Features: July 2010 Archives

In this month's feature is one of England's favorite sons.  Representing the "I" in ITW, is Peter James.  Peter is a Brighton born author, screenwriter, and film producer.  His latest novel DEAD LIKE YOU went straight to the #1 slot on the Sunday Times Bestseller list--and hit #1 on all the other UK fiction bestseller lists as well.  That's a good trick.  He even beat "The Man," James Patterson who had to settle for the #2 slot.  Sorry Jim, but he got you!

Peter's books have been translated into 33 languages with an estimated total sales of 20 million copies worldwide.  He receives fan mail from virtually every country on the planet--with one common question:  When is the next Roy Grace novel coming out?

As a board member with the title of Vice President of International Affairs, Peter is heavily involved with ITW.  He oversees six different sub-chairs, each representing a different area of the world.  As ITW continues to encourage and promote international authors, Peter is at the forefront of that effort.

As you can imagine, Peter is being pulled in dozens of different directions, so I appreciate him taking the time to do this feature interview:

Just the name fires up the imagination - Starvation Lake.

Even better, it's a real place - a small town in Michigan that has folklore of its own. And following the dictum to write what you know, newcomer Bryan Gruley used the locale as the setting for his suspense novels, starting with last year's Starvation Lake and continuing with this month's release The Hanging Tree.

Starvation Lake is a small community whose claim to fame was almost winning an ice hockey championship. Indeed, much of the recent history of the town is connected in some way to its hockey.  In Starvation Lake, pieces of a snowmobile wash up near the slowly dying town. The same snowmobile that belonged to Starvation's legendary hockey coach whose fatal accident happened five miles away and on a different lake.  The evidence points to murder.

Our narrator is the editor of the local newspaper, Gus Carpenter, who recently returned to Starvation after he failed to make it big with the Detroit Times. Years earlier he was the unfortunate goalie who let a state championship get away that not only crushed the dreams of his coach but also earned him the enmity of his fellow townspeople. Investigating the murder of his former coach leads Gus to discover holes in the town's past that seem to conceal dark and disturbing secrets.

Recently I sat down with Ridley Pearson to talk about his newest thriller, In Harm's Way.

In Harm's Way is the fourth book in your Walt Fleming series.  Could you give us a sneak preview?

In Harm's Way is more of a straightforward murder investigation than I've written in quite some time. It is part procedural, part psychological thriller, featuring murder, mayhem, love, and angst - a nice sample of life.

When an unidentified male is found dead alongside of the road in Sun Valley, Idaho, Sheriff Walt Fleming seeks the advice and assistance of legendary homicide detective Lou Boldt. Together the two must negotiate their way through Sun Valley's rugged backcountry, as well as its wealthy and desperate inhabitants, in order to keep those they love from finding themselves in harm's way.

Walt Fleming is a sheriff in Sun Valley.  Isn't that in your neck of the woods?

It sure is! I've lived either full-time or part-time in the Sun Valley area for nearly 30 years. I've known Sheriff Walt Femling (the model for Walt Fleming) for nearly all of that time. So it's really fun for me to write about it.  The setting is a real character, a natural extension for me. It's home.

Fittingly for a master of intrigue, John Sandford (1944- ) really isn't John Sandford. He's John Camp, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper reporter who created one of the most memorable cops in fiction: Lucas Davenport of the long-running Prey series. (Dual-name fun fact: Camp debuted two thriller series--Prey and Kidd--for two different publishers in 1989. Prey's publisher asked for the pseudonym so Kidd's publisher couldn't benefit from Prey advertising.) Sandford was trained as a reporter by the U.S. Army, which sent him to Korea to work for the base newspaper. When he got out in 1968, he became a reporter for a small newspaper in Missouri, then jumped to the Miami Herald, where he worked with legendary crime reporter Edna Buchanan, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he covered crime among other beats and won the 1986 Pulitzer for a series on the Midwest farm crisis. His first Prey thriller, Rules of Prey, catapulted Sandford onto the national stage. He never looked back, writing numerous Preys, the Kidd and Flowers series, nonfiction books, a series of articles about his journey to the combat zones of Iraq, and underwriting a multiyear archeological dig in Israel. But Lucas Davenport, the Minnesota police investigator who is by turns intelligent, zealous, dark, funny, woman adoring, happy, and cynical, remains Sandford's iconic character.

