Peter James’s long-running DCI Grace series, now on BritBox in a grand adaptation as Grace, has just published his 22nd in this series, The Hawk is Dead.
The backstory to this novel is fascinating: Her Majesty Queen Camilla, a huge Grace fan, asked him when she was Duchess of Cornwall in 2019 if he couldn’t see a way to bring Sussex-based Grace to London. After kicking the idea around for four years as he worked on other projects already under construction, James figured out a plot what would allow him to bring Grace and a few members of his team to the Palace.
And that kernel of an idea started when James read that the 775 rooms in Buckingham Palace were to undergo a major renovation, which would take place over the course of several years, not just for updating and modernization but for safety reasons. The Royal Collection consists of over a million very valuable art and objects held by The Crown, many in Buckingham Palace.
From that grew the idea for the entire novel, and the beginning of exhaustive research, which included James being given inside tours of the palace, and even learning how to drive a train! Always giving his realistic police procedurals a grand plot, James knocks it out of the park with this one, literally, by taking Grace from his Brighton territory to Buckingham Palace.
His team becomes involved when the Queen is traveling by train to visit hospices along the south coast. Her train must be evacuated after being derailed inside a tunnel. A harrowing scene from the train driver’s point of view brings the accident to life, and as the Queen and a trusted advisor exit the tunnel, shots ring out. While the Queen narrowly misses being assassinated, Sir Peregrine Greaves, Private Secretary to Their Majesties and one of the most senior members of their household, is killed.
Grace has a nagging feeling the Queen might not have been the intended target, and readers are treated to insights into the workings of the Royal Household, and its pecking order, as well as an extensive treatment of the glories contained within the huge building as the investigation ensues.
With attention turned to the household, when a diary Sir Peregrine kept in code, more matters come to light and soon Grace and his team, especially his long-term bagman DI Branson, must sift through Not-My-King protestors; territorial tiffs with the Met, who want to take over his investigation; and missing artifacts. Then a second body is found…
This was one of the most enjoyable Grace novels to date, and as usual, gives us a window into his home life, too. But James’s intricate plotting with its exploration of life within the royal household make this a gripping story.
I almost did after reading the opening pages of this terrific novel. That’s how strong the opener is, and explains why I kept flipping pages long after the light should have gone out…
I’ve been a huge fan of the Poe and Bradshaw series from Day 1 and follow them avidly. Each of the previous books have genius plotting, really well-done characterizations, and an ironic humor that contrasts nicely to some of the darker bits. Because there are darker bits.
But the stakes are raised in this one. A sniper had been shooting individuals with no apparent pattern. Then a bride is killed on her wedding day, and her influential father aids Poe’s investigation in a rare way, desperate to find his daughter’s killer.
The pressure on Poe and Tilly is sharp and relentless, and it doesn’t help that Poe is due to be married shortly. There will be sleight of hand, psychological reasonings, and above all, Tilly’s uncanny ability with maths to bring them closer to an invisible killer.
A thrilling read, this is an extraordinary book, perhaps Craven’s finest, from someone who’s loved them all.
From time to time, Auntie M likes to let you in what she’s been reading, not for review, but for her own personal choice. These are some of my favorites, the ones I reach for again and again for a satisfying read:
Steve Cavanagh knocks it out of the park with his new Eddie Flynn legal thriller, Two Kinds of Stranger, which may be his most perfectly twisted plot yet, and he’s a master at it. Eddie is a conman turned lawyer who won’t hesitate to step outside the law to bring justice.
This case comes too close to home when a stalker client threatens his daughter, ex-wife and her new lawyer husband. At the same time, he and his team have taken on the case of a young woman whose life had been about espousing random acts of kindness. In an ironic twist, that same instinct has led to her being poisoned, while her cheating husband and his lover are also poisoned. While the duo die, Ellie Parker manages to survive but is soon charged with their murders, as no one can find the stranger she says she helped who poisoned her, a sociopath working behind the scenes to manipulate her life.
No one except Eddie Flynn. And then his ex-wife’s stalker is killed, and his daughter’s mother and her husband are on trial for that murder. His team is managing two serious trials at the same time, and lines will be crossed with life-changing outcomes. At times you can’t see how he can pull this one off, and Eddie isn’t certain he can, either.
