellence in Email Marketing.

She has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The New York Times and on NPR as well as featured in technology circles such as TubeMogul University, Ask the Experts and Robert Scoble's Fast Company Show.

As a speaker she has done lectures, panels and workshops on book marketing and technology for Book Expo America, Romance Writers of American, ThrillerFest, PubWest, Troy Booklovers Festival, Romantic Times and Lori Foster's Book Lover's Convention.  She is a regular contributor to Future Perfect Publishing Blog.

Booklist hails Robert Dugoni as a master who "mixes the suspense of a Grisham along with the political angle of a Baldacci."  His first novel to feature the can't-lose attorney David Sloane was Jury Master, a New York Times Bestseller.  His new book, Wrongful Death, brings Sloane back in a case that he can't possibly win.  

How did your first novel, The Jury Master, come about?

It was a long time in the making. In the early 1980's while still at Stanford, I clerked for a law firm and was invited to hear a very well known and respected trial attorney give his closing statement to the jury. Before he did he told me that he had already lost the case. He said lawyers don't win in closing statements. That was just a gimmick for television and movies.  But that afternoon I watched him build this incredible story until there seemed just no other logical conclusion than what he was proposing the evidence proved. He won. And I began to think of this character, an attorney who can't lose, who can actually will a jury to accept his version of the truth. That raises a whole host of interesting moral and ethical considerations. From there came the character of David Sloane, the San Francisco attorney who does not lose.

Why bring back Sloane in your latest book, Wrongful Death?   

I honestly had no intention of bringing Sloane back. I thought I put that character through the ringer in The Jury Master, but then the reviews started coming in and everyone either expected, or asked, to read more books about Sloane. As I've said before, people want to read about heroes. They want to read about people who are honest and ethical and dogged, and Sloane is all of those things. Plus, I came up with this great idea of a wrongful death action by the family of a Washington National Guardsman killed in Iraq, and who else could take on an unwinnable case against the United States Government and United States Military but David Sloane? 

Monthly Book Giveaway

Congratulations to Joe Stanton, the winner of this month's BIG THRILL giveaway. Joe will receive an assortment of signed thrillers including Wrongful Death by Robert Dugoni, Thy Kingdom Come by Don Helin, First to Kill by Andrew Peterson, Squawk 7500: Terrorist Hijacks Pacifica Flight 762 by Steve A. Reeves, Lords of Corruption by Kyle Mills, Wild Sorrow by Sandi Ault, Demons in the Crawlspace  by Gino Brogdon, Deadlock by Robert Liparulo, Dead-End Road by Richard Kunzmann, The Island by Heather Graham, and The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland.

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

On leave from the New Orleans Police Department after a freak accident, Detective Rick Bentz is obsessed with getting back to work----and not behind a desk. He intends to return to homicide, his partner and to the complex, difficult cases that earned him accolades and a reputation for heroism. Haunted by depression and frustration, nagged by pain that until recently made even walking impossible, Bentz begins to question his sanity when he begins seeing visions of his late wife. Certain he's being set up, he follows the clues back to Los Angeles and to his past. It's where his ex-wife died and where he poured himself into a bottle after mistaking a twelve-year-old boy with a toy gun for a murderer about to kill his partner and shooting him dead. Within forty-eight hours of his return to LA, a killer duplicates the double homicide that helped end his LAPD career, and a killing spree begins in which each victim is a part of his ex-wife's past, each corpse points to Bentz as the killer, and a murderer is determined to keep at it until Bentz has finally paid for his sins.

"A vengeful ex-wife appears to have returned from the dead to stalk her ex-husband in this gripping thriller from bestseller Jackson,,, Jackson heightens the creep factor by including the viewpoint of a character whose hatred for Rick for past wrongs inspires another extreme killing spree." -- Publishers Weekly on MALICE

"Solidifies Jackson's sttus as the queen of the modern-day suspense thriller." -- The Providence Journal on LOST SOULS

"Expect the unexpected." -- The Clarion Ledger on LOST SOULS

Lisa Jackson can't keep away from murderers, especially serial killers. She's been killing people from Savannah, New Orleans and Baton Rouge to San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest--and it's been worth it. Readers come back again and again. Her book Fatal Burn was a number one New York Times paperback bestseller, and her first hardcover, Shiver, hit the top five on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Readers made WICKED GAME, written with her sister, novelist Nancy Bush, and the paperback reprint of LOST SOULS, national bestsellers. Lisa's next book, MALICE is on sale March 31st.