Special to the Big Thrill by Hank Wagner.

The much-heralded ITW project Thrillers: 100 Must Reads was published with much fanfare at ThrillerFest early in July, and has since received a lot of favorable attention from critics (we were especially pleased with Michael Dirda's review in The Washington Post).

To further whet your appetite for this essential book, we've been featuring a series of short interviews with various essayists in past issues of The Big Thrill.  Here is the final interview with Grant Blackwood, who contributed a piece on Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic.

Grant, you wrote a glowing essay about Raise the Titanic.  Do you have any personal connection to the book you wrote about?

Depends on what you mean by "personal".  As I first read Titanic shortly after I read The Mediterranean Caper, which is the book that sparked my desire to be a writer, I feel a pretty deep connection to it.  But, then again, that could be said for all of Clive's books.

In debut author Kristina Schram's The Chronicles of Anaedor: The Prophecies, strange things happen to fifteen-year-old Lavida Mors. Maybe that's why her father sends her away to Portal Manor, a mysterious family estate she has never seen. Lavida quickly discovers that not everything at Portal Manor is as it seems when she stumbles across a secret passage to a hidden world--Anaedor. Anaedor lies deep beneath the surface, separated from humanity, populated by mythical creatures, who take Lavida captive.

While trying to escape the dark realm with the help of her friends, Lavida must battle overgrown sharp-toothed leeches, survive a poison arrow and outwit a giant, all the while trying to convince the hopeful populace of Anaedor that she is not the savior they believe her to be.

"An amazing adventure to a unique and mysterious subterranean world." --Jeremy Robinson, bestselling author of Raising The Past and Antarktos Rising

Kristina graciously supplied the following interview: 

In JJ Cooper's Deadly Trust, a riveting thriller set along Australia's eastern coast, former army interrogator Jay Ryan enjoys the quiet life after leaving the military behind--or so he thinks. Old habits die hard, and when he realizes someone is trying to kill him and make it look like an accident, he's interested to find out who...and why.

An anthrax attack on the Gold Coast complicates the issue, and it soon becomes apparent that this hybrid strain of anthrax is being used to create nationwide panic. Only one batch of anthrax inoculations can resist the deadly new strain, and it was given to five military interrogators, one of whom was Jay Ryan.

When it's discovered the other four interrogators have disappeared, and are presumed dead, Ryan is in hot demand. Racing against time and hunted by rogue soldiers, crazed scientists and an organization that operates beyond the law, Ryan digs deep into his past for a chance at a future! Protagonist Jay Ryan wages a one-man war against enemies both known and unseen. But winning this war may have devastating consequences for the last interrogator.

Who is Joe Hunter?

For a start, there are certain things he isn't.  He's not a cop.  He's not a bounty hunter.  He's not a private detective.
Some people call him a vigilante, but even Joe will tell you that vigilantes take the law into their own hands, whereas there aren't too many laws that define what Joe does to get a job done.

Joe is someone who cares.  Simple as that.  He doesn't like bullies.  He doesn't like men who hurt women or children.  Put into context, that covers a whole bundle of bad guys the world over.  He's a tough guy with a heart.
In his new book, Cut and Run, Matt Hilton pits Joe against a killer who has stolen his identity and committed a vicious double murder.  His motive?  Revenge.  His mission?  Kill anyone Hunter holds dear.  This forces Joe into a deadly duel of wits that takes him from the streets of Miami to the squalid barrios of Columbia to the jungle hideaway of a drug baron.  And brings him face to face with his past.

In Brian Haig's The Capitol Game, it was the deal of the decade, if not the century. A small, insignificant company on the edge of bankruptcy had discovered an alchemist's dream; a miraculous polymer, that when coated on any vehicle, was the equivalent of 30 inches of steel. With bloody conflicts surging in Iraq and Afghanistan, the polymer promises to save thousands of lives and change the course of both wars.

Jack Wiley, a successful Wall Street banker, believes he has a found a dream come true when he mysteriously learns of this miraculous polymer. His plan: enlist the help of the Capitol Group, one of the country's largest and most powerful corporations in a quick, bloodless takeover of the small company that developed the polymer. It seems like a partnership made in heaven...until the Pentagon's investigative service begins nosing around, and the deal turns into a nightmare. Now, Jack's back is up against the wall and he and the Capitol Group find themselves embroiled in the greatest scandal the government and corporate America have ever seen...