There’s a final extra ending twist that makes it all come full circle—you won’t be able to put this one down. Cavanagh gets NYC and its environs perfectly, which is all the more surprising when you learn he and his family live in Belfast, Ireland. Don’t miss this brilliantly layered novel.
The Marlow Murder Club is currently showing on my Masterpiece Mystery, and Auntie M snapped up the newest installment, a locked room (boat) mystery that weaves a killing around the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society in Murder on the Marlow Belle.
Verity Beresford enlists Judith Potts and her friends to track down her missing husband after the drama society had hired The Marlow Belle for an evening on the river. But no one remembers seeing Oliver Beresford leave the boat.
Then Oliver’s body, complete with bullet holes, washes up downriver, and the three women amateur sleuths are on the hunt. Soon they are knee-deep in the personal lives of the main players, whose secrets they must unearth, as it seems Oliver had a host of enemies.
Cosy mystery crime at its finest with a returning ensemble we’ve grown to love.
Queen Camilla let it be known that Peter James is her favorite author, and so his October book, The Hawk is Dead, has scenes at Buckingham Palace. But One of Us is Dead is out now, so readers who follow Brighton Superintendent Roy Grace can gratefully indulge.
Grace and his familiar team are investigating a series of murders that appear unrelated, but Grace has a that twitch of instinct that tells him they are, despite mushroom poisoning and accidents that may not be what they seem.
At a local funeral, a man enters the church late to see a fellow a few rows ahead of him he knows to be dead–because he gave that man’s eulogy. What these disparate incidents have in common becomes the latest chase to find a canny killer.
Grace’s respect and detail of police procedures is at full mast here, as is his frustration at being behind the desk too much. Another great installment in a long-running series that never disappoints.
I had fears that SJ Bennett’s series featuring Queen Elizabeth would come to an end with the passing of the monarch, but Bennett’s Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series continues with A Death in Diamonds by heading back in time to 1957 with a young Queen finding her voice. And now she’s opened up a host of years to pull from as the series continues.
When two people are murdered and the Queen finds herself used as the alibi for one of the murders, all the while trying to learn her job and her nation’s place in a modern world, it seems that the very advisors she must trust may not always have her best interests at heart.
Her ally becomes Joan McGraw, an ex-Bletchley Park code breaker, discreet and loyal to the Queen, and soon this dynamic duo are running their own investigation. A clever and intriguing way to continue this series, Bennett gets the personalities of the royals involved down pat with nice asides we can well imagine might really have been said. A jewel~
Skelton’s well-plotted series featuring investigative reporter Rebecca Connolly continues with The Hollow Mountain.
Filled with the kind of ironic humor Auntie M enjoys, Rebecca is challenged by Alice Larkin, a dying millionaire and former reporter, to unearth what really happened when her lover died while working as a tunnel tiger on the Hollow Mountain project years ago.
With Alice parsing out her story, Rebecca must use her talents and those of her colleagues to unearth the truth of the hazardous construction as the workers blasted through mountains, under rivers, to create a pass, but she soon finds herself in jeopardy when the secrets she is finding threaten the reputations of those left behind.
Skelton’s series at highly atmospheric in their Scottish settings and the entire series comprise great reads.
Nita Prose’s maid Molly Gray is a wonderful character with a unique take on life whom Prose first debuted in The Maid. Now planing her wedding to chef Juan Manual, she’s been promoted to Head Maid and Special Events Manager at the Regency Grand Hotel, a delightful setting for much of the action of the series.
In The Maid’s Secret, the antiquities show Hidden Treasures is filming an episode at the Regency Grand when a decorated egg Molly brings in to be valued is found to be an antique treasure. At the same time as the television world and Molly’s life is turned upside down, excerpts from her grandmother’s diary explain how the egg came to be in her possession. And then the egg goes missing . . .
It’s a nice device that alternates with the madcap part of the auction process and gives a glimpse–and surprising information–to Molly. As usual, there is a sense of a heartfelt lesson being told.
Founder Clay Stafford of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference is pleased to announce this year’s Silver Falchion Award Finalists. The Silver Falchion Award is given for the Best Book in each category for the previous year (2024). Winners in each category will be announced at the annual Killer Nashville Awards Dinner taking place on August 23rd at the Embassy Suites Nashville South/Cool Springs Hotel in Franklin, TN.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the conference which hosts aspiring and established writers from all over the world to network and develop their writing skills in fiction and nonfiction that incorporate elements of mystery, thriller and suspense.
