A few weeks back, I was drinking with some buddies at a writers’ convention when I felt a tap on the shoulder. “I want to introduce you to a fan,” someone said. Like any dignified author at this stage of my career, I whipped around so fast that the Brooklyn… Read more
Southland Nina Revoyr I’m a big fan of stories driven by unexpected detectives: characters drafted in from other walks of life who happen to have a particular emotional or familial stake in figuring out who is to blame for a crime. Jackie Ishida, law student, is one such character. Very… Read more
We’ve all seen it: The heroin takes a bullet in her shoulder area, where the chest muscle meets the shoulder bone. She falls back, winces in pain for a few beats, and then musters just enough strength to outsmart the bad guy and win the day—and has the wherewithal to… Read more
When you start out writing a book about a real person—in this case, Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, arguably the most famous supernatural tale ever told—you find yourself both liberated and constrained at the same time. You’re liberated from having to figure out so much about the protagonist of… Read more
I know what you’re thinking. There’s absolutely no way in the world anyone in their right mind could consider historic Westerns to be crime fiction. Modern tales set in the West are okay—such as the consistently fine work turned in by the likes of Craig Johnson, C.J. Box, Tony Hillerman,… Read more
When I fly into Toronto nowadays, I’m amazed at all the changes—the urban expansion and taller buildings springing up along the 401 and the Gardner, with roadways around the city expanding to extra lanes, some that didn’t exist at all when I lived there. It’s still a great city, and… Read more
At 80 million copies sold and counting, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is poised to surpass the current bestselling mystery of all time, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Clearly, Brown hit on something with his fourth novel: readers love to crack a code. Mix in a little… Read more
I recently reread Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible. The first time I read it—about a dozen-plus years ago—I was enthralled by the characters and the sheer breadth of Kingsolver’s undertaking. It wasn’t just the political relevance or the compelling setting, it was the story. Five protagonists, five points of… Read more
The case has been knocking around for as long as novels have been published. There is supposed to be great literature on one side of the divide and grubby disreputable crime fiction on the other. The usual suspects always get trotted out and displayed in the harsh light of the… Read more
No one is all bad or all good, and some of my favorite antagonists are the ones who I admire in some way. They’ve either got a cool streak or a special talent or maybe they’re just victims of lousy circumstances. Whatever it is about them, the lines between their… Read more