ITW Contributing Editor John T. Cullen interviews British author Adrian Magson about his remarkable new spy thriller Red Station (Severn House, August 2010).

Red Station: MI5 officer Harry Tate finds himself posted to a faraway operation called Red Station, somewhere in Central or Eastern Europe, while the media fuss dies down from a drug bust gone sour. A former soldier, now a loyal Security Services officer and civil servant, his credibility is down the drain after two civilians were shot dead during a drug intercept under his control. The idea is to wait it out before coming back up for air. Or so Harry is told.

What his bosses haven't told him is that Red Station is a punishment posting for washed-out spooks from MI5 and MI6...and that Harry won't be coming home again. All Harry knows is, it's remote and he will be under a No Contact rule. This includes family, friends, former colleagues--everyone.

All hell breaks loose when the Russians decide to support a friendly satellite state, threatening to overrun Red Station. Harry realizes Red Station, and everyone in it, is the target of a U.K. Government assassination team called The Hit.

But his bosses have seriously underestimated their man. When he uncovers the real set-up behind Red Station, he decides to fight back in the only way he knows.

Jack Everett and David Coles would like to dedicate their novel, The Last Free Men, to the last men who offered resistance to the might of Rome in ancient Scotland during the second century.  In their historical thriller, the hero is half-Roman, half-Briton, and used as a spy by the Romans.  He is wrongly accused of murder.  Escaping from a lead mine, he is aided by Druids to reach Scotland.  Here he plots to bring about the destruction of the Roman legions.

I caught up with Jack and David a few days ago and had a chance to ask them some questions.

Is there anything special you'd like to tell us about The Last Free Men?

"The book is a historical thriller which sets down what we believe may have happened to the Ninth Roman Legion, because it is a matter of historical fact that the Ninth disappeared around that time.  Our hero, Marcus Uffin Gellorix, is the result of a union between a married Roman Tribune and a high-born woman of the Brigantean tribe.  The hero's father returns to Rome and his wife, leaving Marcus and Marcus's mother to their fate.  A short time later, attempting to save his commander from a spear thrust, Marcus is mistakenly accused of his murder and sentenced to the lead minds.

Recently, Bente Gallagher sent The Big Thrill the following interview about her new novel, A Cutthroat Business.

Tell us about the new book.

It's the first book in a new series, featuring recovering Southern Belle Savannah Martin. Savannah has always been a good girl, always doing what was expected, fully expecting that if she does everything perfectly, everything will fall into place in its turn. When things don't work out that way, she starts reassessing everything she's always believed to be the truth and starts to build the kind of life she wants, not the one she's expected to have. She gets her real estate license and starts plying her trade, and pretty much immediately finds herself tangled up in a murder mystery, when one of her colleagues is murdered in an empty house and Savannah is the one who stumbles over the body. It's a part mystery, part romance, part suspense novel, with - according to one early reader - "enough wit and sexual chemistry to rival Janet Evanovich." Can't ask for better than that!

A-litter-ation best defines the latest book by Carole Nelson Douglas, Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme.

Midnight Louie makes a triumphant return in the 22nd book in the series about a Private Investigator of the feline-domesticus variety who shows us that cats are far more clever than people, especially when it comes to ratting out crime and wrong-doing.

If you're new to the series and you're wondering how on earth a cat can nip crime as a super sleuth, Carole has always been ahead of her time.

She penned the eight acclaimed Irene Adler Sherlockian thrillers before Robert Downey, Jr., met the lady on screen in his hot new Sherlock Holmes film franchise.  She foresaw the sunrise of vampires, creating the Delilah Street noir urban fantasy series five years ago--long before Twilight!  With the magic of Midnight Louie, she's struck absolute literary gold. I mean, think about it--this series has more lives than Felix, Garfield, Morris and the Cheshire combined--and  the hordes are still hungry for it--certainly in part because Douglas has proven once again that murder doesn't have to be such dead serious business.

Goran Powell has spent more than 35 years in Martial Arts. He is a qualified instructor with Daigaku Karate Kai (DKK), on of the United Kingdom's leading clubs, and assistant coach to the successful mixed martial arts team; DKK Fighters. He is a regular contributor to martial arts magazines and has appeared twice on the cover of the Traditional Karate magazine. He is a freelance writer and has won numerous advertising awards. Powell is married and lives in London with his wife and three children.
 
