Dr. Evelyn Talbot, the psychiatrist heroine of my suspense series—which began with Hanover House and Her Darkest Nightmare and now continues with Hello Again on October 3—studies psychopaths at a remote facility in Alaska. Creating this unusual prison where so many inmates are serial killers has been a fascinating project for me, probably because Evelyn’s…
Fiction is about getting inside the heads of people, whether they are like us or unlike us. When writers depict a sociopath, how close can they get? Is it possible to represent a mental state we can’t experience? Even therapists and psychologists can get it wrong. When we are talking to a person who, by…
Brenda Novak, author of Her Darkest Nightmare, is fascinated by the inner workings of the minds of psychopaths. This fascination is what inspired her to write the Evelyn Talbot Chronicles, featuring Hanover House—a maximum security facility in a small Alaskan town. Ms. Novak was nice enough to take some time away from her research and…
I’m obsessed with “good guys.” You know the ones—they’re actually bad but hiding in plain sight as “good.” “I know there are young men that take advantage of young women and vice versa, but I know for a fact that Brock is not one of those people. He is respectful and caring, talented, and smart…
The Ripper Gene is the debut thriller by Michael Ransom about a neuroscientist-turned-FBI profiler who's discovered a genetic signature that produces psychopaths (available August 18, 2015). Dr. Lucas Madden is a neuroscientist-turned-FBI profiler who first gained global recognition for cloning the ripper gene and showing its dysfunction in the brains of psychopaths. Later, as an…
What Doesn't Kill Her by Carla Norton is the 2nd psychological thriller featuring U.C. Berkley student Reeve LeClaire, who is yanked back into her grim past when her old abductor escapes from a psychiatric hospital (available June 30, 2015). All you have to say is “mental hospital,”and you have my undivided attention. When I picked…
The Winter Foundlings by Kate Rhodes is the third book starring forensic psychologist Alice Quentin who heads to a psychiatric prison to interview an inmate (available February 24, 2015). It’s hard not to draw comparisons to Silence of the Lambs when reading Kate Rhodes’ third novel, The Winter Foundlings, which continues the story of forensic…
Fear the Darkness by Becky Masterman is the second thriller in the Brigid Quinn series about an ex-FBI agent whose niece has some glaring psychopathic tendencies (available January 20, 2015). It’s hard to recognize the devil when his hand is on your shoulder. That’s because a psychopath is just a person before he becomes a…
A Pleasure and a Calling by Phil Hogan is stand-alone psychological thriller about a real estate agent from a small English village who keeps a set of keys to every house he's ever sold (available January 6, 2014). Mr. Heming loves the leafy English village where he lives. As a local real estate agent, he…
Gillian Anderson plays Bedelia du Maurier on Hannibal, an astonishingly cool and self-possessed character, especially given her hints about being the victim of violent crime and given that her almost-shuttered practice has devolved to including only client, the insistent Dr. Lecter himself. If you've been watching, you've discovered more of her hidden depths—oh, that Season…
