Interviews
Catching Up with Louise Penny in Iceland
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Despite a backdrop of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions threatening travel plans to Iceland, I was able to catch up with Louise Penny, author of the popular Three Pines traditional mysteries starring Inspector Gamache. We talked over breakfast at the Hotel Saga in Reykjavik one Saturday morning during November’s Iceland Noir conference. Given the conference line-up,…
Chris McGinley on Appalachian Literature and Noir
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The beauty of being asked to interview Chris McGinley about his new book Once These Hills was I knew I was going to read it anyway and knew I was going to read it as soon as it hit my hands. Chris is a writer of very specific passions—classic Appalachian literature and crime fiction—and he…
Rian Johnson and Olivia Rutigliano talk Poker Face, Knives Out, and Golden Age Mysteries
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Reissued for the first time this century, John Dickson Carr’s The Problem of the Wire Cage is an atmospheric and amusing Golden Age mystery with a memorable puzzle at its center. Dickson Carr is famous for his puzzling “impossible crime” plots in which corpses are discovered in scenarios that seem to lack any logical explanation….
Shop Talk: A Year of Writing Advice and Stories from the Trenches
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It’s that time of the year again, and, no, I’m not talking about the holidays. I’m talking about year-end-list time. Just like the holidays, year-end lists can be anxiety inducing, especially for authors. So, as a reprieve from everybody and their Uncle Bob’s “Favorite Books of 2023,” I’d like to offer you something a little…
Sherlockian Collaborations and the Joys of Fandom
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Bonnie MacBird is regarded as one of the top Sherlock Holmes writers, and her five Sherlock Holmes Adventures for HarperCollins have developed a following. Frank Cho is a top Marvel artist whose cover illustrations are legendary. Together they have collaborated on WHAT CHILD IS THIS? – a Sherlock Holmes Christmas novella. A Holiday pick by…
The Queen of Grit Lit has a New Novel
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What I told her was this: “Read Once Upon a River.” Let me explain. I was at an event promoting my own new novel, Once These Hills, when a woman approached me and asked me where I got the idea to write about my main character, a fierce mountain girl, good with a bow and…
Alexis Soloski on Theater, Criticism, and the Mystery of Performance
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Vivian Parry, the main character of Alexis Soloski’s Here in the Dark, is a perceptive theater critic for a New York magazine. She’s tough on hammy actors, but even harder on herself. Despondent since her mother’s sudden death, Vivian is a self-proclaimed “abyss where a woman should be,” one who dulls “any genuine feeling with…
The Seeds of a Pharmaceutical Thriller: A Conversation Between Co-Authors
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Many thanks to Jyoti Guptara and Thomas Locke for kindly offering a conversation about their new thriller, Roulette. Jyoti Guptara: Thomas, remember when you visited me at the UN in Geneva? You arrived with this brilliant story seed: “What appears to be a simple case of overdose turns into an ER nightmare. Patients seem…
My First Thriller: Patricia Cornwell
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“There was no call for him to be as unkind as he was,” says famed author Patricia Cornwell, who single handedly created the forensic science crime fiction genre. Robert Merritt, the theater and arts critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1989, trashed his fellow Richmonder’s first crime novel, Postmortem, calling her protagonist, Medical Examiner Dr….
Shop Talk: Michael Farris Smith on Learning the Habit of Writing
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I cut my teeth on Larry Brown. If you’ve never heard of Larry before, let me introduce you by way of Michael Farris Smith. Both are Mississippi authors who aren’t afraid to stare straight into the hard stuff. Both write prose so clean it sings. Larry was gone by the time I started reading him,…