Millers Kill is a picturesque small town in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. But as any mystery aficionado knows, even lovely leafy settings have a dark side—like two unsolved murders, one in 1952, the other in 1972. And then, in the present, Millers Kill Police Chief Russ van Alstyne learns it’s happened again. There is yet another murder with the same confounding characteristics: The victim is a beautiful young woman wearing a new dress, her purse and ID are missing and there are no bodily indications of what caused her untimely demise.

We talked to author Julia Spencer-Fleming about Hid From Our Eyes, her newest novel featuring Russ and his wife, Episcopalian priest Clare Fergusson, in which secrets from the past taint the future, politics and money loom large and the MKPD is racing to solve the crime before the police department is defunded and the killer gets away with it—again.

Congratulations on your new book! It’s been about nine years since your last Clare-and-Russ novel, Through the Evil Days. Did you revisit your previous books, delve into your notes, etc., to get yourself back into the mindset of your characters and their community?
I did all of those to reacquaint myself with Clare and Russ and the people of Millers Kill! One thing that helped a lot was relistening to the audiobooks with their wonderful narrator, Suzanne Toren. There’s something about listening rather than reading that allows me to experience the words in a fresh way, which in turn enables me to tune in to aspects of the characters that I might let my eye skip over if I was reading on paper.

In creating Millers Kill, you did such a wonderful job evoking the feeling of the Adirondacks, from the mountainous backdrop to the use of the word “camp” to refer to what’s often quite a large house. What is it about the area that made it feel like the ideal setting for your stories? Do you visit often as a refresher, or is the area vivid in your mind?
Although I’ve lived in Maine for 30 (mumble) years now, I’m originally from that part of New York, and having spent many of my growing-up years there, certain aspects are so deeply embedded I could probably write convincingly about the area even if I moved to Paris and never came back again! However, I do go back regularly to keep the sights and sounds and smells at the front of my brain. In addition to visiting, I try to keep a hand in with research and current events, so I’m not accidentally describing places as they were in 1979. Writing about Saratoga, for instance, requires me to update my memories, because the town has changed almost beyond recognition from when I was a girl.

I enjoy digging up the answers to questions and reading histories, so that part’s not hard, but the real pinch comes in knowing what you don’t know.

The goings-on in the book take place across decades, and while key aspects of police work (analyzing clues, following leads, conducting interviews) remain the same, medicine and technology have advanced in so many ways. Was it difficult to keep track of all of your characters while also remaining true to each era? Did you do lots of research about the specifics, perhaps with a police chief, medical examiner or the like on speed-dial?
I was fortunate enough to be able to call on a detective, a doctor and a pharmacist with specific questions for Hid From Our Eyes, and I did a lot of research into the details of life in the early 1950s and 1970s. I enjoy digging up the answers to questions and reading histories, so that part’s not hard, but the real pinch comes in knowing what you don’t know. I have friends like Rhys Bowen who exclusively write historical fiction, and I am in awe of their ability to nail the research and turn in books on time!

Tracking the changes of various characters as they grew older was much easier for me, in part because I tend to have fairly detailed biographies of major characters at the ready. So I knew a lot about Russ and his mother Margy, and about police chiefs Jack Liddle and Harry McNeil, who appeared in an earlier book in the series.

You went to college for art and acting, and you also have your J.D. Did you work as a lawyer before you became an author? What made you want to transition to the writing life? Do you think your studies in the arts and the law influence how and what you write?
I used to joke that law school taught me what NOT to write, but that’s not really fair. Despite centuries of jokes, good legal writing requires the “ABCs”—accuracy, brevity and clarity. Those aren’t bad habits for a novelist to pick up. Acting and theater, interestingly, have continued to prove useful, as the same techniques I learned for creating characters on stage are the ones I use for creating characters on the page. As for why I left the law to become a full-time writer? The money, obviously.

People interacting with them tended to stop at the uniform—a badge for him, a collar for her—and not see the real human underneath.

Both Russ and Clare are veterans who have experienced PTSD, and they’ve both chosen professions that require discretion and dignity. Do you think that’s a big part of what makes them work so well together as a couple and as parents?
The similarities of their professions are definitely what initially drew them together. People interacting with them tended to stop at the uniform—a badge for him, a collar for her—and not see the real human underneath. And, of course, they did see each other as fully human from the start.

One piece of writing has always been in my mind while writing these books: Leonard Cohen’s famous lyric, “There is a crack, a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” Russ and Clare are people who have been broken, they have broken each other, and cherishing their brokenness makes everything about them a little richer and more tender. I love the fact that they both clash with and complement each other. Without that, my novels would be shorter and a lot more dull.

Clare is an Episcopal priest, and your books’ titles are drawn from Episcopalian hymns. What does religion mean to you, in terms of your writing? Was it important to you to create characters who coexist lovingly, even if they have different views on faith?
One of the reasons the starting point for my series was Clare Fergusson was because I wanted to explore questions I had about my own faith. How do we act as believing people in a largely secular world? What does it mean to be the hands and feet of God? How, if you’re called on to love and forgive, do you love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable? I also wanted to share my view of religion—that it’s OK to be scared, to doubt, to screw up—and, in a time when “Christian” increasingly is defined by narrow-mindedness and exclusion, to show people what my church is like: open minded, radically welcoming, progressive.

At the same time, it was also very important to me to make sure readers of any faith, or none, could connect with my characters. The last thing I wanted to do was preach. So there’s Russ, somewhere on the agnostic/atheist border, and Clare respects and honors his point of view. She doesn’t hide her beliefs, and she never tries to change his. You have Kevin Flynn, who’s probably a lapsed Catholic because he sleeps in on Sunday, and Hadley Knox, who goes to church because she thinks it’s good for her kids. In other words, I try to portray a picture of American religion as it’s actually experienced in a lot of Northern Kingdom/New England small towns.

Relationships between mentors and proteges figure prominently in Hid From Our Eyes. Russ mentors and supports his officers, Clare does the same for her new intern and police chiefs of the past offer wisdom and support to those next in line. Can you share your thoughts on the value of this sort of relationship?
It was something I started thinking about when raising my middle child, my son. I had never really seen a boy growing up before; my brother is nine years younger than I am and I was off to college well before his teen years. I came to realize, seeing my son and his friends, that while girls sort of fall into womanhood on their own, boys have to be taught to be men. They crave that relationship, from fathers or uncles or from mentors. The older and wiser person in the relationship has tremendous power, and I got to explore the use of that power for good and for ill in the book. And of course, there’s an echo of that idea in religion, in the idea of the initiate into sacred mysteries, which is where Clare comes in. All the while she feels she’s flailing around, doing “priesthood” wrong, she’s showing Joni and others, “This is what I do, you can do it too.”

Various characters in Hid From Our Eyes are struggling with difficulties from their past, like policewoman Hadley Knox, whose vindictive ex-husband is trying to cost her her job and custody of their kids, and Russ, who was a person of interest in the 1972 murder. Is this idea, how the past can have a hold on the present, something that intrigues you as you write your books ?
Oh, yes. “The past that won’t stay dead” appears again and again in my books. I used to say it came out of the context; small towns have long memories, and even after all the firsthand participants have passed, stories of memorable happenings and people continue to circulate. That’s still true, obviously, but now I also think it’s rooted in my own sense, as I get older, of just how much the past shapes each of us, and how hard it can be to move forward and break away from the events and individuals that have steered the course of our lives.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Hid From Our Eyes.

You kept your chapters short and your ending a cliffhanger, which definitely amps up the excitement and the page-turning! What’s your favorite kind of book to read? Do you enjoy mystery and suspense when you’re not the one creating it?
I love mysteries and thrillers—and cliffhangers!—and read a lot of it when, as you astutely put it, I’m not creating it. When I’m face down in a manuscript, it’s hard to delve into others’ mysteries; I find I either beat my breast in despair because my writing will never be as good as X’s, or the next day I write in some clever plot twist and then realize, oops! I just read that last night.

My other great love is science fiction. I’m actually a failed SF writer—my first attempt at a novel was a space opera. Terribly derivative and totally not what anyone was reading or selling back in the late ’90s. But the core of the plot was a murder on a space station, so my destiny was already apparent.

In the Bleak Midwinter, your first Russ-and-Clare book, was published in 2002. Has your approach to writing, and to your characters and their fictional world, changed since then? Do you think you’ll be writing about them for years to come?
I always thought the Millers Kill novels would be a five-book series, because the central story question was “Will they, or won’t they?” and how long can you stretch that out? Then I got to the point where I answered that question and discovered I had this large cast of layered, interesting characters to lay with, and wow, there were a LOT more stories I wanted to tell. Right now, I can see myself happy in Millers Kill for many more years.

My approach to writing since (ouch!) 2002? I’ve become a great deal more relaxed. I still plod through the middle of the book and agonize over wrapping up the ending and I’m always ping-ponging between complete conviction that I’m a hack or a genius, but I trust my process and choices much more than I did at the beginning. If I want to take a detour with a character or an event or a setting, I trust it will serve the greater story, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. And I have an excellent editor, who’ll make me take it out if I’m deluding myself!

Is there anything else you want to share about Hid From Our Eyes, or anything else you may have in the works?
I hope everyone will take a peek at it—you can’t pick it up in a bookstore and thumb through the pages, but there are excerpts at Macmillan.com and at my blog, JungleRedWriters.com. Meanwhile, I’m working on the 10th Clare and Russ book, working title: At Midnight Comes the Cry. I don’t want to make my readers wait another six years to resolve the current cliffhanger!

Author photo by Geoff Green.

A seemingly random encounter in the woods of Northern Georgia between a defense attorney Ama Chaplin and a serial killer quickly explodes into terror in Casey Dunn’s Silence on Cold River. Ama once successfully defended the killer in court, even though she knew he was guilty. Did fate play a hand in bringing the pair together again? And how will fate play a role in how their lives go forward? The questions nag at the minds of each character and will nag at readers as well. We put some of the questions to Dunn to help us sort things out.

You previously wrote a trilogy of fantasy/romance titles (The Hightower trilogy, published under the name Jadie Jones,) but with Silence on Cold River you’ve switched gears into a mystery/thriller. What made you decide to change genres? What was the greatest challenge for you in moving to the thriller genre?
When I first began work on the Hightower trilogy, I was also a new mom, and the world, seemingly overnight, had become a more dangerous place. I felt compelled to create a kind of enemy that did not actually exist—a “big bad” that there was no reason to genuinely fear. In looking back, I was not yet ready to confront how much of a danger one person can be to another, how much of a threat a perfect stranger could be to my new little family. Then, as edits on the final book in the trilogy drew to a close, I realized that the most depraved, horrifying characteristics of my otherworldly villains weren’t supernatural at all, but utterly human, and the curiosity to create and face down a monster of a human began to grow. In writing thrillers, I am forcing my characters to face some of my biggest fears.

The two biggest differences that I noticed in switching between the genres are pacing and world building. In a fantasy story, a writer has to create a world (or aspects of it) that a reader has never considered before, then fill it with fantastical creatures that are still relatable and believable. World building is a fundamental cornerstone of any fantasy tale, because without it, the entire proverbial castle crumbles. Thrillers are often set in a world a reader understands enough of almost immediately or with very little help, and the story is built instead on the goal of a killer and the efforts of everyone else to survive it and/or stop it from coming to fruition. Pacing is the foundation of a thriller, and it is critical that it is done well.

In coming from a fantasy background, this shift in focus was my greatest challenge. There is no room for thick and heavy descriptions or physical world building beyond what is immediately and vividly sensory when you have a victim in the hands of a dangerous person and the clock is ticking. Is the water warm, cold, clear, dirty . . . ? Who cares when you have a hook through your cheek, and someone somewhere has suddenly began tugging on the other end of the line?

Who are some thriller writers you admire? What is it about their writing that appeals to you and did you try to emulate them in any way with Silence? How do you think you did?
What I admire most in a book in any genre is voice. While action is imperative in a thriller, the voice delivering every blow to the reader’s internal ear is equally important. The voice is what makes me care, and when the voice and the pacing are spot on, the result is a breathtaking ride from start to finish. Thriller writers who have done this to me include Gillian Flynn, A.J. Finn, Paula Hawkins, Gytha Lodge, Wiley Cash and Felicity McLean. Since voice is the primary make-or-break deal for me in the books I read, I tried to keep that goal present in mind in every scene, and it is also how I decided which chapters would be presented from a first-person perspective and which came more naturally and effectively in a third-person perspective. It is not for me to judge in terms of how well I think I did, but I can tell you that I tried my guts out, and I learned a lot along the way.

You were born and raised in Atlanta, but now live on a horse farm in Southern Oregon. What is it about Atlanta that drew you back to setting Silence there, rather than closer to home in Oregon?
I spent most of my life in Georgia and began writing Silence on Cold River soon after moving to Oregon. The small town we moved to is close-knit, and even though this rugged valley felt like home from early on, I felt like the outsider that I was in many ways. What people care about is different in a rural agricultural community than in a big city like Atlanta. The landscape, the weather (it rained for 100 consecutive days our first winter,) the hardships, the goals, the shopping, the culture, the history, the lingo, the politics, you name it. So, to write something that dove deeply into the psyches of all the characters who were experiencing things entirely foreign to me, I needed to build their world somewhere familiar, a place I understood from basement to roof. Now, four years after moving away, returning to the noise and crowds (and traffic) of Atlanta is a shocking experience. The newest work-in-progress in my queue is tentatively set in southern Oregon.

One of the most notable aspects of Silence is how the chapters alternate between your characters. How difficult was it to stay true to each character’s individual mindset, yet blend the overall story so seamlessly together?
In the early stages, I stumbled around through the first draft of the first act, trying to figure out where in the world I was taking the main plot. Then, while writing a conversation between Ama and Michael, a new secondary character appeared from out of nowhere (I hadn’t planned much about the story, but I really hadn’t planned on her) and I realized this story was about to take a hairpin turn. I scrapped everything I had written after the first chapter and started again, focusing on each character’s story as its own stand-alone narrative, moving forward by two or three scenes in one character’s perspective at a time. This way, I could forecast where they were going and what they were up against next, and I could develop their voice more clearly the longer I stayed inside their head. As I uncovered points of intersection with other characters, I would make notes for the other characters’ chapters, past and present, and edit/draft accordingly. Once I had everyone’s stories mostly mapped out, I placed the first page of each chapter on my bedroom floor, and then rearranged them one hundred million times. Once I had an order that felt natural, I tightened timelines and used small details or pieces of symmetry to feed one chapter into the next.

“Silence on Cold River was written one scene at a time on whatever piece of paper I had on hand that day . . .”

I imagine that with a story of this scope and complexity, you must have used a detailed outline or whiteboard to keep everything straight. Did that leave any room for writing on the fly?
If it gives you any idea just how much planning and outlining and organization went into Silence, I read this question out loud to my husband as we stood in the kitchen of our century-old farm house after spending all day tilling ground and sowing seeds for a large vegetable garden. We were covered in dirt and dried sweat, skin pink from an afternoon in the sun. He was pouring a glass of water when I read it to him. He set down the glass, rested both hands on the lip of our big white sink, looked at me out of his peripheral and burst out laughing. An hour later, gathered around the dining room table, I read the same question to my mother. She glanced from me to my husband to my father, who both stared back with wide eyes, lips pressed firmly together. Then she threw her head back and cackled. Paused, drew a breath, tried to look at me and laughed until she cried.

I am, hands down, one of the least organized people I have ever met. From start to finish, Silence on Cold River was written one scene at a time on whatever piece of paper I had on hand that day, which I would transfer to a Word document on my ancient laptop once all my kids were in bed for the night. I had neither a detailed outline nor a whiteboard, but I wish that I had. For months, my purse, my truck, my desk and the kitchen counter were littered with fragments and notes as I brainstormed single conversations or snapshot moments. And I had no solid plan for how Silence was going to end. I had a rough idea for what I thought I wanted to happen (especially to Michael), but when my characters arrived at that penultimate moment on the bank of Cold River, I realized my original inclination was not how it would organically play out. So, I let the chips fall, and I am grateful that I went that route instead.

That giant garden, by the way, is not planted in rows. Or labeled. We’ll all be surprised.

Typically, a first-person narrative is reserved for the protagonist of the story. Readers most want to identify with and sympathize with the protagonist, who in this case is Ama. But in Silence, you’ve written the antagonist, Michael, in first person. Why did you make that choice? Did that make writing this story more challenging?
The opening scene is what inspired the entire story—a teenage boy standing in a courtroom, waiting for the jury foreman to announce a verdict for a serious, yet unspecified, charge, followed by his genuine surprise upon learning that he’s gotten away with what he’s done. While the rest of the story changed multiple times during rewrites and edits, the first chapter remained untouched.

There is a fine line between unfolding an antagonist internally in such a way that adds to the story, and glorifying the villain. Knowing that I would be asking the reader to experience the development of a serial killer through a first-person perspective absolutely made his chapters harder to write. Michael believes in fate, that every moment in his life has led him here, and the only way to walk that path with him was to see it through his eyes. A villain rarely sees themselves as a “bad guy,” and Michael believes himself to be a hero on his own redemption journey. That’s not to say I agree with him, but this perspective gives the reader a full, unflinching picture of what Ama and his other victims are up against. In thrillers, sometimes what the killer is able to pull off seems impossible. By walking with Michael, a reader can see how he has remained hidden all these years, why he sees proof that fate is on his side and why he was found not guilty all those years ago. There is a moment early on where Ama says to Michael, “Tell me your story,” and it is, unbeknownst to him, one of her first successful efforts to regain an inch of control.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Silence on Cold River.

Michael believes much of what transpires in his life can be attributed to fate. Do you share any of these beliefs with him? Or is fate just what we make it?
When I began touring for the Hightower trilogy, I discovered a new, paralyzing phobia of flying, certain I was testing fate each time I stepped on a plane. I had not flown in years, and I could not abide by the idea of my children facing the teeth and claws of this world without me to protect them should the flight go down. Then one day, as I shopped at a consignment store for something to wear to a signing in Oklahoma, I confided my fears to a woman who worked there. She sat down with me, looked me square in the eyes, and said, “Our days are numbered, and only the Lord knows when your last day has come. Getting on the plane, not getting on the plane, it isn’t going to change when your number comes. But for what it’s worth, I have a feeling you’ll be just fine.”

Some people may consider her advice morbid or trite or over-the-top or too reminiscent of Final Destination, but I found a strange sense of comfort in it. That is not to say I believe fate will save me from myself if I throw all caution to the wind. It is our responsibility to determine which risks are worth the cost, and to remember that it often isn’t a cost we pay ourselves, but rather a potential debt we would pass on to those who rely on us if the cards don’t fall in our favor.

Michael’s devotion to the idea of fate is a showcase of what happens when any belief system is taken to the extreme and personal responsibility becomes meaningless. I think we are each a combination of what we are made of and what happens to us along the way. We will go through things in our lifetimes that can fundamentally change the way we value ourselves, our goals and/or the world around us. I believe that we are here on purpose and for a purpose, and it is the desire of our souls to figure out what that something is. Maybe that purpose is a moment, and maybe it is a lifetime. The ripple effect of a single action is something that mystifies me. It is possible that our personalities or patterns require us to face the same trials, conflict or decisions over and over until we learn whatever lesson it is that life has been trying to make us see, which may feel a little bit like fate. I am stubborn to a fault and tend to dig in all the more when I have something to push against, as if the reward will be greater if I had to suffer or work harder to reach it. But I have learned time and time again that sometimes those closed doors or speedbumps or rejections are the universe (or whatever you want to call it) trying to save us from ourselves or from accepting the comfort of a familiar devil, rather than staying open just a little longer to whatever might be coming right over the horizon.

“My father and his siblings all have an incredible talent for music. . . . Music was our peacemaker.”

Michael also obsesses over music quite a bit in this novel. What music moves you? Do you listen to music while you are writing?
My father’s side of the family is what most would refer to as “musical.” My grandmother was a singer and a pianist, even playing for an audience only a few weeks before dying of lung and spinal cancer. My father and his siblings all have an incredible talent for music. When I was a child, holiday dinners tended toward tension when those siblings and their mother gathered around the table, but by the end of the meal, they would all invariably drift toward the piano in the corner of the room, and for an hour or so they could all get along. Music was our peacemaker.

To flip that on its head and have music serve as both the wound and the weapon allowed me to explore this obsession of Michael’s from an emotional place. I still love music, and my preferences are all over the map, although live music from a single instrument will always give me pause (and goosebumps). I will turn on the stereo and crank up the volume when I cook, clean, drive, paint, you name it. But I cannot write a single word if music is on. Music is tied to memories for me, and my brain will jump aboard a familiar song or a good beat and sail away.

Unlike your first books, which were part of a trilogy, Silence is a self-contained story. Will we see any of the characters again? What’s next for you?
It was both satisfying and a little scary to write my first stand-alone story. I knew I had multiple storylines to wrap up in a way that felt honest and natural—doors opening and closing at the same time for multiple characters. I learned a lot about Detective Martin over the course of writing Silence, and he began to understand himself and his past in a different way, too. I am not ready to be done with Martin. He has access to a closet full of cold case files and a childhood in Alaska that I would love to explore. As for the others, I guess I’ll have to see where the next stories take me.

Right now, I am working on a thriller that opens 25 years in the past on a frigid night in rural Tennessee, and am also making notes on scrap pieces of paper about a fatal accident on a winding road in southern Oregon that is a cover-up for much, much more. I should probably invest in that whiteboard. I am going to need it.

Author photo by Stephanie Schlund.

Caritas Fountain is Copenhagen’s oldest fountain, a popular gathering spot for residents and tourists alike. Alas, it is also where Bettina Holte is found murdered: floating, nude, drained of blood, a series of cuts serving as strange and grisly cues. In the next two days, two more bodies are found—also in water, also exsanguinated.

Detective Jeppe Korner and his colleagues (plus Detective Anette Werner, on maternity leave but doing casework on the sly) must find the killer before they can strike again. They work through a large number of plausible suspects connected to a psychiatric facility for teens called The Butterfly House, unearthing terrible secrets and raising more questions along the way. We talked with author Katrine Engberg about her inspirations and motivations, and how she changed careers from a dancer and choreographer to a creator of the darkest of murder mysteries.

Your novels are bestsellers in your native Denmark and are now being published in the U.S. (and many other countries). Congratulations! What has it been like to work with the various new editors and publishers and translators of your books?
To be anything but grateful in my situation would be downright ludicrous. I am blessed to be working with some of the world's finest publishing houses and very best editors. It feels like having an extended work family all over the world, which makes writing a lot less lonely. That said, there is always some insecurity involved with being translated. Essentially, you hand over control of your most personal voice to a stranger, who then interprets your words in their own language. It is bizarre but also a huge privilege—and great fun!

"I never get tired of trying to understand humankind."

Readers first met Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner in your first novel, The Tenant. In The Butterfly House, you separate them and dive more deeply into their individual personal lives, from Jeppe’s recent divorce to Anette’s frustrations with maternity leave. Will you talk a bit about why it was important for you to reveal their inner thoughts and struggles in this way?
To me the key to any good reading experience lies in connecting with the characters. One has to get to know them and care for them, even in crime fiction. Well, especially in crime fiction. The more twisted and far out a criminal plot is, the more I have to believe in the characters and trust them. I find that a major part of the suspense in any book lies in the interaction between and growth of the protagonists, even if the main goal of the story is to find a killer on the loose. People—and all the different ways we tackle divorce and maternity leave and life in general—are essentially interesting. I never get tired of trying to understand humankind.

Your home city of Copenhagen, Denmark, plays a major role in The Butterfly House. Bodies are found in its waters; suspects represent various subcultures; characters move about both above and underground. Was incorporating the city into your books an “of course” for you?
It was more than an "of course"; it was the inspiration for the whole series and a motor for every story. Readers often name Copenhagen as one of my protagonists, and they are right in doing so. I love my city. Being medieval, Copenhagen is not only atmospheric and beautiful but also has layers and layers of history that speak to you as you wander its streets. Secret corners, subcultures, weirdness—Copenhagen has everything. And it's all sitting right next to the loveliness of Tivoli Gardens and the Queen's Castle. I've always been a fan of how Ian Rankin’s books revolve around, and salute, Edinburgh. I hope I can do the same for Copenhagen.

Before becoming an author, you worked as a dancer and choreographer. Did changing careers feel strange to you, perhaps like a culture shock of sorts, or was it a natural transition? How does dance inform and affect your writerly work?
The transition was slow and felt very natural to me. I used to tell stories with actors on a stage, and now I tell stories with words on a page, but to me the process is very similar. I have always written; it is my most fundamental form of expression. I just never used to show my texts to anyone. And I still work just as intuitively as before. I don't plan ahead much, and I don't control my characters and their actions too sternly; each scene has to progress organically and each sentence has to form naturally . . . like music.

Many of the characters in this mystery work in health care with, shall we say, mixed results. A character muses, “Sometimes working in health care felt like renovating a fixer-upper with modeling clay.” What about this often-Sisyphean pursuit appealed to you as a subject?
All authors are drawn to conflict, and unsolvable problems have their specific appeal. The health care industry is a forever intriguing mixture of good intentions, business decisions, flawed legislation and patients and health care workers with all of their individual needs. Denmark prides itself in having some of the best health care in the world. Even so, many patients—especially psychiatric patients—suffer from inadequate care and the shortcomings of the system. I wanted to shine a light on this hypocrisy.

Your characters also raise important questions about how society views mental illness and those who experience it. One points out that “sick” and “healthy” are loaded and ambiguous terms: “You could argue that any deviation from societal normal is pathological. You could also argue the opposite.” What do you hope readers will take from The Butterfly House about this subject?
We tend to keep mental illness at arm’s length because it frightens us so. But, in reality, we all carry the potential for mental illness, and most of us will experience some form of it firsthand at some point in our lives. Anxiety, postpartum depression, stress—living is a tough business, and it doesn't take much of a push to tip the scale and plummet to the bottom. We need to revise our perception of "sick" and "healthy" and, to a greater extent, embrace walking the fine line over the abyss that is the human mind.

Bodily mutilation plays a role in your first novel, The Tenant, wherein a woman had a pattern carved into her face. In The Butterfly House, the victims have mysterious groupings of cuts on their bodies. Is the psychology of bodily mutilation (or modification) especially intriguing to you?
I wish I could say no, because having a morbid fascination is not the most sympathetic trait I can think of. But I do. I would argue that all crime aficionados share this quirk (and, really, maybe all of us in general, come to think of it). We go through life knowing that death is certain but without having any idea what that means. This fear of the unknown becomes a fascination. Poking the fear makes us feel more alive, ironic as it may seem. In a way, reading crime fiction is like riding a roller coaster: comfortingly frightening. On top of that, I have an affinity for ancient medical equipment, and in The Butterfly House I have combined the two—turning an old device meant to heal and soothe into a murder weapon.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Butterfly House.

Being honest and straightforward, however scary or painful it may be, plays an important part in your characters’ relationships. Whether between Jeppe and his mother or Anette and her husband, making the effort to express, rather than bury, feelings can offer hope and reassurance. What made you choose to highlight that aspect of close personal connections, both filial and romantic?
How people interact with each other (and the psychology that lies behind every action) is what interests me the most, in life as well as when I write. This is true not just for my protagonists but for ALL my characters, including the antagonists and secondary characters. WHY do we do what we do? WHY are we so complex and unpredictable when our wants or needs are fundamentally the same? WHY do some people become violent? People interest me, and I would never read a book if I were not drawn to the characters and their inner lives, even if the plot was original and well crafted. I hope that readers will connect with my characters and maybe even identify with their thoughts and struggles.

The notion of the butterfly effect is fascinating to think about. Will you share what it means to you and how it inspired you as you created The Butterfly House?
The notion of evil people—that a person can be born bad—has always seemed strange to me. We all have the potential for good and bad deeds; what determines the balance between the two can be the smallest things. A misunderstanding between friends, a missed text message, a bus that didn't leave on time—small, innocent things can, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, lead to disaster. That is the butterfly effect: The flap of a butterfly wing on one side of the earth can cause a flood on the other. There is a certain degree of surrender in accepting the butterfly effect, an acceptance of how very small we are and how little control we have over life and death. I like that surrender to circumstance, to life, even to fate itself.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with readers about The Butterfly House, and what’s up next for Jeppe and Anette (and you!)?
Just that I hope readers will embrace this second book in the series with the same warmth that they gave The Tenant. I am extremely thankful for the fantastic reception the series has had in the U.S. and Canada.

Author photo by Les Kaner.