And here is the complete listing of all of the Finalists. Congratulations to the nominees:
2025 KILLER NASHVILLE SILVER FALCHION AWARD FINALISTS
(for best books of 2024)
Best Action Adventure
JERICHO BURNING
T.G. Brown
THE GENERAL’S GOLD
Bruce Robert Coffin and LynDee Walker
DESPERATE MEASURES
Ley Esses
WHERE LOVE MEANS NOTHING
Howard Gimple
THE NORTH LINE
Matt Riordan
Best Comedy (includes comedic P.I. and crime caper)
THE PRINCESS SHOPPE
Kerry Blaisdell
SWIPED
L.M. Chilton
GET GRIBNITZ
Howard Gimple
MODEL GHOST
TK Sheffield
SORRY, KNOT SORRY
Lois Winston
Best Cozy
BEESWAX BEWITCHMENT
S.E. Babin
ELIZABETH SAILS
Kristin Owens
STUDY GUIDE FOR MURDER
Lori Robbins
FRAMED FOR MURDER
Marla White
WHEELING AND DEALING
Becki Willis
Best Historical
EMPOWERED BY THE DREAM: A JOURNEY OF RESILIENCE
Gladys A. Barrio
THE PARIS MISTRESS
Mally Becker
A KILLING ON THE HILL
Robert Dugoni
FIND YOUR WAY TO MY GRAVE
Chris Keefer
WHAT ONCE WAS PROMISED
Louis Trubiano
Best Investigator (includes procedural, serious P.I., detective, and noir)
THE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN
Peter W.J. Hayes
LAST DOG OUT
Candace Irving
BLACK & WHITE
Justin M. Kiska
TIGER CLAW
Michael Allan Mallory
MURDER OUTSIDE THE BOX
Saralyn Richard
Best Juvenile / Y.A.
BEYOND THE CEMETERY GATE: THE SECRET KEEPER’S DAUGHTER
Valerie Biel
DEAD GIRL
Kerrie Faye
STEALING TIME
Norman Birnbach and Tilia Klebenov Jacobs
SNOWED
Twist Phelan
STAR BROTHER
Maxine Rose Schur
Best Literary
SHE RUINED OUR LIVES
Chris Chan
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
Dan Flanigan
Best Mainstream / Commercial
THOSE THAT DID NOT DIE
Penny Fletcher
ON THE MAD RIVER
Lucrecia Guerrero
PEOPLE WILL TALK
Kieran Scott
BETWEEN LIES AND REVENGE
Hannah Sharpe
BLINDSPOT
Maggie Smith
Best Mystery
DROP DEAD SISTERS
Amelia Diane Coombs
OBEY ALL LAWS
Cindy Goyette
AT FIRST I WAS AFRAID
Marty Ludlum
A WORLD OF HURT
Mindy Mejia
SCORCHED: BURN ME ONCE…
Cam Torrens
Best Nonfiction
THERE IS NO ETHAN
Anna Akbari
LOVERS IN AUSCHWITZ: A TRUE STORY
Keren Blankfeld
ASK NOT: THE KENNEDYS AND THE WOMEN THEY DESTROYED
Maureen Callahan
TILGHMAN: THE LEGENDARY LAWMAN AND THE WOMAN WHO INSPIRED HIM
Chris Enss
SEEDS OF LEADERSHIP
Wilson Lukang
Best Sci-Fi / Fantasy
OCEAN’S GODORI
Elaine Cho
THE CANOPY KEEPERS
Veronica G. Henry
MASTER VERSION 1.1
Antanas Marcelionis
HOUSE OF FIRE & MAGIC
Sherrilyn McQueen
THE BUILDING THAT WASN’T
Abigail Miles
Best Short Story Collection / Anthology
NEVER TELL COLLECTION
Kjersti Egerdahl, ed.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD / Andrea Bartz (author)
EVERYWHERE WE LOOK / Liv Constantine (author)
SCORPIONS / Rachel Howzell Hall (author)
THE BAD FRIEND / Caroline Kepnes (author)
JACKRABBIT SKIN / Ivy Pochoda (author)
THE GHOST WRITER / Loreth Anne White (author)
DAY
Patrick Kitson (author)
DEEDS OF DARKNESS
William Burton McCormick (author)
6-LANE HIGHWAY
Sean Mitchell (author)
LARCENY & LAST CHANCES: 22 STORIES OF MYSTERY & SUSPENSE
Judy Penz Sheluk, ed.
