crime
Thrillers Where Natural Disaster Looms Large
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It’s a perennial question at readings and signings: Where do you get the ideas for your books? I usually mumble something that amounts to (phrased politely), “I pull them out of thin air.” But when it comes to Best Be Prepared (Severn House), my most recent in a series featuring amateur sleuth Nora Best, I…
Kenneth Branagh and De-Poiroting Hercule Poirot
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A man with his back to the world waits for two impossible and perfect eggs. He follows an officer to the transport as a dream-generated locomotive leaves the story. He dreams of a holiday in Egypt and wakes up in the gnarls of memory’s black and white world; his famous face is shaped by loss…
An Argument for the Unintentional Villain
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A good villain is essential to a good mystery. He or she is the author of the crime, the driver of the plot, and the key to solving the ensuing investigation. Often, the more cunning and deceitful the villain, the more satisfying their unmasking and capture. This is one reason for the public fascination with…
Healing Through Horror
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Oh, the Horror! It doesn’t often come up but when it does, people are often surprised when I tell them I never set out to be a horror writer. Sure, I’m a die-hard, lifelong fan of the genre, and it was reading Stephen King’s The Shining at thirteen that opened my mind and imagination to…
Inside the Early Days of Investigating the Murdaugh Family
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Before Mandy Matney was the award-winning host of the #1 Murdaugh Murders Podcast, she was a local Hilton Head reporter practiced in viral stories about sharks and tornados. Was she up to the task of reporting on the crimes surrounding a powerful South Carolina family with generations of influence? In this exclusive excerpt from her…
Storm Warning: Excerpt and Cover Reveal
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5:44 PM Rain smacks my windshield. The wipers fight a losing battle. The Elantra’s on its last legs, and there’s so much water I can barely see the nearly one thousand feet of causeway ahead of me. Waves pound either side of this narrow link between the mainland and Ketchum Island, sending foamy water sloshing…
How the True (and Still Unsolved) 1986 Assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Inspired My Nordic Noir Novel
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The movie was a spur-of-the-moment idea. The prime minister had had a stressful week. Seeing a comedy with his wife and son and his son’s girlfriend was just the tonic that Olof Palme needed. Bodyguards? It would have been cruel to call them back to work on a Friday night. Besides, this was cozy, peaceful…
A Journey Into the Heart of the Everglades, and the Alligator Poacher Sting that Divided a Community
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In January 2020, I drove down from Orlando to the easternmost edge of the Everglades and booked a room in the neon-dazzled Miccosukee Casino & Resort, a hotel in the no-man’s-land between the glitz of Miami and the seemingly endless wilderness of the glades. That night, I looked out of my window on the casino’s…
What Spy Fiction Taught Me About Breaking the Rules
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As a kid, I broke what I like to think was a normal amount of rules. There was the time in kindergarten when we were sitting on the rug for storytime, and the boy in front of me kept leaning back against my legs, even when I asked him to stop, and eventually I got…
Difficult Women In Historical Fiction: A Reading List
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I try to be good but fail every day. My natural state is lazy, self-indulgent, resentful, and dangerously avoidant. The damage I’ve done in life has mainly come from not-getting-around-to something I ought to do. If you’re still waiting for my thank you card or RSVP or post-retirement letter of recommendation or final portfolio grade,…