"Girl power" doesn't quite cut it when describing Carla Norton's debut thriller, The Edge of Normal.

Reeve is a former abduction victim, suffering from PTSD and making small steps in recovering from her four years in captivity. When Reeve is asked to mentor a little girl named Tilly who was rescued from a similar situation, Reeve quickly becomes the only barrier between Tilly and the predator who still watches, and she may be the only one who can save the two little girls who are still missing.

Norton is also the author of a true crime bestseller, Perfect Victim: The True Story of the Girl in the Box, which details the story of Colleen Stan, a 20-year-old girl who was kidnapped and tortured in captivity for seven years. With The Edge of Normal, Norton drew on her experiences, her research and her true crime expertise to create a psychological thriller with a horrifying premise and a truly indomitable heroine.

This is your first crime novel, and it’s dedicated to Colleen Stan, the “Girl in the Box” who was the subject of Perfect Victim. What are you able to accomplish with a novel that you weren’t with true crime? Did you feel there was something unfinished that The Edge of Normal could fulfill?

My first book was a true account of horrible crimes, and I drew inspiration from that, but with The Edge of Normal I was free to explore hypotheticals: What if a former victim, struggling to come to terms with her past, must overcome her fears in order to save other victims? What kind of person would she be? What are her strengths and weaknesses? How can she fight back? That’s what I wanted to do: empower a victim—correction, a survivor—of kidnapping, and make her tenacious as hell.

And yes, there is some unfinished business. I’m appalled that Colleen’s abductor, Cameron Hooker, is already scheduled for release. He’s a sadistic criminal who should never be set free. The beauty of fiction is that villains can be made to suffer a swift and final justice.

Your research for Perfect Victim sounds downright traumatizing. You’ve visited the scenes of the crime and even put on the “head box” Colleen wore. What have been the most disturbing parts of your research process?

Maybe it’s not surprising that writing both books gave me nightmares. In writing about terrifying events, you really try as much as possible to inhabit the story, and this is true for either genre. I put on the "head box" and descended into the basement, but it’s hard to imagine for even an instant what Colleen endured for years.

Most research is easy in comparison. I just visited the FBI Field Office in Seattle last month, and I talk with forensic psychiatrists and other experts whenever I get a chance. I’ve come to consider psychopaths evil. Others call them opportunists, narcissists or reptilian, but experts agree that they’re wired differently than most of us. Psychopaths lack empathy in a way that can be seen as an untreatable impairment, similar to the way a colorblind person can lack the ability to see red.

How was writing Perfect Victim different from writing The Edge of Normal? What new liberties/constrictions did you encounter in the fiction process?

One big difference was that, when I woke up with my heart pounding, I was thrilled while writing The Edge of Normal, because I’d think, “Hey, I can use this.” Whereas when you’re writing about true events, you wake up thinking, “God, that really happened.”

[Writing true crime is] a completely different process: attending a trial, listening to testimony and trying to reconstruct events. With nonfiction, you do your best to do justice to the story. People genuinely suffered, and there’s no room for levity. And in terms of storytelling, facts are facts, so they dictate the direction of the narrative. But fiction has no map or boundaries. The writer has to determine the path to take, the point of view, the characters. And you’re in pursuit of a different kind of truth.

"You write as a means of expressing your fear and your anger, and you try to transform it into a story that is more socially acceptable than ranting on the street corner."

Do you look at the world any differently after writing these books?

I suppose writing about crime heightens your paranoia. And while some of my characters may not like certain legal institutions or members of law enforcement, I have tremendous respect [for] those who give up their time to do their civic duty and those who risk their lives in law enforcement. When a killer comes through your window, who do you call? Who is going to come to help? Seriously, those people face dangers we don’t even want to see on the page.

Also, true confession: I keep a copy of Perfect Victim in my car. When I spot the occasional female hitchhiker, I offer a ride on the condition that she’ll read the book, and then I lecture sternly about the perils of hitchhiking.

You’ve attributed your fascination with abduction cases to an “abnormal interest in the nature of evil.” It’s clear that many other writers share this interest, as kidnapping and torture thrillers have become very popular in the last two years. And clearly readers share the interest as well, because they’re reading these stories. Why this collective fascination?

I think people are always fascinated by what frightens them, but I don’t think this is anything new. If we’re looking specifically at kidnapping and captivity, sure, there are recent cases—Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart and the three women rescued in Ohio—that come instantly to mind. But looking at a broader timeframe, you’d want to include lots of other literature. The Collector, that prescient novel by John Fowles, was published in 1963. Then there’s Misery by Stephen King, published in 1987, and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, released in 1988. In fact, abduction stories go all the way back to the myth of Persephone.

A major issue for Reeve in The Edge of Normal is how the media and society exploit the victim. Are abduction thrillers exploiting the stories of victims? Why or why not?

I’m glad you asked that, because it’s something I’ve given some thought. If you write about a patient fighting cancer, are you exploiting the victims of that disease? If you write about the Holocaust, are you exploiting the Jews? We write about what moves us. It’s not a coldly calculated decision. I can’t write about vampires or wizards or courageous freedom fighters named Katniss.

Anne Rice and Stephen King talk about how they were simply compelled to write in their particular genres. It’s not a choice so much as a compulsion. And I think most writers tap into something deep within them and write as an outlet. Maybe they had horrible childhoods. Maybe they’ve overcome addiction. Maybe they’ve lost a child. You write as a means of expressing your fear and your anger, and you try to transform it into a story that is more socially acceptable than ranting on the street corner. Writing takes a lot of time and dedication and effort; it damn well better be about something you care about.

The Edge of Normal is far less graphic in its depiction of torture and rape than many other abduction thrillers currently on the market. Was this a conscious choice?

A friend of mine just made the same comment, and I’m so relieved to hear this. The book deals with dark subjects, but I try to keep the pain and suffering offstage. There’s no point in dwelling on the gritty details. The reader gets the idea without being dragged through every sadistic episode. Just mentioning a scar can be sufficient.

It’s often said that a writer must have compassion toward all of their characters, but Duke is a villain of the vilest sort. How were you able to write about a person who will elicit absolutely no empathy from the reader?

This might be the biggest difference between writing fiction and nonfiction. I found Duke very entertaining, so maybe it’s not a question so much of having “compassion” for your characters as it is enjoying some aspect of them. Hannibal Lector would have been repulsive in real life, but he’s fascinating on the page.

While you wouldn’t personally want to spend time with these people, you want to create fearsome villains to drive the story. Character is revealed through conflict, so you want to set your protagonist in opposition to a frightening antagonist—a David-and-Goliath-type dynamic—and that’s what I was aiming for with Reeve and Duke.

What are you working on next?

I’m neck-deep in the sequel to The Edge of Normal. And I’m at the point now where it’s all coming together, where I’d rather keep writing than stop to eat or bathe. Reeve is consuming all my attention. She’s damaged and flawed and struggling with inner demons, but she’s a fighter.

There are three things you may not know about free-range thriller writer Dean Koontz, who has sold hundreds of millions of books during his rise to the publishing stratosphere:

1. His new thriller, Innocence, a paean to nonviolence, was inspired by a dream about a long-dead best-selling author;

2. His abusive alcoholic father tried to cut short his literary career with a homemade switchblade; and

3. The night before the attempt on his life, his mother called from beyond the grave.

And true to the one-man genre that is Koontz, the mild-mannered 68-year-old golden-retriever fancier manages to find wonder, humor and hope in all of it.

Few authors have managed to produce so many novels (I lost count at 120) under so many pen names (10 that I know of) across so many genres with as much success as Koontz. Since breaking in as a science fiction writer with 1968’s Star Quest, the one-time Pennsylvania English teacher has turned out as many as eight titles a year by cross-pollinating suspense, horror, romance, fantasy, space opera and even comedy. Along the way, he became one of only a handful of authors to top the New York Times bestseller list 14 times.

Genre? Koontz don’t need no steenking genre!

“I started out sneaking comedy into my suspense novels, and as I moved around genres, I realized that I have a low boredom threshold,” he says by phone from his home in Newport Beach, California. “If I’d had to write the same thing book after book, I would have quit long ago.”

Case in point: Innocence, a ­fantasy/thriller/love story about star-crossed outliers, has something for everybody. What sets Innocence apart from his past works is its poetic use of language and the fact that Koontz dreamed up the story—literally.

“For years, fans have asked me if I get a lot of ideas from dreams and I always said no, I’ve never had an idea from a dream,” Koontz recalls. “But early last year, I sat up in bed at 4:00 in the morning from a very odd and vivid dream. I was having lunch with [actor-turned-best-selling author] Thomas Tryon [The Other]. I never knew him but I’d read a few of his books. It was a celebratory lunch because he had a new novel coming out. Some of the moments were very vivid and in color, and I don’t dream in color ordinarily. I couldn’t wait to start putting the story on paper.”

The resulting chase-packed love story between societal outcast Addison and fugitive Gwyneth is just the sort of left-brain/right-brain head-scratcher that Koontz fans love to tackle.

Growing up in Everett, Pennsylvania (pop: 4,000), was anything but a dream for Koontz, who suffered beatings and abuse from his alcoholic father, Ray. The author credits his knack for horror and suspense, as well as the unapologetic optimism in his fiction, to his early exposure to the dark side.

“If my father hadn’t been a violent alcoholic who held 44 jobs in 34 years, I might not have the career I have,” he says. “I’m not thankful that that was my childhood, but it wasn’t a bleak one by any means because I was determined that it wouldn’t be.”

Unfortunately, Koontz’s dark past followed him west. Shortly after he and his wife, Gerda, relocated to California in 1976, circumstances brought his father into their care. The couple supported Ray in psychiatric care facilities for the remaining 14 years of his life. He was ultimately diagnosed as a sociopath.

That kind turn almost cost Koontz his life—twice in one day.

“The care center called one morning because [Ray] was down on the lobby floor shouting at people,” Koontz recalls. “I found out later he had developed a tolerance to his anti-psychotic medication and had honed his fishing knife into essentially a switchblade.”

Koontz talked his father back to his room, but Ray’s agitation worsened.

“He kept pacing the room, opening and closing a dresser drawer, until finally he pulled out his knife. We struggled into the hallway, where all these people were returning from lunch. I managed to get the knife away from him without being cut and asked staff to call 911,” Koontz recalls.

It turns out the staff had already called the police. Unfortunately, when they arrived, it was Koontz who was holding the knife.

“The police yelled, ‘Drop the knife!’ and I said, ‘No, it’s not me, it’s him; I took the knife away from him!’ They both drew their guns and yelled, ‘DROP THE KNIFE!’ I finally realized I was going to get shot and dropped the knife. They made me lay face-down on the floor until they got the situation straightened out. It was a memorable day.”

As was the day before, when Koontz encountered one of only two unexplainable experiences in his life (the second he’s saving for full novel treatment).

“The night before my father pulled a knife on me, the phone rang. I picked it up, and this woman’s voice said, ‘Be careful of your father,’ and I swear it was my [late] mother; I recognized the voice. She said that twice and was gone,” he says. “The very next day, if I had gone in there unaware instead of edgy about that call, he probably would have succeeded. I often wonder about that.”

Reconciliation was not in the cards for this father and son. “A sociopath is never going to change and they’re not going to see that any of the problems in their life have been of their own making,” Koontz says. “It’s a very sad thing to never have a relationship with your father, but there was no way to have one.”

As for happiness? Well, that’s another matter.

“Happiness is a choice,” Koontz insists. “That sounds Pollyanna-ish, but it’s not; you can make it or not. Readers over the years say what they love about my books is that they’re full of hope, and that’s the way I see life. If you always dwell on what went wrong in the past, it’s almost hopeless. So I just don’t dwell.”

Ten years after his acclaimed novel Tijuana Straits, author Kem Nunn—whom our columnist credits for the creation of the "Surf Noir" genre—returns with a compelling new psychological thriller, Chance. Set in the foggy Bay Area, the story follows Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist caught up in an affair with one of his beautiful, fractured patients, Jaclyn. When her husband's jealousy grows to sinister extremes, Dr. Chance finds himself in the middle of some serious danger.

In a 7 questions interview, Nunn explains why San Francisco is the perfect setting for a thriller, how he approaches writing in different formats, what he's working on next and more.

Describe your book in one sentence.
An alluring patient leads a doctor, in the midst of his own rather spectacular decline, into an affair of the heart that quickly becomes a one-way trip down the rabbit hole, where nothing is what it seems.

You show a dark and gritty side of San Francisco in this novel. What inspired you to set a thriller there?
The genesis of the story was there—a friend who happens to be a neuropsychiatrist. And then there was the city itself, the atmosphere of the place. It is, after all, the cool, gray city at the edge of a particularly turbulent sea, with its hills and valleys, its ever-shifting winds and fogs—a useful enough metaphor in a story about secrets and hidden agendas.

What do you love most about Dr. Eldon Chance?
I suppose it is the above-cited “spectacular decline.” Given what I take to be the general condition of the species, this serves, at least for me, to make him a kind of every-man. That he is able to stare all of this in the eye, and then to make it a transformative experience . . . I find that touching.

How does your writing process for a novel differ from your writing process for television?
First and foremost, writing for television is a collaborative experience. Writing a novel is a lonely experience, which is both its blessing and its curse. And then, of course, you have different tools in your bag. Screenplays rise and fall, for the most part, on their dialogue. Novel writing allows for the creation of a narrative voice. It is my preferred mode of expression.

Name one book you think everyone should read.
Chance ☺

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
There’s a saying among surfers—if you never go, you never know. I would say that applies to life in general, and certainly to the making of art, in whatever medium. Fear of failure can be paralyzing. So take the plunge. As William James said, it’s all about faith or fear. Choose faith.

What are you working on next?
At the moment, I’m writing for the FX series "Sons of Anarchy"—headed into its final season. And of course thinking about the next book, waiting to see which of several ideas will make the requisite case for itself.

Photo by Ulrike Nunn