HIT-AND-RUN / Christina Boufis (Author)
WHEEL OF FORTUNE / John Bukowski (Author)
THE POOL / Brenda Chapman (Author)
HAIL MARY BLUES / Susan Daly (Author)
INCIDENTS AND INTENTIONS / Wil A. Emerson (Author)
THE CRIMSON SALAMANDER / Tracy Falenwolfe (Author)
NO GOOD DEEDS / Kate Fellowes (Author)
NOT THIS TIME / Molly Wills Fraser (Author)
THE CASE OF THE PILFERED PARKA / Gina X. Grant (Author)
A PROMISE KEPT / Karen Grose (Author)
RED INK / Wendy Harrison (Author)
SKEETER’S BAR AND GRILL / Julie Hastrup (Author)
A TIGHT SQUEEZE / Lary M. Keeton (Author)
UNCLE RANDY’S MONEY / Charlie Kondek (Author)
THE PURLOINED PARCHMENT / Edward Lodi (Author)
THE RAGE CAGE / Bethany Maines (Author)
ONCE A THIEF / Gregory Meece (Author)
ROBBERY AT THE BIRDCAGE / Cate Moyle (Author)
THE CONSTELLATION NECKLACE / KM Rockwood (Author)
THE LAST CHANCE COALITION / Judy Penz Sheluk (Author)
THE HOSPITAL BOOMERANG / Kevin R. Tipple (Author)
ARTIFACT / Robert Weibezahl (Author)
Best Southern Gothic
POCKET FULL OF TEETH
Aimee Hardy
KENTUCKY BLOOD (BOOK I OF THE KENTUCKY BLOOD SERIES)
Please welcome Laury A. Egan, who will describe her journey with her new thriller, The Psychologist’s Shadow:
The Psychologist’s Shadow by Laury A. Egan
From the Beginning
The Psychologist’s Shadow is a portrait of Dr. Ellen Haskell, a compassionate, introspective therapist who finds herself in a dangerous struggle with an unknown stalker. The novel is a simmering suspense, one in which tension accumulates as the reader gains insights during sessions with clients—one of whom may be the psychologist’s shadow—and through the stalker’s journal entries, which serve as a discordant counterpoint.
The inspiration for the novel originated in my college interest in psychology. During my later years at Carnegie Mellon University, I selected all of my course electives in that field. Upon graduation, the head of the university’s counseling center, who had been one of my professors, urged me to embark on a career as a therapist. I was tempted but didn’t go that route, yet I continued to read books and to follow changes in psychology. When I began this manuscript in 1992 (a second novel), my goal was to meld my interest with my writing, depicting how a psychologist would react in sessions and what her thoughts would be during them as well as later, when she was alone and in private.
In other words, the story let me travel down the road I hadn’t taken, to try on the career I hadn’t chosen.
The novel is a semi-cozy suspense/mystery, set primarily in the counselor’s office in Princeton, New Jersey, and in her home on a forested property northwest of town—places I know well because I worked in Princeton and lived in a similar house. In addition to the familiar setting and my fascination with psychology, I was also attracted to the idea of writing about a light/dark dichotomy: the psychologist versus the disturbed, obsessive follower whose identity is unknown. Both are narrated in first person, thus allowing the reader (and me) to plunge into their minds, with a more in-depth concentration on Ellen Haskell.
Because one of my greatest pleasures as a writer is creating characters, the plot of The Psychologist’s Shadow allowed me rich opportunities to compose a sampler of diverse clients; to imagine their histories, personalities, and problems; how they would speak, behave, and dress, a process which was similar to writing case studies at university. I was also able to don a psychologist’s hat to “treat” each person, which provides the reader a voyeuristic perch from which to observe, analyze, and search for clues during therapeutic conversations. Wrapping Ellen’s story around her clients’ lives and interspersing the enigmatic journal entries by the stalker, was like being granted a chance to perform all the roles in a drama.