When I caught up with Goran Powell by phone, we spent a pleasant forty five minutes chatting about his writing, his involvement in Martial Arts and some of his likes and dislikes. Powell came across as a gentle and pleasant man, one who's company would be quite welcome. His company would be quite welcome too on a dark night in a back alley when faced by thugs; Powell is a 4th Dan, Goju Ruy Karate expert, and it is his love of the Martial Arts that has inspired two books on the subject. And that was the reason for this interview; Powell's latest novel, A Sudden Dawn.

In a way, it seems inevitable that Australian author PD Martin would end up writing a popular mystery series; she wrote her first mystery novella as a budding author in fifth grade!

After that, she went back to concentrating on her schoolwork...but she never forgot her love of mysteries and writing. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in behavioral sciences, she wrote three unpublished young adult novels, before finally striking gold with her series about Australian FBI profiler Sophie Anderson, which have received international acclaim. This month marks the release of the fifth Sophie Anderson novel, Kiss of Death.

Recently I was able to catch up with the busy wife, mom, copywriter, and author, to chat about her latest novel and her future plans.

Australian FBI profiler Sophie Anderson is on a new case, and this one is strange, even for Sophie. The victim is found dead in a state park with two puncture wounds on her neck. There is no blood on the scene, but she looks to have been drained.

Think "thriller" and any number of things come to mind:

International conspiracies;

Terrorists;

Weapons of mass destruction;

Plagues;

Real Estate.

Wait a second--Real Estate?   Donald Trump's hair aside, real estate seems to be unlikely subject matter for a thriller.  Until you talk to Justin Peacock, author of Blind Man's Alley, due for release this month from Doubleday. 

Blind Man's Alley is Peacock's second novel, following his Edgar Award-nominated legal thriller A Cure for Night.  The book explores the high-stakes world of New York real estate from two very different perspectives.

Recently I sat down with L.J. Sellers to talk about Thrilled to Death, the latest in her Detective Jackson Mysteries.

Jack  Quick, a book reviewer, said you have a "delightfully twisted mind." I assume that is a good thing, for a mystery novelist. Care to elaborate?

For a crime novelist, "delightfully twisted mind" is the highest compliment you can receive. In my case, I hope it refers to the many twists and turns my stories take and to the unusual and difficult crimes I devise for Detective Jackson to investigate. To clarify, I don't write about serial killers or evil for the sake of evil, so he didn't mean that kind of twisted.

The premise is terrific: "two missing women with nothing in common, a dead body and a suspect who hasn't left his house in years."

The details of this story are complete fabrication, but women disappear all the time, so this is a common headline and I think about these women daily. It's difficult to talk about the plot's basic idea without giving away several twists, but like most of my stories, I've combined ideas that stuck in my mind. I bounce ideas off each other, asking: How can I connect this event to this crime?

Timothy Hallinan's fourth novel to feature Bangkok resident and travel writer Poke Raffery, is titled The Queen of Patpong. Patpong Road is what Hallinan, who spends half his year in Asia and the other half in California, calls "the most famous and most garish of the Bangkok tourist-based red light districts."

Poke Rafferty is a travel writer. Hallinan says, "Poke is short for Phillips. He got it when he was a little kid because he poked his nose in where it didn't belong. He's a rough travel writer. He writes about things that are sort of outside the tourist topiary they usually guide you to--exactly opposite of Frommer's." Poke has written two books, for instance, Looking For Trouble In The Phillipines and Looking For Trouble In Indonesia.

Hallinan says, "Poke landed in Bangkok to write Looking For Trouble In Thailand and the same thing happened to him that happened to me, which is he fell head over heels in love with Thailand. By which I mean the Thais, since Bangkok is not a lovable city on the face of it." Hallinan eventually marries a Thai go-go dancer who goes by the name of Rose. Hallinan says The Queen of Patpong is Rose's book. The couple also have adopted a street kid named Miaow.

Cue the music.

A man walks directly in front of you.

You see his profile.  He's wearing a sharp suit, keeping to himself.  The perfect target.

You got him in your crosshairs.  You're about to pull the trigger.

Suddenly he turns and fires a gun directly at you.

Everything goes red.  The world shakes.

The story begins...

For nearly sixty years the name James Bond has been synonymous with action and adventure.  In his new collection, Choice of Weapons, author Raymond Benson keeps the thrills coming.  This exciting compilation begins when 007 finds himself in Hong Kong to investigate the deadly intrigue taking place behind Britain's political handover of the colony to China (Zero Minus Ten); then he must match wits with a fanatical cult that has murdered M's lover (The Facts of Death); and finally must stop a Japanese crime ring from attempting a mass assassination with a deadly strain of West Nile virus (The Man With the Red Tattoo).  Included also are two rare short stories, Live at Five and Midsummer Night's Doom.

I recently had a chance to contact Mr. Benson who gave me some insight into what it was like to work within a series that has such a rich history behind it.

It is rare to find a novel that is both a true thriller and outright hilarious.  If you treasure that combination as much as I do when it's done right, then you'll want to practically inhale Baked, the unique, drug-fueled romp from Mark Haskell Smith.

The story revolves around popular botanist Miro Basinas. Popular, because he has created an award-winning strain of marijuana for his rather exclusive clientele. Of course the illegal drug trade leads to murder, but the book is so much more than a crime novel. In between the laughs it tackles concepts like greed, and morality in ways that Weed and Breaking Bad haven't even considered.

As Smith points out, drugs are a huge subculture and a business that generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the underground economy.  Of course, that also means hundreds of millions spent on law enforcement, trying to stop that business.  An interesting arena indeed for a story about an amateur botanist.

Richard Doetsch spent most of his adult life selling buildings.

Then he started breaking into them.

Not just any buildings. Only the best, like the Vatican and the Kremlin.

And now he's headed for prison.

Because, with apologies to Willie Sutton, that's where the readers are.

Or that's where they'll become the end of this month when Doetsch's new thriller The Thieves of Darkness is released. It's the third book in a series featuring thief extraordinaire Michael St. Pierre, now retired, although circumstances keep dragging him back.

First, in The Thieves of Heaven, Doetsch's 2006 debut novel, which introduced St. Pierre, it was an unsuccessful attempt to save his cancer-ridden wife. Then, in The Thieves of Faith, it was a commitment to fulfill a dying man's last wish. And now, in The Thieves of Darkness, its rescuing his friend, a priest being held in a foreign prison and set to be executed. And in each of the novels, the inciting incident sets in motion a ball of high stake international intrigue.

Kevin Guilfoile told me, "Expectations never work in your favor unless they are low, and nobody wants low expectations."

Expectations for The Thousand, his second novel, releasing this month, were hardly low. Not after his debut novel, Cast of Shadows, earned Kevin critical acclaim from every point on the literary compass.

• The New York Times: "Mr. Guilfoile, in his first outing as a novelist, does all this with a lot more panache than Mr. Crichton has demonstrated in many years."
• The Chicago Tribune: "One of the best books of 2005."
• UK: "One of the best novels I have read this year."
• Australia: "Slick, well-paced and carefully crafted."
• Canada: "Five stars."
• Netherlands: "The best book of 2006."
• Switzerland: "A masterful thriller."
• France: "Un bon thriller." "Elegant writing and perfectly drawn characters."
• Argentina: "The ideal book to satisfy their expectations."

So, high expectations it is. Guilfoile has the means to deal with them.

Recently, I sat down with Cynthia Eden to talk about her latest novel, Deadly Fear.

Cynthia, as always, I love hearing about the author's journey. Please tell us a little about how you started and your first big break in the industry.I've always loved writing.  Unfortunately, as I grew up and completed college, I lost sight of my dream. You know the story--life gets in the way sometimes.  But, I found my way back to my dream (lucky for me).

My  "big" break came after I signed with literary agent Laura Bradford of the Bradford Literary Agency. Laura pitched my first paranormal romantic suspense novel, Hotter After Midnight, and landed me a deal with Kensington Brava.  This book allowed me to explore two of my favorite things: monsters and suspense. I was one very happy writer.  Since that sale, I haven't looked back--I've written over twelve novels and over seven novellas.  And it has been a great ride!

Toni Kelner and I had a great chat about the exciting new anthology of (lucky!) thirteen deliciously dark tales, all by different authors. In Death's Excellent Vacation, editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner bring together a stellar collection of tour guides who offer vacations that are frightening, funny, and touching for the fanged, the furry, the demonic, and the grotesque. Learn why it really can be an endless summer-for immortals.

