After the divorce, it was settled that my little sister would live mostly with my mother, while my two older brothers and I would live mostly with our father. A lawyer himself, our father—tasked all at once with the rearing of three unruly boys—naturally fell back on what he knew…. Read more
Today, January 19th, is Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday. To celebrate his would-be 210th name day, we’re taking a look back at “The Purloined Puzzle,” C. Auguste Dupin, and the villain who’s been right in front of our eyes this whole time. It’s what he would have wanted. You don’t hear… Read more
After over twenty years in Human Resources, I certainly witnessed my share of bad workplace behavior — lying, bullying, manipulation, drug abuse, physical altercations, and equipment theft, to name a few. But that horrific conduct pales in comparison to my findings as I researched cybercrime for my latest thriller, Ginger… Read more
Have you ever met a murderer? I’ve brushed up against three infamous murder cases—each lurid enough to be fictionalized on programs like Law and Order and Cold Case. In the first one, I lived in the same dorm with Gina Grant, a young woman convicted at age fourteen of murdering her mother. In Gina’s… Read more
A couple of months ago, the human species passed an ominous milestone that had long been anticipated by thriller writers: the first genetically modified babies were born. What’s more, it happened in exactly the way that many authors (including me) had predicted. A rogue researcher violated a worldwide ban on… Read more
When the idea for my debut thriller, Freefall, first came to me, I knew it was one I wanted to develop: a plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies and the sole survivor must fight her way through the wilderness with the clothes on her back and whatever supplies she can… Read more
While they may share the end goal of “telling a story,” a novel and a screenplay are two very different products, each with its own requirements, approaches, and styles. The most significant difference is that a novel is a finished product, while a screenplay is a blueprint for a film… Read more
When I began writing the first book in my Maine Clambake Mystery series back in 2012, I sat down to think about what attracted me to cozy mysteries. Like traditional mysteries—a genre of which cozies are a part—cozy mysteries make the unknown known, supply satisfying answers to all the vexing… Read more
Why set a thriller in 1920s Paris? This is the Paris of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of Gertrude Stein and Nancy Cunard, of Josephine Baker in her banana skirt taking her pet leopard for a walk. This is a Paris of wild parties full of flappers and swells—surely this is not… Read more
2018 was a memorable year for a variety of reasons, but here at CrimeHQ, we’re concentrating on the things that thrilled us, scared us, mystified us, and kept us up all hours of the night. Without further ado, may we present our favorite books of 2018. And here’s to you,… Read more