Throughout the years, I continued to revise the manuscript—almost forty times—and then, after publishing a number of other novels, I rolled up my sleeves, sharpened my red pencil, and attacked the manuscript with fervor, finally finishing the project. It now joins eleven other books on my shelf, several of which are in the suspense genre: A Bittersweet Tale, Doublecrossed, Jenny Kidd, and The Ungodly Hour.
However, unlike most authors, who usually concentrate on one genre, I tend to write whatever alights in my consciousness. This sometimes happens in a kind of channeling process when a character “comes through” while I’m sitting on my deck, looking out to sea, for example, or because a setting or “what-if” situation has inspired me. I’ve even tackled comedy: Fabulous! An Opera Buffa and young adult fiction, The Outcast Oracle and Turnabout. Perhaps I’m versatile or perhaps I love being all kinds of people, in all kinds of situations and places.
The Psychologist’s Shadow stayed with me for a long time, but it was ultimately a very satisfying creation. For those who have been in therapy or are therapists, for those who love solving mysteries, I hope this psychological suspense will be an intriguing read!
Published November 18, 2023 by Enigma Books, an imprint of Spectrum Books, UK
Laury A. Egan is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Firefly and Once, Upon an Island; a collection, Fog and Other Stories; four volumes of poetry; and numerous short fiction published in literary journals and anthologies. She lives on the northern coast of New Jersey. Website: www.lauryaegan.com
Please welcome Australian author Natalie Barelli, who will describe the influences on the thread of her new novel, UNTIL I MET HER:
Writers and Lies Natalie Barelli
Writers and lies
My new suspense novel, Until I Met Her, is loosely about a woman who pretends to be
the author of very successful novel.
I didn’t set out to write a novel about a writer, I set out
to write a novel about a lie, but the two are strangely intertwined: after all, it can be argued
that all crime writers are also consummate liars: they set out to tell you a story, which we,
the readers, take at face value, only to find out at the last minute that we were led up the
garden path and we are left to reel in shock at the deceit that was played out.
In Until I Met Her, Emma isn’t a writer at all, and she doesn’t harbour any ambitions of being
one, either. In her case, it all starts out as a favour to a friend. Put that way, if you were asked to put your name to a novel you didn’t write, would you?
That depends on who’s doing the asking, I hear you say. Which is a fair comment, so
let’s assume it’s your favourite thriller author: your favourite thriller author has asked you to
pretend that you wrote his or her latest book. Why? because it’s different from anything
she’s written before, because she’s typecast, she wants the novel to be received at face
value.
Why not write under a pseudonym? you ask. Sure, but there’s a publicity tour to be
done, there are TV interviews lined up, magazine profiles wanting to be written.
Would you be Jill Emerson? Rosamond Smith? Robert Galbraith?
Of course you would.
These are all pen names, but here is a real life story: In the mid 70s, the famous French
author Romain Gary wrote a novel under the pseudonym Emile Ajar. The novel became so
successful that it became impossible for “Ajar” to stay out of the public eye. But no one
had ever met Ajar, not even his publisher. So under such pressure, Romain Gary enlisted
his nephew to front up and pretend to be “Ajar”.
It may have been decades before the age of the internet, but it still didn’t take long for
someone to point out that Ajar was in fact a man called Paul Pavlowitch. So Paul
Pavlowitch did yet more interviews admitting that yes, he had been writing under a
pseudonym. He was the nephew of a very famous author after all, he wanted some
anonymity. This multilayered subterfuge went on for a few years, during which “Emile Ajar”
published three more novels, and when Romain Gary died in 1980, Pavlowitch/Ajar came
out publicly and revealed the duplicity.
Back in the fictional realm, writers and lies make for some gripping thrillers, and some of
my favourites are John Colapinto’s About the Author, Sascha Arango’s The Truth and
Other Lies, and Lie with Me, the beautifully written latest novel by the brilliant Sabine
Durrant. In all these, the protagonist is either a writer who lies about what they’ve written,
or someone who lies about being a writer.
In Until I Met Her, Emma has only recently met Beatrice, a famous crime writer, a woman
Emma admires, and they are fast becoming friends. Then Beatrice asks for a favour: she
needs someone to be “the author” of her yet to be published novel, someone not shackled
by the expectations of fame and genre. Would Emma be willing?