You obviously have a great 'hook for your books' in the Mary Russell series, an apprentice and wife who helps the ultimate detective solve crimes.  How brave did you have to be to take on the sacrosanct Sherlock Holmes as a continuing character?

Well, I prefer the take on the series that the Random House marketing department came up with: "Meet the world's greatest detective--and her husband, Sherlock Holmes."  The real fun of the books is that Holmes is a supporting character, and Russell what Sherlock Holmes would look like were Holmes a young, 20th century female.  Sherlockians were dubious at first, but once they saw that I had respect and affection for both Holmes and Conan Doyle, they decided to play along, and in fact have invited me to some of the annual Baker Street Irregular dinners.

In your series, your heroine, Mary Russell, has an interesting character arc.  Since your hero, Sherlock Holmes, is so well known, have you been able to develop a character arc for him also?

That's the reason I wanted to pick the character up after Conan Doyle was finished with him, at the eve of the Great War.  Pastiches can't really permit a lot of development, since you have to brush the character off and put him back where you found him, but to start with him at a point of immense change for Britain as a whole--well, as one of the LRK fan sites says, "After 1914, Holmes is ours." There were a lot of ways Conan Doyle didn't even try to permit his character to grow, not only because he didn't take the man seriously, but because he assumed that the personality of Holmes wouldn't survive the post-war changes.  I did.

Just three novels into her second career, things are looking dazzling for Jilliane Hoffman, the storyteller who Nelson DeMille called "one of the best legal thriller writers in the country." Hoffman's first book, Retribution, was an international bestseller, received widespread critical acclaim and is currently under development with Warner Bros.

The book-to-film process can be long and drawn out, but Hoffman reports that she's written the first draft of a screenplay that is currently with director John Wells. The author says that the project "generated a lot of talent interest when the rights were first sold. Jodie Foster, Julia Roberts. Charlize Theron. Renee Zellweger. Nicole Kidman. I don't know how much is serious and how much is talk, but I certainly love hearing it!"

Though Hollywood may be calling, Jilliane Hoffman has a lawyer's passion for precision and accuracy and she comes by it honestly. Hoffman spent four-and-a-half years as a felony prosecutor in Miami, and another five as the regional legal advisor for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Those were important miles to Hoffman. "I couldn't have written any of my novels without that experience," she says now.

You shake the dice at the tables, lights blinking and bells ringing all around you. Whether you blow on them, cross your fingers or say a little prayer, when the cubes of ivory leave your hand, it's all up to Lady Luck. Unfortunately. Don't you sometimes wish ghosts really existed and you could . . . well, just wink at a spectral partner and have those dice do a little dance and flip so they landed on your point?
 
Heather Graham has.  In fact, she thought about it so much she wound up writing a book about it. "To be honest, what sparked my desire in NIGHTWALKER was an intense desire to have a ghost who would fix the dice for you at a craps table." Instead of a plot or the hero coming initially to her mind, "No, the ghost came first." The ghost, named Ringo, has attached himself to a Paiute ghost communicator, or "nightwalker," named Dillon Wolf, hoping he'll someday solve his own murder. There's a good chance, since Dillon is a private detective, working in Las Vegas, near to where Ringo died a century before.

Robert Liparulo has had the writing bug for a long, long time.
 
When he was in the fifth grade, his family lived in the Azores Islands, where his father was stationed in the Air Force.
"One day, I watched the Concorde land there on its first transatlantic flight. I wrote an article about it and my fifth grade teacher sent it into the magazine without telling them my age."

A few months later, he received a copy of the magazine with his article and a check.

"I was hooked," he says. "I knew then that writing was all I wanted to do."

At the age of twelve, Liparulo read Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND, a book that affected him profoundly -- so much so that he was brought to tears. This in itself was a revelation for him. If a book full of "only words" could reduce a tough kid to tears, he knew he had to be a novelist.

Throughout his youth, when asked what he wanted to do when he was older, he always said, "I want to make 12-year-old boys cry."

After spending several years as a journalist and adding over a thousand articles and several writing awards to his resume, Liparulo finally achieved his dream when COMES A HORSEMAN was published by WestBow Press.

Since then, Bob has created a series of YA thrillers, has written the novels GERM and DEADFALL -- which Michael Palmer called "a brilliantly crafted thriller" -- and has seen his fourth adult thriller, DEADLOCK, hit the stands in March.

When asked what inspired him to write DEADLOCK, Liparulo says:  "In September 2007, word hit the news about Blackwater guards in Baghdad firing on civilians in Nisoor Square, killing seventeen.  One of the pictures showed a guard afterward leaning casually against a Humvee, one leg cocked, picking his teeth with a toothpick, totally unaffected."

Sometimes the scariest novels seem to be written by the nicest guys. This certainly holds true for the new techno-thriller SCREENSHOT and its author, John Darrin. SCREENSHOT is part of a trilogy featuring investigative reporter Seth Mathias who's hot on the trail of a multi-millionaire entrepreneur with a bent for murder and a talent for creating bizarre killing machines, including his latest business plan: interactive pay-per-view executions, live on the Internet. Yet behind this terrifying premise is a mild-mannered writer leisurely exploring the United States by RV and just enjoying life. John took some time from his travels to answer questions about his upcoming release and about his unusual lifestyle.

Tell us a little about SCREENSHOT, and explain the inspiration for it.

SCREENSHOT is a techno-thriller. It started as a great story that happened to revolve around the Internet.

The Internet has a huge impact on our daily lives already, and it's only going to get more pervasive. That's both good and bad. We're all aware of scams and identity theft, but the possibilities for evil go well beyond those. My antagonist, Screenshot, takes evil to a new level, hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet and using its global reach to broadcast live assassinations - pay-per-view spectacles targeting bad guys. These victims are criminals themselves, people you would want to see dead anyway, so the audience can watch and cheer the carnage like it was some pro wrestling match. And the problem becomes, how do you catch a virtual murderer?

The inspiration came from a news story about an uproar surrounding a website that allowed people to hunt . . . online. I love this. Someone actually mounted a rifle on a remote-controlled stand, added a webcam, and invited anyone to take potshots at passing animals for a fee. My son pointed this out to me and thought it would make a good story. It got pretty embellished from there and the writing became more fun and interesting as I introduced more and more imaginative remote-controlled weapons, and as the targets became people. My favorite is the Pediphryer - a liquid taser the Screenshot uses to flame-broil a known pedophile.

The other two books in the trilogy should be out by this time next year.

Carla Cassidy has published more than eighty romance novels for Silhouette and Harlequin, but has always loved reading suspense novels, and, she says, "It didn't take long for me to begin adding suspense elements to my stories." She sold her first romantic suspense novel in 2004, and since then has developed a loyal following for her stories that blend traditional romance elements with suspenseful plot lines and heroines who face danger but find love.

Her latest book, coming from Signet Eclipse in April, is Last Gasp, and it's the story of a single mom who discovers that her father, who had been convicted of murdering her mother and siblings, may actually be innocent, and she must uncover the truth about the crimes and in the process becomes the target of a psychotic killer.

Romance has some very specific subgenres, and your writing has ranged across them, which do you think is the most fun to write?

I love the book I'm working on at the moment, until I get toward the end where I hate it and think it's the worst thing ever written!   Suspense is definitely my first love and I like my suspense with a romance involved.  

Where did you get the inspiration for Last Gasp?  Is it purely a work of imagination, or was there any actual case or event that sparked the idea?

The story is definitely a work of imagination, but the setting was inspired by childhood memories.  The story takes place in a small town in western Kansas.  I spent many summers with my grandparents on their farm.  It was a small, fairly isolated place where the wind blew often and it was easy to imagine scary things in the dark of the night.

Probable Claws is the fourth book in Clea Simon's Theda Krakow series involving cats & crime & rock & roll.

Give us a brief overview of the new book, Probable Claws (great title by the way!)

Probable Claws opens up with shelter cats being sickened by contaminated cat food. (This is based on real incidents from last year with pet food from China that had been contaminated with melamine.) In my books, of course, no cats would ever die -- but it does raise a question: Has the food been intentionally poisoned or is this an accident? Theda and her buddy Violet, who runs the shelter, can't quite agree on this, and when Theda learns about some of the politics that are dividing the area shelters -- basically the question of euthanasia and shelter funding -- she begins to understand why.  But would shelter politics explain why a vet is then brutally murdered? Since Theda's cat, Musetta, is the only witness -- and Theda is the likeliest suspect -- these questions take on a grave importance.

