Brian Klingborg’s Thief of Souls (Minotaur Books, May 2021) marks the launch of a new mystery series following Inspector Lu Fei. When a brutal murder in a rural village in Northern China sends shockwaves all the way to Beijing, Inspector Lu Fei, exiled to this tiny town, is seemingly the only one interested in finding…
Which family members were you the most excited about being able to interview? Would you say that they were supportive of the story being told? I was lucky enough to gain the cooperation of Chris Watts’ family early on. I was in Spring Lake, North Carolina researching the book when I saw Chris’s mother Cindy…
Describe the first time you pictured Joe Gunther in your head. Joe came to me first as a voice, more than as a physical type. What I wanted was a go-to spiritual model that every other character (and the readers) could consult in moments of confusion and stress. At various times, I have played the…
R.G. Belsky has forged an impressive, decades-long career in writing both fact and fiction. As a journalist, he served as metropolitan editor of the New York Post, managing editor of the New York Daily News, news editor at Star Magazine, and, most recently, a managing editor at NBC News. As a novelist, he’s published fourteen…
Describe the first time you pictured Flavia Albia in your head. It was during my Falco series, she was just a pathetic, very young scavenger, a street child glimpsed in a bar, intended to show the seamy side of Roman Londinium. Then, once in Rome, a troubled teenager, her character developed. Her looks had to…
Masquerade for Murder by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins is the latest Mike Hammer novel from Titan Books. Mike Hammer, a WWII veteran/private detective, witnesses a hit-and-run outside of a steakhouse in Manhattan. The victim—a young, powerful Wall Street broker named Vincent Colby—survives the incident when a red Ferrari nearly crushes him. But he’s…
Meet Archer Mayor: New York Times-bestselling Vermont crime writer Archer Mayor has written thirty-one books in his Joe Gunther series, about a Vermont police detective who solves crimes in all corners of his native state. He is a past winner of the New England Independent Booksellers Association Award for Best Fiction and the latest book…
Describe the first time you pictured Lady Emily in your head. Believe it or not, I woke up one morning with a vivid image in my head: a young woman, dressed in Victorian clothing, standing on the cliff path in Imerovigli, a small village in the Greek island Santorini. It was so striking that I…
The Poet follows Samantha Jazz, the lead detective on the case of a violent serial killer dubbed “The Poet,” named as such for the poems he leaves with the bodies of his victims. How did the subject of poetry enter the novel? My mother wrote poetry while I was growing up and I recently found some of…
Describe the first time you pictured Minou in your head. I saw a figure of a woman in the mist, in the shadow of the medieval city walls of Carcassonne, on a cold, winter’s night. I could see long brown hair beneath the hood of her cloak, cold hands carrying a basket, hurrying through cobbled…
