To a detective character from a big city like New York or Los Angeles, the Midwest might look like one big flyover zone. But to plenty of mystery writers (myself included), the Midwest looks like home—and a good setting for a crime novel. We have plenty of cynicism to counteract that apple-cheeked, earnest idea…
The balance between fact and fiction can be a tricky one for a historical novelist. Playing fast and loose with the facts can leave a writer open to accusations of inauthenticity. Yet, if there is anything I have learned from studying history, it’s that it is not static, it is open to interpretation, and what…
Submarines have been known to collide in fiction, but do they occur in reality? The short answer—yes. I’ll have to credit Wikipedia with a list of the more well-known submarine collisions since 2000: 2001 – USS Greeneville collision with Ehime Maru 2002 – USS Oklahoma City collision with Norwegian tanker Norman Lady 2005 – USS…
For the past year, I’ve been wrapped up in a project that, to be honest, has taken a lot more of my time than I suspected it would. It’s a TV show, Berlin Station, that I’ve been creating and writing with the help of a small staff of writers in a room in New York…
Fingerprints as forensic science seem routine to the modern crime story fan, because they know humans are born with loops, arches and whorls on their finger pads. But in a true-life manifestation of existential philosophy, these obvious physical markings didn’t exist as forensic evidence until their usefulness was discovered. The initial classification of fingerprints occurred…
