Reed Farrel Coleman discusses the unique setting to his latest book Soul Patch.

Nothing is so sad as an empty amusement park. And no amusement park is so sad as Coney Island. Once the world's playground, it is no longer the world's anything; not even important enough to be fogotten.

These are the opening lines to Soul Patch, the sequel to The James Deans and the next novel in my Moe Prager Mystery series. Coney Island plays a central role in my work precisely because it is more a place that used to be than a place that is. At one point early in the 20^th century, Coney Island was one of the busiest tourist attractions in the world. By 1956, the year I was born, Coney Island was slipping slowly, if inexorably, into a painful, persistent kind of living death.

Unlike Ebbets Field-the former home ballpark of the Brooklyn Dodgers-which was mercifully plowed under, pieces of Coney Island have been left standing as monuments to stupidity and waste, to possibility and unkept promise, to beauty and decay. This dichotomy of spirit isn't my invention. Coney Island seems to inspire it. Maybe it's the salt air or the creaking planks of the boardwalk or the sea rusted girders of its impotent rides. For years, the two most popular books about the place were Sodom by the Sea and Good Old Coney Island. See what I mean about that dichotomy of spirit?

I'm getting ahead of myself, for not everyone knows Coney Island. First off, Coney Island isn't an island at all, but a peninsula that juts slightly into the Atlantic along Brooklyn's south shore. It got its name from Dutch sailors who spotted the native rabbits or "conies", as they called them, from the decks of their ships as those vessels swung around into the mouth of New Amsterdam harbor. Brooklyn was Indian territory and farmland in those days. Hard for me to reconcile that image of Brooklyn with the Brooklyn I was raised in and with movies like The French Connection, The Warriors, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Do the Right Thing, The Godfather, Saturday Night Fever, Smoke, Requiem for a Dream and Moonstruck.

As early as the 1830s, people were traveling to the beach at Coney Island and, by the time of the Civil War, hotels and bathhouses were popular in the area. In fact, that entire section of Brooklyn's shoreline, from Manhattan Beach and Sheepshead Bay in the east to Brighton Beach to Coney Island in the west, developed into a tourist mecca. By the 1880s, it had become a sort of a Las Vegas by the sea. Gambling, prostitution, horse racing, and just about any vice or desire could be handled by the locals. But it wasn't until 1897, when Sea Lion Park was opened, that Coney Island started to evolve into what we would think of as an amusement park. Coney Island never actually was just one amusement park, but an amalgam of several theme parks-Dreamland, Steeplechase Park, Luna Park(formerly Sea Lion Park), and much later, Astroland-in close proximity to one another. Sorry folks, but Walt Disney didn't invent the theme park nor was he remotely original in grouping differently themed parks in a single geographic area.{mospagebreak title=Steeplechase Park}

Each of the parks was owned by different men with wildly different visions of what to offer the public. Steeplechase Park, for instance, was aptly named as it's central attraction was a ride that featured wooden horses than ran along steel rails throughout the entire park. This ride was still around when I was a little kid and although I was too young to ride, I have fond memories of watching my brothers and cousins fly around on those beat up old horses. Dreamland's rides were supposed to reinforce the moral beliefs of the day. And Luna Park was famous for its shows and the 250,000 incandescent bulbs strung throughout the grounds.

In 1916, Nathan Handwerker opened a hot dog stand. You know the place as Nathan's Famous and you probably have a franchise near your house or in the local mall. Oddly enough, I grew up with one of Nathan Handwerker's grandchildren. Robert Handwerker lived around the corner from me and we went to PS 209 together. I wonder what he's up to. Probably not writing PI novels. Up until World War II, Coney Island continued growing. Rides like the famous Cyclone rollercoaster and the Parachute Jump were added to the parks.

But it wasn't the vibrant, growing, glorious Coney Island to which my dad took me on Sunday afternoons. No, the Coney Island of my childhood was a collection of filthy streets and ragged ruins which mocked its former glory. Both Dreamland and Luna Park had long ago burned down. On the grounds of the old Luna Park sit the Luna Park houses, the most depressing collection of apartment buildings I can imagine this side of the former Iron Curtain. To paraphrase a few lines from The James Deans, Luna Park had once been so bright that scientists have speculated that it might have been visible from space. Now the neighbors wish you couldn't see it from across the street. And old Steeplechase Park was in dreadful disrepair, frayed and crumbling around the edges. I remember the bulldozers razing the place. The only piece of it left standing is the rusting superstructure of the Parachute Jump. It's kind of like a poor man's Eiffel Tower.{mospagebreak title=The Parachute Jump}

In spite of its decay, I have always loved Coney Island. I loved endlessly riding the Cyclone with my friends. I love a good Nathan's hot dog and the most unique tasting fries in the world. But now the word is that the Coney Island I know is at its end. The real estate developers have finally done it, gobbling up all that disused oceanfront property. I hear they're going to leave only Nathan's, the Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel, and the Parachute Jump as window dressing. I will see them as tombstones and forever miss the mocking ruins and dirty streets.

Of all my work, Soul Patch is the novel most influenced in tone by its setting. A large portion of the book is set in the Coney Island of my youth. Coney Island is the location of the 60^th Precinct, where my protagonist Moe Prager spent his entire NYPD career. If any of my books prove that setting can be character, this is that book. And though I can't hope to impart to you the effect Coney Island has had on my evolution, I do think Soul Patch can give you a taste and a glimpse into my inspirations.

If you want a look at the disappearing Coney Island, go to www.reedcoleman.com or www.BleakHouseBooks.com or view the promo video here for Soul Patch.

Reed Farrel Coleman is a member of ITW, IACW and the former Exec. VP of Mystery Writers of America. His novel, The James Deans, won the Shamus, Barry, and Anthony Awards and was nominated for the Edgar, Macavity and Gumshoe Awards. He is the editor of the short story anthology Hardboiled Brooklyn. His essays and short stories appear in Wall Street Noir, Brooklyn Noir 3, These Guns For Hire, Damn Near Dead, Dublin Noir, and Crime Spree Magazine. He also writes under the pen name Tony Spinosa. Reed lives on Long Island with his wife and two teenage children.

You can find more books published by ITW authors below. If you're an ITW member with a new book coming out please use the facilities on this site to publicise your work, and any tour dates or other engagements through the diary. Just contact us for a logon if you don't have one by e-mailing us at editorial@thrillerwriters.org.

HARDCOVERS



DEADLY APPRAISAL by Jane K. Cleland



DARK ROOM by Andrea Kane



SHADOWS KITH AND KIN by Joe R. Lansdale



CROAKED! by Dick Lochte



YELLOW EYES by John Ringo and Tom Kratman



ANATOMY OF FEAR by Jonathan Santlofer



GLOBAL SHOT by Trevor Scott





TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINALS



LOST DOG by Bill Cameron



CHASERS by Lorenzo Carcaterra



PATTERN OF VENGEANCE by C. Hyytinen



MASS MARKET ORIGINALS



SHELL GAME by Jeff Buick



BENEATH THE SNOW by Caroline Carver



EX MARKS THE SPOT by Merline Lovelace



SLEIGHT OF HAND (LAS VEGAS) by Jeff Mariotte



A MOST UNSUITABLE GROOM by Kasey Michaels



MCKETTRICK'S HEART by Linda Lael Miller



SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT by Ann Voss Peterson



BELOVED WARRIOR by Patricia Potter



THE NIGHT WE MET by Tara Taylor Quinn



A SOLDIER'S OATH by Debra Webb

Twisted Truths

"I'm an excitement junkie for one thing," says Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. "I'm always out there fighting for justice, for victims, and will do anything to get the guilty punished and the innocent protected."

Rosenberg's protagonist, Carolyn Sullivan, feels the same way.

In Revenge of Innocents, the fourth book in the Carolyn Sullivan series, probation officer Sullivan's job turns too personal when the officer's best childhood friend is murdered. Determined to find the killer, Sullivan heads down a path of twisted truths as she uncovers how little she really knew about her old friend.

Drawing from real life experience to write this series, Rosenberg was one of the first women to come out of the Dallas Police Academy in the 1970s when the women's movement was evolving. She started out as a policewoman patrolling the streets. (Today she would be called a police officer.) She then worked her way through various departments until she became a department probation officer.

"That's where I refined my writing skills," she says, "writing 24-page reports, interviewing offenders and victims—-if they were alive," she says, "and if not, then I talked with next of kin."

Rosenberg says she developed a reputation and gained respect for her work from the judges. "Someone once quipped that I could write somebody into prison," she says. "Every sentence I recommended to the judge was imposed."

Then, in 1990, she was thrown from a horse. Rosenberg almost lost her ability to walk. She channeled her writing skills into fiction and wrote her first novel: Mitigating Circumstances, launching a new career. The 1993 debut novel became a New York Times bestseller. Academy award winning director, Jonathan Demme, bought film rights.

These days, probation officers make $75-$80 grand and is a pretty good job," Rosenberg says. "You're usually not shot. You might get locked in a tiny cell with a murderer or rapist"—-yes, that happened to Rosenberg—-" but everything in my life has always worked out," she says. "Writing is a wonderful catharsis."

Revenge of Innocents is the fourth book in Nancy Taylor Rosenberg's Carolyn Sullivan series. The other three in the series are also coming out in paperback this month: Sullivan's Law, Sullivan's Justice, and Sullivan's Evidence. Rosenberg has appeared on Prime Time Live, The Today Show and Entertainment Tonight.

Unspeakable Madness

In Lisa Jackson's sequel to Shiver, Eve Renner returns to New Orleans to forget her past, to forget the night she was nearly killed and her lover tried for murder.

But in Absolute Fear the past will not forget Eve.

Someone is watching, planning, luring Eve back to the ruins of Our Lady Of Virtues Hospital, a Catholic run, mental asylum in New Orleans. This is the institution where Eve's father was a doctor, where Eve spent her childhood exploring its secret chambers.

And as Eve's memories surface, bodies are found--victims are slain in ritual fashion, numbers are tatooed into their bodies. The only connection between the killings is:

Our Lady of Virtues—

Somewhere in its decaying rooms lies the key to a terrible crime, a crime that seems to lead to Eve. And though the only person she thinks she can trust is her former lover, Cole, he may be a cold-blooded killer.

"I've always been intrigued by any kind of psychosis," says Jackson. "I was intrigued by what happened to mental hospitals during the Reagan era when many of these institutions closed down due to lack of federal funding. A lot of people ended up on the streets that shouldn't have been there."

Jackson visited New Orleans five or six times. "I liked the city for its inherent history," she says. " It has a real eeriness to it and lends itself to that atmosphere." Both Absolute Fear and Shiver take place before Katrina. "

As for her interest in Catholicism, Jackson says she grew up in a small town in Oregon where most of her neighbors and friends were Catholic. She was a non-practicing Protestant. "I was captivated by the mystique of the Catholic church and fascinated by the rituals," she says. "They were so different from what I knew."

Lisa Jackson's Absolute Fear is a sequel to Shiver, and a companion book to two other New Orleans novels (Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded,) and one or two more forthcoming. Her books regularly place high on the New York Times, USA Today and Publisher's Weekly best seller lists, with her recent novel, Fatal Burn climbing to number 1 on the New York Times list. She lives with her family and an eighty-pound dog in the Pacific Northwest. You can read and listen to an excerpt here.

Mortalis authors David Corbett and Jenny Siler discuss Sophocles, Shakespeare, the war in Iraq, and their new books, BLOOD OF PARADISE and AN ACCIDENTAL AMERICAN (Jenny's first novel as Alex Carr).

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I am a horror writer. The last of a dying breed.

I didn't intend to be one, and if I'd had any commercial sense at all, I would have delved into paranormal romance, chick lit, suspense, mystery, and fantasy. All of which I write, by the way, often in the same book. In fact, I've always simply called myself a "thriller writer," because I hope to thrill in my readers. But the word "Horror" is stamped on the spine. At the fork in the publishing road, as Robert Frost wrote, I took the one less traveled by, and all the difference has been made.

Labels are a creation of marketing departments, not authors and artists. Bookstores needed places to shelf the books, salespeople who no longer had time to read were pitching to buyers based on "brand," and, to some degree, editors were playing to the sales staff and were more reluctant to buy books that mixed genres or fell between the cracks. Since books aren't cottage cheese, there's no incentive in building a long-term audience for a single title. It's much more efficient and smarter, at least from a pure business angle, to make artificial categories that would serve as a code throughout the distribution process, from the editor's selection of the book ("We need three mysteries this month") to the final ring of the cash register.

As a category author, much of my personal success hinges on the industry's perception of my category. After all, perception is reality. Showing up early for my last book signing, I had time to browse the store a little bit, checking out the competition, wading past the pirate, wizard and Da Vinci material to reach the fiction section. I looked for the titles of my friends and peers, who are also horror/thriller writers. Miraculously, practically overnight, the spines of their books had been changed to read simply "Fiction."

I was all alone, and that was scarier than any ghost or monster I had ever penned. I'm not vain enough to believe I had suddenly become the standard bearer for a fading genre. No, what had changed was the publishing industry perception of the label. The publishers' sales teams believe horror doesn't sell, so they convey this lack of enthusiasm to the bookstores. The bookstore owners don't order it, and because readers don't see it on the shelves, they believe horror must no longer be readable.

Horror is many things to many people. Author and anthologist Doug Winter once announced, "Horror is an emotion, not a genre." He said this a decade ago, long after the end of the 1980's horror boom, when evil dolls, sharp-toothed critters, and decrepit manors adorned dozens of books each month and generally had six-figure sales. The genre born with "Odyssey" and "Grendel," passed up through "MacBeth," and then on to "Frankenstein" and "Dracula," reached its zenith with "Rosemary's Baby," "The Exorcist," and an extraordinary average guy named Stephen King. Horror was selling like Happy Meals, and even when the good times faded, largely due to an avalanche of crappy hackwork, a couple of publishers still maintained horror lines, turning out one or two horror titles a month.

Until they, too, saw the light at the end of the black, soulless tunnel. Until my last novel, when I alone survived, though I was already half dead because my mass-market shelf life is comparable to that of cottage cheese.

Within the horror community, the discussion over the "death of horror" breaks into two separate issues-the genre and the market label. A belief persists that "horror elements," the ghosts, vampires, serial killers, and essential human fears that are the root of good storytelling, have expanded and are touching more genres, writers, and readers than ever.

Iris Johansen's last suspense novel featured a woman who wants to turn people into zombies. Kay Hooper's bestselling series feature psychic special agents. "The Lovely Bones" and "The Ruins" are built on supernatural frameworks. One can hardly turn around without being poked by a stake-wielding, scantily-clad woman on a book cover who is drooling over a well-oiled Fabio with fangs. So horror, the emotional effect, seems to be quite popular.

And then there's "horror," the label, the market anathema.

The brand that's no longer in stores, despite the plethora of ghosts, goblins, witches, and vampires that still crowd the shelves. The brand that rarely merits its own section, and when it does, those shelves contain little more than King, Dean Koontz, and Anne Rice, whose books are all labeled "Fiction."

I watched people's faces at my signing. Some saw the "horror" label, set the book down, patted the spooky scarecrow cover, grimaced, and made a brisk escape. A couple muttered, "I don't read that kind of stuff," or, "I don't read horror, I only read King and Koontz."

"But it's not horror," I wanted to say, not sure whether this constituted smart marketing or just plain lying. "'The Farm' is about the relationship between a mother and her daughter--it's chick lit! It draws on Appalachian culture and religion. It's a mystery, a paranormal romance, a psychological thriller-whatever category you want it to be!"

Who cares about the man-eating goats? What about the long sex scene where the new wife is possessed by the ghost of the dead wife? Those are sprigs of parsley, added for color and not taste. Those who take the time to talk to me about the story usually end up buying a copy, even people who profess a dislike for the genre. Once they get past that "H-word," they see the story may serve up more than just the rehashed tropes and murder-by-numbers plots that plague too many modern horror movies.

My horror peers are a step ahead of me. They quit calling their books "horror novels." Now their agents pitch them as "supernatural thrillers." Same books, different words, higher advances, more marketing, a collective sigh of relief from the sales departments. At last they have books they can sell without embarrassment, as if horror were the literary equivalent of naughty pictures.

I was briefly the last horror writer in America, but I won't be dead for long. Anybody care to try a supernatural vampire paranormal action thriller scary-book type of thing?

Psst. It's "horror."

Scott Nicholson is the author of six horror novels and over 50 short stories. He is vice president of the Horror Writers Association and lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where he collects mountain folklore, tends an organic garden, and picks acoustic guitar. He's also a volunteer in International Thriller Writers and bass player in the Killer Thriller Band. His spirit resides at www.hauntedcomputer.com

Mafia Fiasco

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to read an excerpt from Fresh Disasters.

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

In Scott Mariani's THE FULCANELLI MANUSCRIPT, Benedict Hope was an elite soldier before his troubles forced him to quit the army. Now he's using his skills to rescue kidnapped children. But when Ben is approached by a millionaire businessman to trace an ancient lost manuscript whose secret could save a dying girl, he finds himself embarking on the strangest mission of his life.

With fiendish codes to crack and dangerous enemies in hot pursuit, Ben teams up with Roberta Ryder, a beautiful scientist. The trail leads them from Paris to the ancient Cathar strongholds of the Languedoc. There lies an astonishing secret that has been hidden through the ages.

A heady cocktail of history, mystery and culture make The Fulcanelli Manuscript a roller-coaster ride.

Scott Mariani was born in St Andrews, Scotland, of mixed Irish, American and Egyptian descent. Having lived in various countries over the years he finally found his writer's haven in a country house in the wilds of west Wales.

Scott read Modern Languages at Christ Church, Oxford and later took a Diploma in Film Studies. He has worked as a translator, a professional musician with a touring Irish band, a pistol shooting instructor and a freelance journalist. He has written several non-fiction books over the years, but always wanted to write thrillers. He draws inspiration from film as much as literature, influenced among others by Hitchcock, Tony Scott and Dario Argento.

Scott's interests include travelling - nearly getting lost in a Saharan sandstorm being the most interesting' experience of all - as well as astronomy, wine, jazz, archery, golf and American motorcycles.

His debut thriller, The Fulcanelli Manuscript, is out in March 2007 with Robert Hale.

 

When Secrets Bind and Kill

What happened in those Massachusetts woods the night Rachel Lorant died on her birthday? Rachel's four sorority sisters pledge never to reveal what they saw in the Berkshires, so close to their college campus. Now, ten years later, each receives a card in the mail from-Rachel! Someone knows what happened and is sending deadly warnings.

In Wendy Corsi Staub's newest thriller, Don't Scream, the past returns with murderous intent. Brynn Costella, one of the four sorority sisters, is terrified. She didn't want any part of what occurred that sickening night. A mother of two, she will do what it takes to protect her family, matching wits with a killer, a twisted psychopath who is closer than she thinks.

"I like the idea of secrets and keeping connected to the past," says Straub. "It's provocative."

In her own life, she's maintained friendships from high school and college and likes to keep those past connections alive. Yet she wonders, "Do we really know each other?" When she hasn't seen someone for a while, she notices how people change and appear different.

Staub set the story in the Berkshires because she wanted a place that was insular, detached, beautiful and transient, as college towns can be, she says, yet not so far from a large metropolis like New York or Boston. It's also the place where she and her husband shared their own intimate past. Honeymooning in those remote mountains 15 years ago, she vowed to return but never did except in writing Don't Scream.

This spring, though, she plans to return to the Berkshires on her book tour.

Wendy Corsi Staub is a New York Times bestselling and award winning author of over sixty books. She has won two RWA Rita award. A number of her titles have been featured selections for Mystery Guild, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Large Print Book Club. She grew up in rural southwestern New York and lives in a suburb of Manhattan with her husband and two sons. Read an excerpt from Don't Scream.

Are Sleepwalkers Murderers?

--Yes or no, depending on which country you're tried in, says international bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark , who explores the legal and moral ramifications of the syndrome in her newest suspense novel, I heard that Song Before.

Protagonist Kay Lansing has gnawing doubts about her husband, Peter Carrington, who is a sleepwalker and a man with an unsettled past. Carrington's first wife was found dead in the family swimming pool. Years before that his date was never found after he drove her home from a party. Though never charged, the police consider Carrington to be a "person of interest."

Now Kay Lansing must uncover the truth about her husband and determine if what she learns will be enough to save his life, or if his life deserves saving.

Fascinated by memory and its fragments, Higgins visited a sleep disorder center as part of her research. She saw the cameras in the rooms, the equipment used to study sleep. She learned one can drive and perform normal daily tasks while sleepwalking, yet have no memory of it. "You have to be careful about waking someone who is sleepwalking or they might perceive it as an attack," she says.

She also read real cases of sleepwalking murders. In the United States, for example, two men were sent to prison after committing murder in their sleep. But in Canada, two men who committed murder in their sleep were released-acquitted of the crime. In all cases the men did not remember committing the act.

Higgins read about an 1898 case in England where a man killed his infant son. The man loved his child but had no memory of committing the heinous crime. Why?

He was sleepwalking.

"I want the underpinnings of accuracy," says Clark. "If there's a scene in a court, a lawyer can read about it and believe in its authenticity. Writing suspense is like creating a crossword puzzle. You want all the pieces to fit."

Mary Higgins Clark's books have sold over 80 million copies in the U.S. alone. She is # 1 fiction bestselling author in France, where she received the Grand Prix de Literature Polici�re in 1980. In 2000, she was named by the French Minister of Culture "Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters." She is the author of twenty-five suspense novels. Many of her works, novels and short stories, were made into television films. Clark's first suspense novel, Where Are the Children? published in 1975, became a bestseller and marked a turning point in her life and career. It is currently in its 75th edition in paperback and was re-issued in hardcover as a Simon & Schuster classic.

I've got a book trailer for my March release, NEW MOON. It was fascinating shooting it. And I got to have a cameo role. I'm the convenience store clerk standing behind the counter. My husband's also in it--briefly. He's sitting on the right when you see the bad guy standing beside a campfire.

You can also see a two-minute version here.

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