So of course we want to know about the new book, Death's Excellent Vacation. What's it about and why do you love it?

Death's Excellent Vacation is our take on the beach book.  We asked our contributors to write about supernatural creatures on vacation--that was our whole pitch--and Charlaine and I were just amazed at how many different takes on that simple theme people came up with.  I love how each story is both wonderful and wildly different from the others.

I see that this is the third anthology you've put together. I'd love to know how you and Charlaine came up with the idea to collaborate on this kind of project in the first place.

Frankly, I was drafted.  Martin Greenberg at Tekno Books was the one to come up with the idea of  Charlaine editing a vampire anthology.  I wasn't there, but I've imagined the conversation going something like this:

The Ten Commandments, even if not accepted as God's word by some people, are still accepted as general guidelines for decent behavior in any society. Always one of the Sunday school favorites: Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the Decalogue tablets, then destroying them upon finding the people of Israel worshipping a Golden Calf. The remains were gathered inside what is known as The Ark of the Covenant, since lost in the realms of History.

In his latest novel, The Moses Expedition, the award-winning Juan Gómez-Jurado weaves a thrilling adventure that is sure to keep the pages turning.

After fifty years in hiding, the Nazi war criminal known as the Butcher of Spiegelgrund has finally been tracked down by Father Anthony Fowler, a CIA operative and a member of the Vatican's secret service. He wants something from the Butcher --a candle covered in filigree gold that was stolen from a Jewish family many years before.

But it isn't the gold Fowler is after. As Fowler holds a flame to the wax, the missing fragment of an ancient map that uncovers the location of the Ten Commandments given to Moses is revealed. Soon Fowler is involved in an expedition to Jordan set up by a reclusive billionaire. But there is a traitor in the group who has ties to terrorist organizations back in the United States, and who is patiently awaiting the moment to strike. From wartime Vienna to terrorist cells in New York and a lost valley in Jordan, The Moses Expedition is a thrilling read about a quest for power and the secrets of an ancient world.

Steven James is among a relative handful of people with a Master's Degree in Storytelling. Not English. Not Creative Writing or Liberal Arts, but good old fashioned Storytelling. Talking to him, one can sense he comes by it naturally. In fact, it may be in his blood. "As a kid, when we would get together with my extended family, we always wanted to go to Uncle Rich's house, because he would tell us stories. I think everyone should have an uncle like that." James found himself repeating Uncle Rich's stories later as a camp counselor. When that well ran dry, he started making up his own stories, and his career was born.

What may be of particular interest to thriller writers is the subject of James's masters thesis. "How much can you change a story from your life and still claim it's true? It gave me a good understanding of what makes a story work and what a good story is."

For many, it might be enough to be a literal "master" storyteller who has explored the territorial boundaries between actual fact and believable fiction, but James adds another ingredient to his fiction that won him acclaim as a "thinking man's thriller writer" and legions of devout fans. "(As readers) we want to be entertained--that's number one. But I think we also want to explore deeper questions and deeper meaning. When stories do that, they have the effect of attracting rabid fans and the word begins to spread."

STEWART TIMES, AUGUST, 2010

SATIRIC CRIME AUTHOR, PETER GUTTRIDGE, LAUNCHES DISTURBING THRILLER

HEAD UNDER PILLOW

MIND GOING TO PIECES

CAN'T PUT IT DOWN

I was shocked early in the week by the news that I'd be interviewing a particularly fantastic author. The thriller begins with a decades old crime, finding the nude torso of a woman in a trunk at Brighton Central Railway Station, and the discovery of the legs in Kings Cross.

DISMEMBERED BODY LEFT ON INTERVIEWER'S PORCH

At the time, no one told me who the author was, I was only left with the bloody remains of another body on my porch wrapped in brown paper and tied with window cord. On the edge of the paper written in blue pencil are the letters "Silver Bullet". Luckily I'm not on the award's committee or I might be nervous.

I think the body wasn't so much a body as a collection of pig parts cleverly sculpted to resemble my mother in law. I'm not sure what was scarier, how she looked at me or how it tasted that evening.

It's a grisly start to an interview, especially if you're expecting something satirical, but blame Guttridge for setting the tone. The first chapter with City of Dreadful Night's protagonist Detective Sergeant Sarah Gilchrist is just as grisly and mysterious.