Of course she would.
Neither Beatrice nor Emma have any expectations of the novel breaking any records. It’s well and truly a literary effort, it might do well with the critics, but such novels
traditionally sell little on the commercial front.
Except that it does do well. So well, in fact, that very quickly, Emma becomes rich, famous,
and hailed as one of the most talented authors of her generation.
And now, Beatrice wants her novel back.
*** Until I Met Her is published on amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Until-Met-Her-
Natalie-Barelli-ebook/dp/B01FBTW19C/
You will usually find Natalie Barelli reading a book, and that book will more likely than not be a psychological thriller. When not absorbed in the latest gripping page-turner, Natalie works as an IT professional, loves cooking when she has the time, knits very badly and spends far too much time at the computer. She lives in rural NSW, in Australia.
Auntie M is late to James Hayman’s McCabe and Savage series, but she’ll be back for more after reading The Girl in the Glass, its fourth installment.
The action fluctuates between Whitby Island, Maine, in a case from 1904 and the tragic death of the lovely Aimee Whitby, a French artist, whose murder remains filled with speculation but unsolved. This is contrasted against the June 2012 murder of her descendant, Veronica Aimee Whitby, and closely resembles the hallmarks of the first, with the action split between Portland and Whitby Island.
Veronica is the valedictorian of her school, a manipulative young woman killed on the night of her graduation party. Enter McCabe and Savage, determined to find the killer as quickly as possible. Despite the revelations that perhaps Veronica wasn’t the nicest young woman, she was still only eighteen and at the cusp of her life when she is murdered.
But their investigation is thwarted by the different personalities at hand. There’s the dead girl’s father, wealthy to the point of absurdity, her stepmother, and her half sister. There are petty and real jealousies, sibling rivalry, and the kind of complex family situation that you know you wouldn’t want to be at their Thanksgiving dinners.
Hayman gives McCabe and Savage their own relationship issue to struggle with as the case pushes forward, under the eye of a a strident media, dogging their heels. One of the highlights of this is seeing the duo at work, balancing their case and their emotions, trying to make sense out of the various strands. The past come into play in surprising ways as the case races to its finale. Fast paced and reminded Auntie M of the quick read in one gulp action of a John Sanford novel.
Please welcome thriller writer Frederick Wysocki, who will explain to Auntie M’s readers how he changed careers, the lessons he’s learned, and how he gets his inspiration for new books~
A NEW CAREER
My wife has always called me a storyteller, as if it were a bad thing. However, I never thought I could muster the patience to write a hundred-thousand word novel. Now I have written five within in just over two years and I’m currently working on number 6. (My imaginary friends keep telling me more of their secrets.)
In my first career, I was in high technology having started my first company in 1975. It involved constantly flying somewhere. During those trips, I always packed a thriller or two to read.
I retired early and was finally inspired to start my second career of writing while sharing a golf cart with a movie producer. It turned out he was playing slow because he was finalizing the writing of a novel. We talked. I told him some stories about the tech industry and he told me they were fascinating and to write them down.
I decided to try it and started to learn the craft by going to writer’s groups I found on meetup.com. I am now a Mister with the Sisters in Crime and DesertSleuths.
I still find I’m drawn to writing crime fiction novels inspired by real events.
LESSONS
The most important lessons I’ve come to learn are:
• That one should only write something you truly enjoy, as you will have to reread the darn thing a hundred times before it’s ready.
• That readers love obstacles, suspense and twists.
INSPIRATION
I find myself inspired daily by what I hear on the news and read about in technology blogs. I start by doing research then writing out a rough plot. Then I layer in subplots and decide how my characters will change. I avoid lengthy descriptions. I tend to write short chapters that are heavy on dialogue.
THE START-UP for example, started with a news headline about a still ongoing FBI investigation.
I was curious. How does someone (Anthony Rizzo) start a computer software company and sell it months later for billions of dollars? Then the buyer finds out that it was all a scam and calls in the FBI. With a diverse Board of Directors and countless lawyers and investment bankers, how does a large tech company get duped? How does the FBI deal with it? And yes, it is still in the news today. That was the plot behind THE START-UP.
