One of my favorite elements of storytelling is momentum. Reading a well-written thriller is a bit like standing in a river current—whether it’s a violent tug or a steady pull, the narrative is always moving inexorably forward and taking you along with it. With escalating stakes, white-knuckle action, or a dazzling concept explored to its…
If you can’t decide on what to read, the Minotaur Fall Sampler is the perfect way to choose. Whether you want to start a series or read a standalone novel, the Sampler has you covered. The Sampler contains the beginnings of four different mysteries, so don’t be surprised if you end up wanting to finish…
I come from the rainy and murderous Pacific Northwest near Seattle, a place where we know a thing or two about serial killers here because we’ve had some of the most notorious call our neck of the woods home. I can look across the water from my home and see the city where Ted first…
In the old days before streaming video, the only place you could reliably see a Chinese martial arts movie was on your local TV station’s Saturday afternoon broadcast of Kung Fu Theater, or some similarly named program. Chances are it would a double feature—Shaolin Executioners followed by Dirty Ho, perhaps—featuring guys in bad wigs and…
A Note from Alex Finlay I was thrilled and humbled by the reception to Every Last Fear—from prominent newspaper reviewers, to librarians, to independent booksellers, to readers—and I’m incredibly grateful. I’m also optimistic that The Night Shift will be a worthy follow-up, and am particularly excited about the return of Special Agent Sarah Keller. —Alex…
What is noir? It’s legendarily hard to define but you know it when you see it: Dark streets slick with rain. Seedy hotel rooms lit by a reddish neon glare. A wisp of smoke curling up from a cigarette in a shadowy corner. Desperate men and women with obscure motives and shifting loyalties. In Asia,…
Portland–and Oregon in general–has had its share of crime: We’re the home of D. B. Cooper, the I-5 serial killer, Diane Downs, Tonya Harding, and Westley Allen Dodd. The Green River Killer and Ted Bundy committed some of their crimes here, and a cult in eastern Oregon once tried to poison a river that fed…
Who are the real Baker Street Irregulars? Are they a gang of street kids who worked for Sherlock Holmes, appearing in only three stories but nevertheless spawning at least three major TV shows in the last 30 years; or are they the US’s first and most famous Sherlockian society? Or are they actually Winston Churchill’s…
The idea for People of Abandoned Character, a story about a woman who thinks she may have married Jack the Ripper, came from a night class at a local college. The teacher had handed out newspaper clippings from 1888 reporting the murder of Polly Nicholls and we were asked to write from the point of…
I started off my writing journey by writing dark YA suspense with a healthy (or unhealthy?) body count. The darker it was, the more I was attracted to it. My friends used to joke that I couldn’t write a single book without killing anyone, and the one time I did, I quickly followed up with…