Gordon Aalborg's DINING WITH DEVILS starts with a murder, a dead pigeon and a small serving of real-life revenge.

A blind man competing in a Tasmanian competition for gundogs--dogs trained to retrieve game birds--seems at first to be the likely suspect when  the dog trial judge is shot. Until, of course, it is realized the gun in use at the trial is loaded with blanks.
The death, followed by two kidnappings with possibly cannibalistic intentions, catch the attention of police Sgt. Charlie Banes. The killer's trail stretches back to a cave in Canada, where one of his kidnapping victims had trapped him and left him to die.

And Banes must connect the disparate crimes before a serial killer makes a meal out of his friends.

The revenge aspect? A blind friend of Aalborg's in Tasmania once did compete in gundog retrieving trials, with a dog bred by the author. But his enthusiasm was shattered by a judge who told him he should give up.

"The idiot, insensitive twit had to add, 'and besides, you can't win anyway,'" Aalborg said. "I wanted to shoot him right there on the spot (and I wasn't alone!) but couldn't, obviously, so now I've done the next best thing by having somebody else do it in DINING WITH DEVILS."

The Los Angeles Times says, Mark T. Sullivan writes "real, old-fashioned thrillers... all bodily functions and the ability to care for one's family to be suspended while reading," According to the London Literary review, Mark's novels are "superbly written tales of suspense, mystery and adventure." Writer Robert Crais said, "Triple Cross makes you wonder why the bottom really dropped out of the stock market. The story snaps and twists like a cracking whip, and I defy you to guess the ending."

So, why did it take almost five years for ex-journalist Sullivan to write his new novel, Triple Cross?

"I know some of my readers and fans have been asking why," Sullivan said. "Some of the reasons were business related, painful and not worth getting into. But after the publication of Serpent's Kiss, I was burnt out for a while and spent a few months wandering around in the woods and along the rivers near my house in Montana, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. The answer after all that therapeutic navel gazing was that I wanted to continue to write. I realized that writing is one of my favorite things to do, and that got my butt back in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard."

You never quite know what you're going to when you head off to a writers' festival, and it's always with a degree of trepidation that I pack my bags.  And so it was when I set off to the 12th Time of the Writer Festival in Durban last month, especially as this was the first time the festival had ever featured crime fiction writers.  My companions were Angela Makholwa, Deon Meyer, and Margie Orford - all of us members of ITW, I'm pleased to say.

Unlike many festivals this one has an outreach programme to school goers and students so each writer ends up visiting three schools and a college.  Well, those outings took off all the jaded feelings I had about the world.  Also - with a general election later this month and the certainty of a president coming into office who has a dubious financial past, who was involved in a notorious arms scandal distinguished by huge bribes, who was charged (but subsequently acquitted) of rape, and who famously said that after sleeping with an HIV+ woman all you needed to do was take a shower to guard against the highly infectious disease, my thoughts about the country's future were less than enthusiastic.  In addition it should be noted that his supporters like singing a song which, in rough translation, says, Give me a machine gun - an AK47.  Hence my reservations.

But the kids changed all that.  They were attentive, articulate, bright, sharp, polite, and they asked questions.  In one session we ran - at their request - 15 minutes into their break!  Most importantly they had no truck with the incoming president or his hugely discredited party, the African National Congress.  And this in the home province of the next president, Jacob Zuma.  Unsurprisingly (given Zuma's antics) but surprisingly to me as I'd thought Zuma's popularity was more widespread, they couldn't take the man seriously.

Contributing editor Keith Raffel recently interviewed South African thriller author Rob Marsh about his new book, Beasts of Prey.

Rob, would you give us a sneak preview of Beasts of Prey?

January 1988. A body is discovered in the Kruger National Park, and Russell Kemp, disgraced Special Branch operative now relegated to the Criminal Investigation Department at Phalaborwa police station, is dispatched to the crime scene. What at first appears to be a simple case of suicide evolves into something more sinister. Before long, the trail leads Kemp to crime and corruption at the highest levels of the South African Defence Force. A terrible secret of the apartheid government is about to be revealed - and there are those within the military who will stop at nothing to prevent him from completing his investigation.  Beasts of Prey is based upon a true story.

How did you do your research on the South African CID and Special Branch?

I've been writing about crime in South Africa for over 20 years. I've written two books on SA crime and I've written and presented a 13-part radio series on crime for SAfm, the South African Broadcasting Corporation's English language radio station. It was more difficult to research the role the South African Defence Force (SADF). However, the story on which the book is based was the subject of an official Commission of Enquiry which published an official report.

When readers have finished Beasts of Prey, what do you want them to take away from the book?

The aims of Beasts of Prey are twofold. First and foremost it's intended to be a 'good' read, a page-turner if you like, but it's also a reminder of the evil that men do, that government organizations - such as the SADF - that are supposed to protect us can sometimes be the worst culprits.

Sometimes ITW seems like a scary place. Here's why: I keep interviewing authors who have a, uh, shall we say shadowy background. No interview has made me feel more like that than my recent conversation with Haggai Carmon, author of the upcoming THE CHAMELEON CONSPIRACY and two other thriller novels featuring CIA and Justice Department operative Dan Gordon.

International attorney Haggai Carmon makes no secrets of his vivid past, although he's somewhat circumspect on details. For the past 24 years he has represented the United States government in civil litigation in Israel. He is also legal council to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. He notes that the embassy is run by the State Department and the litigation is handled by the Justice Department. "This has been for twenty-four years my 'day job' but I also had a 'night job.' I was retained by the U.S. government to perform intelligence gathering in sensitive cases that sent me undercover to other countries."

He claims to no longer be doing that--plausible deniability? Who's to say? His fiction writing began a few years back when he was investigating Russian organized crime in one of the former Soviet Republics. "My Interpol contact came to my hotel and said, 'Don't leave, you've been exposed.' Here I was in a small room with a black-and-white TV that spoke only Russian, with bad food and a small bed and a small desk. Interpol protected me but I was really frustrated. I had no gun, I wasn't armed." So, while waiting through the night for Interpol to get him safely out of the hotel and presumably out of the country with the Russian Mafiya looking for him, Carmon started writing on his laptop, churning out almost 100 pages of a novel that would ultimately become his first, TRIPLE IDENTITY.

The Left Coast Crime Awards were announced last Wednesday in Hawaii. Congratulations to the many ITW members on the lists!

THE BRUCE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL HISTORICAL MYSTERY

Tasha Alexander: A Fatal Waltz (HarperCollins)
Rhys Bowen: A Royal Pain (Berkley Prime Crime)
Rhys Bowen: Tell Me Pretty Maiden (St. Martin's)
Laurie R. King: Touchstone (Bantam)
Kelli Stanley: Nox Dormienda, A Long Night For Sleeping (Five Star) - WINNER

HAWAII FIVE-0

Baron Birtcher: Angels Fall (Iota)
Kate Flora: The Angel of Knowlton Park (Five Star)
Asa Larsson: The Black Path (Delta)
G.M. Malliet: Death of a Cozy Writer (Midnight Ink)
Neil S. Plakcy: Mahu Fire (Alyson Books) - WINNER
Karin Slaughter: Fractured (Delacorte)

THE LEFTY

Donna Andrews: Six Geese a-Slaying (St. Martin's)
Jeffrey Cohen: It Happened One Knife (Berkley Prime Crime)
Sue Ann Jaffarian: Thugs and Kisses (Midnight Ink)
N.M. Kelby: Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill (Shaye Areheart Books/Random House Group)
Rita Lakin: Getting Old is To Die For (Dell/Bantam)
Tim Maleeny: Greasing the Pinata (Poisoned Pen Press) - WINNER

In addition, the Dilys Award was presented by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association at the Left Coast Crime awards ceremony. The winner was Sean Chercover's Trigger City.

Father's day is a dark and atmospheric tale of an ex-cop from Philadelphia asked to track down the missing daughter of an old friend. The investigation takes him deep into his past, into the darkest corners of the city where the ghosts of his most painful memories await his return.

He uncovers truths about the alleged suicide of his friend, a fellow officer with the Philadelphia police department; truths about the accusations that ended both their careers; truths about the woman who had come between them; truths about the tortured life of the girl he's trying to find and naturally, truths about himself.

Father's Day is a novel with multiple layers of meaning, taught psychological depth, strong noir elements and stark visual imagery. It is a terrifying exploration of the emotions behind our deepest fears.

"Gilman has a cop's eye for detail and a hardboiled humor that can't be faked. A palpable evil fills the pages of FATHER'S DAY that is both terrifying and relentless. Gilman writes sharply and knows where all the bodies are buried; his Philadelphia is worth a visit." -- William Lashner - New York Times bestselling author of A KILLER'S KISS.

"The best fiction has this feeling that someone's just leaned close to whisper in our ear: 'I've something important to tell you.' FATHER'S DAY, Keith Gilman's debut novel has, and sustains, that quality from the first page. You know right away that you're in the hands of a natural and very fine storyteller. Authenticity, voice, the sense of lives beyond the page, all those things we crave as readers and for which we work so hard as writers, tossing the bones, hoping the magic will work -- all are solidly, soundly in place."-- James Sallis, author of Drive and the Lew Griffin series

Keith Gilman is a cop. He was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania and he's been a police officer in the Philadelphia area for over fifteen years. He knows how cops think. He knows what cops know. He's seen things most people only see in their nightmares. He walks the walk and he talks the talk, and in FATHER'S DAY, his debut novel from St. Martin's Minotaur, he pulls back the curtain on his disturbing vision of a decaying urban world, haunted by shadows of deceit and death. 

Paul Levine, whose latest thriller ILLEGAL drops March 24, has been a journalist, a trial lawyer, a television writer and a novelist. In his varied careers, there have been two constants--the law and his unique wit.

From the dairy farming area of central Pennsylvania, Levine moved to Miami where he worked for what was considered to be one of the top daily papers of the nation, the MIAMI HERALD. Starting out as a general assignment reporter, he was quickly promoted to covering criminal court.

"I developed an interest and curiosity about the law by watching lawyers work," he said. "Some of those guys were really good. One was Roy Black, a defense lawyer. And there were talented prosecutors, too. I thought 'what they're doing looks like fun, and what I'm doing is writing about what they're doing, and I'd rather be doing it.'"

So he went to law school.

"What I didn't realize was that a lot of the law is pure drudgery. I'd seen the drama, the courtroom work." And ironically enough, he ended up in civil work rather than criminal.

New York Times bestselling author, Kyle Mills is happiest living in Wyoming, climbing rocks for fun and danger. He started off as a banker, but tried his creative chops at writing and discovered a talent for telling life and death stories about moral ambiguity. With ten books to his credit, he's a force in the thriller world.

And for a thriller writer, there's not a lot of praise higher than what Booklist heaped on him: "Mills does the large scale thriller better than anyone else working the genre today. As a matter of fact, he may do it better than anyone who's ever sent a character out to save the world."

In LORDS OF CORRUPTION, his latest hero, Josh Hagarty, ventures to war-torn Africa in the name of charity, but discovers his exotic employer is part of an international conspiracy that is anything but altruistic.

Here Kyle Mills fields questions about his work and his life:

How is writing a thriller like rock climbing?

They can both be a little scary no matter how many times you do them.  There's always that little adrenaline rush before you start climbing a route--not only from the fear of getting hurt, but the fear of failure.  I feel the same thing when I sit down to start a novel.  Have I finally run out of ideas? Will this be the one I can't pull off?

This month it's my pleasure to feature Allison Brennan, a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Allison has published ten romantic thrillers with Ballantine, a novella, and a short story featured in KILLER YEAR, a Lee Child edited anthology.

Allison's readership is wide reaching.  Over four million books have been printed in eight languages and many have their own UK editions. If you laid them end to end, they'd form a continuous line from Los Angeles to San Francisco!
Her latest thriller, SUDDEN DEATH, promises to the deliver the goods again.  It's the first in a Sacramento FBI trilogy.  Here's a snapshot:

When a homeless veteran is found dead in a squalid Sacramento alley, FBI special agent Megan Elliott vows to find the murdered hero's killer. Her investigation gets complicated fast, for the victim, a former Delta Force soldier, is just one link in a nationwide spree of torture and murder.

Straight off a job rescuing medical missionaries, soldier-for-hire Jack Kincaid returns to his home base in the Texas border town of Hidalgo only to receive the news that one of his closest colleagues has been brutally murdered. Faced with an inept local police force, Jack takes matters into his own hands.

Now, as part of a national task force to stop the sadistic killings, "by-the-book" Megan and "burn-the-book" Jack form a tense alliance, sparked with conflict and temptation. But they struggle against more than passion, for a vicious pair of killers has only just begun a rampage of evil . . . and the primary target is much closer than Megan suspects.

I like this book's premise. A lot. It's my kind of novel. I asked Allison about the villains in her stories.  "The villain is certainly one of the major drivers of all my stories for several reasons. First, without the villain the chances that the hero and heroine would be at the same place at the same time working together would be next to nil, so the villain is essentially a catalyst for the romance part of my romantic thrillers."

The April issue of The Writer Magazine features the article Ten Basic Ingredients for a Successful Thriller by ITW member and bestselling author, Gary Braver. In his article, the veteran of the genre lists the 10 basic ingredients you'll need to cook up the perfect story.

Braver is a charter member of ITW who helped conceive of the organization during the first Bouchercon meeting in Toronto, October 2004 along with David Morrell and Gayle Lynds. Braver is also the bestselling author of seven critically acclaimed thrillers including Flashback (2006). Visit Braver's website at www.garybraver.com for more info.

Airline pilot Mike Rendell's day started simply enough.  He flew his Boeing 737 out of Chicago expecting a relaxing flight west.  But then he encountered bad weather.  Mechanical malfunctions further complicated his life.  Could things get worse?  Well yes, if you consider a hijacking a problem.

Squawk 7500 is the kind of thriller that screws the tension on tight and every minute feels real because the author, Captain Steve Reeves, has been there and done that.  In fact, after reading this book you might not think it belongs in the fiction section of bookstores.  If so, Reeves would agree with you.

"The book is a fictionalized recounting of a true adventure so, I'd prefer that it be placed in the "True Adventure" section," he says.

Squawk 7500 is a fiction thriller, but it's based on Reeves' real life experiences as a commercial pilot.  His 12,500 hours flying civilian, military, and commercial aircraft allow him to truly give an insider's eye view of what it takes to fly a jumbo jet while juggling a series of crises that most of us would not want to face, but love to read about.  Reeves says he has seen many of the same problems in his 21 years of flying commercial airplanes.

"I've had to contend with tornadoes, hurricanes, and tropical storms," Reeves says.  "I've had my fair share of drunks on board but this is the first time that I had someone go crazy and hijack the plane."

Congratulations to our Win-A-Thriller Library winners. Kay Burke is our Grand Prize Winner. Kay will receive a collection of 150 signed thrillers from bestselling authors like Gayle Lynds, Michael Palmer, Allison Brennan, Kathy Reichs, Joseph Finder, Barry Eisler, Sandra Brown, Lisa Jackson and more.

Our 3 runner-up winners are Howard Siggelko, Ann Boles and Donald Cash. Each runner-up winner will received a copy of the bestselling anthology THRILLER, a collection of short stories by thriller authors Steve Berry, Lee Child, Heather Graham, Eric Van Lustbader, Katherine Neville, James Rollins, Brad Thor and more. The THRILLER anthology is edited by James Patterson.

Thanks to everyone for entering our contest and for being Big Thrill thriller fans!

Many mysteries surround Shakespeare's life?  People argue if he even wrote the plays.  Where was he during 'the missing years?'  Who was the 'Dark Lady' in his life?  But now the most intriguing mystery:  Why was William Shakespeare registered to wed two different women in the same church marriage bond book?  'The true story of Shakespeare in love' is suspense novelist Karen Harper's MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE out from Putnam.  Also in audio book from Brilliance.

"A story of love, loss, and a legend in the making, "Mistress Shakespeare" is a riveting must-read."  -- Strand Bookstore, New York City.

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Karen Harper has been published for 25 years. She is the winner of the 2006 Mary Higgins Clark Award.  A former college and high school English instructor, Harper currently writes contemporary suspense for Mira Books and historical novels for Putnam. She and her husband divide their time between Columbus, Ohio and Naples, Florida.