Against that backdrop I layered in a ‘Hero’s Quest’ character arc of a young man (Frank) facing increasingly ruthless tasks in order to make his share and how it changed him and his girlfriend.
Upon publishing, I discovered eighty percent of my readers of THE START-UP were women and they wanted to know what happened to Frank. The answer came in the form of books 3 & 4. (More on them in a minute.)
Reader feedback also gets my creative juices flowing. Two examples of reader feedback:
• A former FBI agent told me that his first undercover job with the Bureau was similar to my plot for A Timely Revenge. He told me I got the era, events and motives of the crooks just right.
• A relative of a mob family told me she recommended my books to her family as they were the best portrayal of modern Mafia white collar crime she had ever read.
It seems every reader that meets me thinks they know each books’ inspiration and are asking me things like: is Anthony Rizzo (insert name of major CEO)?
What happened to Frank and his girlfriend? That was the question I explored in BLOOD RIVALS and NO TIME FOR FOOLS.
The inspiration behind BLOOD RIVALS came from an interview I did with Fiona Quinn of ThrillWriting.com. I told her about a case where the FBI had mistakenly focused on the wrong suspect from an inconclusive fingerprint.
Naomi Dolphin was introduced in BLOOD RIVALS as a young female bodyguard who Frank hires.
My next novel – THE ARABIAN CLIENT – should be out in a few months and is a prequel of how Naomi went from being a maid and nanny on the island of Anguilla to becoming the bodyguard for a Saudi princess in Saudi Arabia. She struggles to overcome the Islamic culture and terrorists, as well as her clients.
THE ARABIAN CLIENT is very different for me since it’s a psychological thriller and is written from a female point of view. It goes behind the headlines and answers the questions about what is really happening in the Middle East. I’ve had Middle Eastern Muslim women review it for accuracy.
A critical part of my process is reaching out to friends who seem to know unique ways to kill someone.
For example in NO TIME FOR FOOLS:
• A doctor from Florida gave me three methods of killing someone with a cigar lighter.
• The former helicopter pilot for a USA President explained the best way to crash a jet plane without using a bomb.
FROM STAND ALONE, TO SERIES, TO SAGA
I did not start out to write more than one book, nor did I want to do a series. Now with prequels and sequels, I find myself in the midst of writing a saga.
At first, I thought I was writing a single novel, THE START-UP. Readers were all asking me what happens next for the main characters. I had already started on a prequel of Anthony Rizzo – the family crook. That became A TIMELY REVENGE.
Readers were unanimous in asking me what happened to Anthony’s nephew – Frank Moretti. Thus were born BLOOD RIVALS and NO TIME FOR FOOLS. Both those books feature a female bodyguard – Naomi – for Frank.
Readers asked me how she became a bodyguard and that is why I am currently finishing THE ARABIAN CLIENT. It chronicles Naomi, her time in Israel and her first assignment in Saudi Arabia.
Book 6 (takes place in Russia) will pick up where NO TIME FOR FOOLS left off.
As long as my real world readers keep asking me about my imaginary friends, I’ll keep writing.
The isolated island of Sweden’s Faro is the setting for Hakan Oslundh’s crime novel, The Intruder.
Auntie M finds the Scandinavian writers have different conventions to their crime novels, a more leisurely developed pace that allows for the characters lives to be examined before the hunt for a perpetrator sets in. There’s a large sense of setting, too, which looms over the action and in this case, helps to narrow down the suspects when a truly horrific crime sets in.
But long before we get to the terrible act to come, there are small incidents occurring to this family with two small children. Malin Andersson is a food blogger; her husband Henrik Kjellander is a professional photographer who travels extensively on photo shoots with glamorous models, those print ads paying the bills and helping the couple renovate the house and outbuildings they’ve purchased on Faro. Their plan is to have an artists colony there, a place where other photographers will gather to recharge their batteries, refreshed by the stark landscape and Malin’s food.
The family returns to their home after a four week vacation that has allowed them to rent the house out for decent prices. But immediately upon their return, Malin is frustrated not just by the uncleanliness the last tenant left, but by missing times from the home. There are pieces of glass on the floor, too, found only when Malin steps on one and cuts her foot just as their daughter calls them to her room: someone has defecated in her toy basket.
And then Malin notices that family photos are missing, and when she finds one shoved amongst their linens she calls the police in fear, for the photograph has been damage in that all of their eyes have been poked out.
Gotland detective Fredrik Broman is sent to interview the couple. Just returning after a lengthy medical leave from fall that almost killed him, he’s finding his footing again at work and at home, concerned he doesn’t have what it takes to work at policing again. These incidents on Faro could be a joke, but Broman takes them as a warning. Then the couple’s daughter disappears at lunch from her school, and the action ratchets up.
Henrik has returned to the island under unusual circumstances. Estranged from his mother’s second family, a lawsuit between the two arms of the family seems the obvious place to look for suspects. When the incidents turn deadly, Broman and his team will find themselves rapidly trying to save this family as they exhaust all possible suspects, hampered by the remoteness of the setting.
The language is lovely; there is a depth of characterization of all of the participants Auntie M enjoys that makes the heartbreak later on particularly poignant. This mystery is rich with the psychology of the participants, filled with secrets of the past, and vastly enjoyable.
When I started writing The Rising, I had a very rough idea of where the story was going. I knew what I wanted to happen but had no idea how I was going to make it happen. Getting from Point A to Point Z was going to take some planning.
The main character, Detective Ellie Saunders, was a thirty year-old woman with a bad habit of looking for love in a one-night stand. One of those one-night stands turns out to be a co-worker, Jesse Alvarez, a former vice cop with a gorgeous smile. To Ellie’s horror, Jesse is assigned to help with her case.
But as often happens with fictional characters, they have a mind of their own. Jesse was not only pushing himself into Ellie’s case, he was pushing himself into my novel! Jesse Alvarez was intended to be a very secondary character. A character’s whose only purpose was to illustrate Ellie’s spiraling out of control personal life.
So I gave him a few lines of dialogue. And then a few more. And then a couple more. And before I knew it, Jesse was more than Ellie’s former one-night stand. He was her partner. And trust me, I never intended for Ellie to have a partner. This was her story. I wanted her to face certain fears on her own. I wanted her to come to terms with her life, on her terms. But what was I to do? Every time I tried holding him back, he pushed himself right back in the scene.
And then I found myself, and Ellie, in a situation I wasn’t comfortable being in. Not only was Jesse taking over Ellie’s personal life, he was taking over the case. He was becoming her rescuer. Every scene where Ellie faced even a small amount of danger, it was Jesse to the rescue.
I wanted Ellie to be strong from the start. I wanted her to be clear-headed and independent. But I also wanted her to be vulnerable. In the book, she has a very tender spot for the little boy dubbed Johnny Doe. Yet, she forms a strong maternal protectiveness over the child. A mamma grizzly at its worst. In another aspect, she has a very real fear of facing the media, stemming from a childhood trauma. Once the “Johnny Doe” case goes public, the media is stirred into a feeding frenzy, forcing Ellie to deal with those fears. I purposely held Jesse back in these instances, forcing Ellie to step-up-to-the-plate and face the issues on her own.
When the time came for the final showdown between Ellie and the suspect, again, I left Jesse at home. Although he played an important role, to the case and in Ellie’s personal life—I wanted it to be all Ellie in the end. I wanted Ellie to save herself and not rely on a handsome partner with a gorgeous smile.
Yes, Jesse’s around in the end—but he’s not Ellie’s rescuer. She did that all by herself.
Lynn Chandler-Willis has worked in the corporate world (hated it!), the television news business (fun job) and the newspaper industry (not a fan of the word “apparently” and phrase “according to”). She keeps coming back to fiction because she likes making stuff up and you just can’t do that in the newspaper or television news business.
She was born, raised, and continues to live in the heart of North Carolina within walking distance to her kids and their spouses and her nine grandchildren. She shares her home, and heart, with Sam the cocker spaniel.
She is the author of the best-selling true crime book, Unholy Covenant. Her debut novel, The Rising (Pelican Book Group, 2013) won the 2013 Grace Award for Excellence in Faith Based Fiction and was a finalist for an INSPY award. In October 2013, she was the first woman in a ten-year span to be named winner of the Minotaur Books/Private Eye Novel Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel competition for her novel, Wink of an Eye. It will be released by Minotaur in Nov. 2014.
Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff 