Peter Spiegelman’s fourth novel, Thick as Thieves, is one hell of a heist thriller and one of our Whodunit? picks for August 2011. Our reviewer called it “a superbly crafted tale, pulsing with tension, twisty as a corkscrew and positively demanding to be read in one sitting.”

Spiegelman chatted with BookPage about mystery writing and great books:

Describe your book in one sentence.
It’s the story of a crew of highline thieves in the midst of the biggest job of their lives, and of their new and reluctant boss who, when he’s not managing this heist, is looking into his predecessor’s death, which he fears was arranged by one or more of the people in his crew. (That was one sentence, wasn’t it?)

What are you reading now?
Crime, a collection of stories by Ferdinand von Schirach. Grim, scary, and very moving.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
No one will ever miss all the great writing you leave out.

Name one book you think everyone should read.
Dispatches by Michael Herr. Vietnam with an acid chaser. Lessons for today’s ongoing, too-easily-ignored wars.

If you could swap lives with one of your characters for a day, who would it be and why?
John March. I love his running routine.

What was the proudest moment of your career so far?
Finishing my first novel, Black Maps.

What’s next?
A new book, with new characters, set in a new city (Los Angeles).

Breaking Point, the sequel to Dana Haynes’ Crashers, is a graphic and violent adrenaline rush. Featured in our November 2011 Whodunit column, the gripping story of an investigation conducted immediately post-plane-crash is “a compelling page-turner, with ‘cinema adaptation’ written all over it.”

BookPage chatted with Haynes about fears, shoes and books.

Describe your book in one sentence.
A team of government crash investigators must race against the clock, an assassin and a forest fire, after three of their own team are injured in a mystery plane crash.

After writing Crashers and Breaking Point, are you afraid of airplanes?
Not at all. Doing the research for these books convinced me how well-built modern aircraft are, and how well-trained are the crews and pilots. I absolutely love to fly; it’s the drive to the airport that scares the hell out of me.

Readers can learn a lot about your characters just by their shoes. What do your shoes say about you?
Style-over-comfort. I’d rather limp than wear ugly shoes.

Name one book you think everyone should read.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Beautifully crafted, taut and timeless.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
“Sit down and write.” Seriously. It’s as simple as that. There is no better way to improve your writing than writing.

If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one of the Crashers (crash investigators), who would you want it to be?
The pathologist, Tommy Tomzak, is the funniest, and that’s important when stranded with someone. But the ex-Israeli spy, Daria Gibron, would be most likely to get us rescued.

What’s next for you?
St. Martin’s Press has asked for two more thrillers, starring Daria Gibron. The first is due to my editor in January.

Neal Baer and Jonathan Greene have worked on popular shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “ER,” but Kill Switch marks their long-form fiction debut. The novel centers on forensic psychiatrist Claire Waters and NYPD detective Nick Lawler. Troubled by a traumatic event from deep in her past, Waters finds herself at the epicenter of a serial killer’s rampage. We contacted Baer and Greene for the scoop on their brilliant new heroine and writing as a team.

What do you think readers will like most about Claire Waters?
Her courage and vulnerability. Readers will find that Claire’s quest for the truth evolves into a journey to discover her own truth, a deep look into her soul. In the face of severe adversity, her ability to finally tap into her fears is what eventually leads her to not just solve the crime, but to begin to answer the question we all ask ourselves: “Who am I?” How we can live with a tragedy that shakes and perhaps scars our soul?

You two have worked together for a long time. How does your collaborative process work?
Nine years ago we developed an idea for a feature film, using all the characters in the novel. Years later, our book agent, Lydia Wills, asked us if we had a medical thriller and it so happens we had the movie outline, which ultimately became the outline for the novel. Our process is one of writing and constantly rewriting. We spend hours together talking through the plot points, writing and rewriting the outline and then writing the chapters. Jon wrote the first chapters and Neal rewrote them. In the last third we alternated writing and rewriting each other’s chapters.

What was the biggest challenge you encountered in adapting a movie outline into a book?
The biggest challenge is that an outline for a movie is based on scenes. What the characters think and feel, see and hear, is played out through dialogue and screen direction as interpreted by the director and actors. Writing a novel, however, was liberating. We were free to write what the characters are thinking—which of course you can’t do in a movie script, unless you rely on voiceover. In writing a novel, one has complete control over the characters—there are no actors, directors, cinematographers, art directors. Everything is presented through words. It’s a challenge, and it’s exhilarating to have the freedom to create a story for a medium that does not rely on others to carry out your vision.

It’s exhilarating to have the freedom to create a story for a medium that does not rely on others to carry out your vision.

What kind of research did you do in order to write your book?
Neal: As a pediatrician, I’m interested in medical ethics and the question of how far we should take biological research, especially as it allows us to do things that were once considered unimaginable. For instance, should we concoct viruses that combine the most lethal elements of, say, smallpox and ebola? Should we clone children? Where does research cross an ethical line? In light of these interests, I contacted Dr. Alfred Goldberg, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, which I attended, to help us better understand research in apoptosis or programmed cell death, a real area of burgeoning interest not only to biologists but also to physicians, because it may hold the answers in treating and curing cancer.

Lawler’s character suffers from a relatively rare degenerative vision disorder. Did that come from any particular personal experience?
Neal: Yes, I have a sibling with retinitis pigmentosa, so I’m well aware of the emotional and physical problems it poses, how it affects one’s life and the lives of loved ones.

The principal protagonists of Kill Switch—Dr. Claire Waters and NYPD detective Nick Lawler—get off to a rocky start, yet by book’s end they have not come completely full circle to the more intimate relationship a reader might expect. Is this “taking it slow” for benefit of the series arc, or does it suggest Lawler might not be featured as prominently in future books?
What we’ve found over the years, especially in our work on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," is that the best and most entertaining drama doesn’t wrap things up in neat little packages at the end. Based on the emotional trauma Claire suffers through her journey, we thought it would be unrealistic for her to start a romantic relationship with Nick by the end of this book. As for their future together, readers will have wait for the next installment.

When writing the book, did you ever feel the need to navigate around the specter of Clarice Starling (the main character from 1988’s The Silence of the Lambs) in your portrayal of Claire Waters?
No. Clarice Starling is a very different character from Claire Waters; most notably Clarice comes from a law enforcement family and has been trained as an FBI agent, whereas Claire is the child of a physicist and biology teacher. Claire is thrown into a situation she never dreamed of and finds herself having to engage the help of a cop to stop a serial killer. The only similarity is that the both have first names that start with the letters CLA.

Kill Switch is promoted as the first of a series. How far have you gone in the process of writing future entries?
We are currently outlining the second book in the series.

What’s next for Claire Waters?
Without giving anything away, she’ll be faced with another mystery that will test her abilities as a forensic psychiatrist and put her in grave danger.

Though Kill Switch marks a transition for you both from television to print, how likely are we to see Claire Waters and Nick Lawler on screen—big or small—in the future?
We hope to be able to announce this soon. Stay tuned.

Are there any authors or series that you’d cite as inspirations for Kill Switch?
Jon: I’ve been a voracious reader my whole life, starting with mostly non-fiction (true crime, medical, political, biography) until someone gave me my first Robert Ludlum novel, The Chancellor Manuscript, when I was high school, and from there I was hooked. I quickly devoured The Matarese Circle (what I think is Ludlum’s finest work) and The Bourne Identity. That led me to other authors: James Patterson, Thomas Harris, David Baldacci to name just a few. The last thriller I read (and I consider this a thriller) was Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which I couldn’t put down.

Neal: I’m a die-hard movie fan so I am drawn to Hitchcock—any Hitchcock film, but particularly ­Vertigo—and film noir. You’ll find many allusions to these films, such as character names, quotes and even anagrams, in the book.

What are your favorite activities to do when you aren’t writing?
Jon: Anything involving my children, playing the piano and singing (not publicly), reading, tennis, catching up on all the great films I haven’t seen, both new and old.

Neal: Making documentary films; working with social entrepreneurs on projects to improve the world; solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays.

Writing 101 typically dictates, “Write what you know.” This was never so true as for Taylor Stevens, whose second Vanessa Michael Munroe novel, The Innocent, is featured in our January 2012 Whodunit column.

In The Innocent, Munroe heads down to Argentina to infiltrate a dangerous religious cult called “The Chosen” to rescue a hostage. It’s an intense read on its own, made all the more interesting by the author’s own experiences. Stevens was raised in a cult very similar to “The Chosen,” known as the Children of God. She gives a frank rundown of her nomadic childhood on her website.

BookPage chatted with Stevens about growing up in the Children of God, becoming a writer and what comes next for her sexy, jet-setting heroine.

Describe your book in one sentence.
Vanessa Michael Munroe is approached by a group of cult survivors—each one harboring an ulterior motive—to infiltrate the environment in which they were raised, and rescue a kidnapped child.

The “Chosen” cult hits very close to home for you. Was this a difficult book to write? Why or why not?
I’ve come to terms and made my peace with my unusual childhood. I wouldn’t say that drawing upon it was easy, but it certainly wasn’t as difficult as it otherwise might have been. More than anything, this story seemed like a perfect opportunity to showcase more of Vanessa Michael Munroe’s skill and badassery while at the same time offering readers access to a firsthand account of cult life that most thriller writers don’t have.

What was your favorite book growing up?
Sadly, I didn’t have much opportunity to read fiction while growing up. The Children of God (the apocalyptic religious cult into which I was born) believed education beyond sixth grade was a waste of time and didn’t allow access to television and books from the outside. I did attend public school sporadically between grades one through six, and it was then that I discovered Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, which I loved. I guess you could say those were my favorite books, but I didn’t have much to compare them against, either.

What is the most important thing you have learned about writing?
That every reader brings a portion of themselves to the story, so the actions and motives of both writer and characters will be interpreted in as many different ways as there are readers. Therefore, the only way to write an honest story is to write for yourself, from your soul, and leave the rest to fate.

If you could spend one day in Munroe’s shoes, what would you do?
If I was answering this question in front of a live audience, I’d deadpan and say, “kill people.” Joke, of course, but since that sort of humor doesn’t carry well in writing, um, if I could spend a day in her shoes I’d probably visit a country like Colombia, which I’m too chicken to visit in real life, but where I would love the opportunity to spend time if given half a chance.

Name one bad habit you have no intention of breaking.
Oh, this is such a difficult question because one man’s virtue is another man’s sin. A “bad habit” I wish I could indulge in more often is that of being very late to bed and very late to rise. Although I do a really good job of putting on a game face, I’ve discovered that I am so not a morning person.

What’s next for Munroe?
In the third Munroe novel, which is currently titled The Doll, Munroe is thrust into a world of human trafficking and sexual slavery, forced to deliver a missing Hollywood starlet to a client in order to keep the ones she loves alive. In succeeding she’ll guarantee the young girl’s demise and so is forced to choose who lives, who dies, or find a way to outthink and outsmart a man who holds all the cards.  Otherwise, win or lose, Munroe will pay her dues in the only currency she values: innocent life.

A series protagonist can almost feel like family to a diehard suspense fan, so it’s exciting when an author introduces a new character. In And She Was, readers meet Brenna Spector, a missing persons investigator with an unusual ability: Brenna has Hyperthymestic Syndrome, a rare, real-life condition that causes a person to have a perfect autobiographical memory. Brenna can precisely remember every detail from her life with all of her senses—a disorder that kicked in when she was a child and her little sister disappeared.

In And She Was, the first book in a new series, Brenna is called to investigate the disappearance of Carol Wentz, an adult. Carol’s case is connected with the disappearance of a young girl, Iris, that happened years before—and with Brenna’s own painful history. This fast-paced story includes flashbacks that highlight Brenna’s incredible memory, a fascinating characteristic that inspired BookPage to get in touch with author Alison Gaylin. Here, Gaylin talks about her discovery of this unusual medical condition—and whether it’s a blessing or a curse to unavoidably remember everything.

How did you learn about Hyperthymestic Syndrome, and why do you find it fascinating?

I read a magazine article on someone who had Hyperthymestic Syndrome, and I was amazed. I went online and found some medical journal articles about it, and learned that the first case had been diagnosed in 2006 (at most a year before I’d seen the article)—and that there were only a handful of known cases in the world. Having a pretty good memory myself, my first response was, “That must be awful!” I honestly think that the ability to forget—to let the past fade into soft focus and recede in your mind—is one of the great tools of survival. How can you forgive and forget if you can’t forget? How can you move on at all, if the past is just as clear and visceral as the present? How can you truly be with the people around you, if your mind is full of everyone who is no longer in your life? 

What was the most surprising thing you learned about this condition?

How can you forgive and forget if you can’t forget?

The woman in the case study I read compared the syndrome to a movie playing constantly in her head. That’s what I found the most surprising about the condition—and also one of the biggest challenges as a writer: the lack of control over memories and the past constantly intruding on the present.

Do you think the ability to remember every moment from your life is something to covet—or fear?

I think it’s both. Remembering painful experiences in perfect detail would be very hard on the emotions. But by the same token, if I were to be able to relive certain days from my daughter’s early childhood, for example—or some of the wonderful times I spent with my dad, who passed away 10 years ago—I’d consider that a real gift. With that type of memory, you could keep special experiences—or people—alive in your mind forever.

Brenna can remember any moment from her past with all of her senses. Which of your senses is the strongest? Is one most valuable to you as a writer?

I’d say my sense of hearing. I can’t sing to save my soul, but I’m a huge fan of all types of music. And like many writers, I’m a really good listener and a huge eavesdropper. I often take things I’ve overheard and build stories around them.

What was your process for plotting And She Was? You must have been very organized to include all the flashbacks!

The thing is, I’m not a naturally organized person—which I should have thought of before deciding to write a series about a character with perfect memory! I do love to plot, though, and plotting this book was a huge challenge. I tried outlining, but that didn’t really work. What worked best for this book was multiple timelines, with dates: I had one for Clea’s disappearance, one for Iris’s disappearance 11 years ago and another for Carol Wentz’s disappearance, which Brenna is investigating now. (And by “now,” I mean 2009. Sigh.) I wrote the book with all the timelines in front of me and tried to find ways to make all of them mesh. And still, I had tons of rearranging to do in my second draft.

There are many iconic series protagonists in crime fiction. Do you have a personal favorite?

Does it sound too cliché to say Sherlock Holmes? I loved those books as a kid and still stand in awe of his powers of deduction.

What’s next for Brenna Spector?

What starts as an investigation of a missing webcam girl becomes Brenna’s most personal—and dangerous—case, as she comes closer to solving the mystery of her sister’s disappearance.

What would you be your dream job if you weren’t writing suspense fiction?

Either travel writer or restaurant critic, for purely selfish reasons.

It’s so hard to be a good guy when Russians ask you to spy for them in postwar Berlin, especially when you owe those Russians big time—but David Downing’s character John Russell does his best in Lehrter Station. Whodunit columnist Bruce Tierney promises Downing’s “deft weaving of fiction and real-life WWII history is second to none.”

BookPage chatted with Downing about his newest thriller.

Describe your book in one sentence.
Lehrter Station is the fifth instalment of John Russell’s (and Effi Koenen’s) struggle to survive the slings and arrows of the mid-20th century as reasonably decent human beings.

If you could travel back in time to any decade, where would you go and what would you do while you were there?
Back in early 1966, when I was at university, Bob Dylan played the Royal Albert Hall with the backing group that became The Band, and for some strange reason I didn’t bother to go. I’d like to remedy that omission.

What is your favorite thing about being a writer?
Walking the hills near my home and thinking through plots.

Would you make a good spy?
No. I don’t dissemble that well.

Where do you write?
In my office at home, surrounded by other people’s books.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
When your characters start surprising you, you’re doing something right.

What are you working on next?
I’ve just finished what I hope will be the first of a new series, set before, during and after the First World War, and now I’m working on what will probably be the last of the Russell series, Masaryk Station. Still no idea how to end it.

In her latest novel, You Don’t Want to Know, Lisa Jackson brings a woman’s greatest nightmare to life: What if your family told you your child was dead, but you didn’t know if you could believe them? We asked Jackson a few questions about scaring herself silly, the attractions of suspense and, of course, her pug.

You Don’t Want to Know explores some very dark recesses of the mind. How do you write a character who cannot be trusted?
It was tough. Ava is a complicated character and I wanted to make her vulnerable, yet have an inner strength, even when she questioned her own sanity. I had to work to make certain that the fractured woman on the pages was not a frightened victim, that she had strength and resolve. Actually I loved writing about her; she became so real to me as she dealt with one of life’s most horrific tragedies—that of losing a child. She’s a fighter, even when everyone, herself included, seems against her.

What is your favorite thing about living in the Pacific Northwest? How does this region help inspire creepy stories?
I’ve always lived in the Pacific Northwest and what I love is the freshness of it and the surprises around every corner. You can have lunch at Timberline Lodge, high on Mount Hood in the craggy Cascade Mountains, even ski year round if you want, then three hours later, walk along the beach and have dinner overlooking the Pacific Ocean at sunset. How fun is that? And the fog and the creepiness, the shadowy old-growth forests, the sheer cliffs that rise above a swirling surf? Talk about perfect for the kind of stories I write. There are tons of beautiful places on the earth, each with their unique qualities, but I really do love the place where I was born.

How are you able to tap into people’s greatest fears?
We all have fears and they are usually pretty basic, even primal. What I try to do is scare myself in a suspenseful scene, fall in love in a romantic scene and get angry in an intense scene. It’s all about imagination, I guess. [To me] there’s a major gulf between a scary scene and a bloody scene. Suspense does not equal gore in my estimation. Suspense equals fear . . . oh, well, maybe a fear of gore! I just roll with what scares the devil out of me!

How do you keep from scaring yourself with your own stories?
Oh, I don’t. I want to scare myself! If there’s no thrill for me, there probably won’t be for my readers either, and I always try to give them the thrill ride of their lives. Kind of a fun job, yes?

What do you do when you need to lighten things up?
Personally, when a scene is too intense for me, as the author, I finish it and LEAVE the computer. I go out for a walk, do a crossword puzzle, play with the dog, go see a friend, do anything to take a complete break from what is going on in the book. To lighten things up within the pages, if that’s what you mean, I change point of view. I start another scene where the characters haven’t yet learned of whatever dastardly event has taken place in the intense scene.  It’s to give the readers a break. I think not only the author needs a little breathing room, but the readers, too. It’s all about peaks and valleys or, maybe, more like a lie detector test print out . . . calm, calm, a twitch, oh, my intense swings, a twitch or two, calm, calm . . . that kind of thing.

Does your writing process differ when you’re collaborating with your sister, Nancy Bush?
Oh, yes. Nancy and I are “in each other’s business” when she and I are working on a book. We plot it out together, taking into consideration each other’s advice, then, once the story line is approved, we kind of leapfrog through it. She writes, then I overwrite her scenes and go forward, then she overwrites my scenes and goes forward and on and on until the end of the book. When she and I write individual books, we offer “first read” advice or “plot” advice or “character” advice and a time or two she’s actually written a few scenes in my books, but it’s not as intensely unified as a project we co-write.

If you could hypnotize anyone and ask them one question, who would it be and what would you ask?
Wow, I just can’t single any one of them out.  Okay, okay . . . let’s keep it to writing. I’d love to ask George R.R. Martin: “How in the world did you write those incredible books, create that world in your A Song of Ice and Fire series?” Seriously? How does he keep it all straight? Can you tell I’m a “Game of Thrones” fan?

You are a voice for a number of charities. How did you choose these charities, and why are they important to you?
I donate to a lot of charities, but those found on my website are the nearest and dearest for a variety of reasons. My compassion for animals led to my decision to put up the Southwestern Washington Humane Society and Equine Outreach listed on the site. These are only a couple of the organizations dedicated to the rescue of animals I support. As for Raphael House, it’s a Portland-based shelter for women and children who need a safe refuge from abuse. Though I’ve never been involved in an abusive relationship, I feel deeply for those who are threatened/abused by loved ones, the very people who vow to keep them safe! I can’t tolerate that kind of cruelty, nor abuse of animals. As for Molly Bears, this is a wonderful organization which puts teddy-type bears, made individually, into the arms of grieving parents who have lost an infant. As my family has experienced this kind of tragedy, I know personally the importance of the support for the pain that is almost a taboo topic. I encourage everyone to donate or volunteer to the cause of his/her choice. It’s important.

We love that you have a pug named Jackie O No! If you suddenly found yourself trapped in one of your own thrillers, would she be a good guard dog?
Oh . . . no! Unfortunately, I don’t think Jackie O No would come to my rescue. She is kind of “tough” around some other dogs, especially in her house or on a leash right beside me, but it’s all for show. Deep down, she’s pretty much a chicken. I’m thinking I’m a better “guard person” for her than she is “guard dog” for me!

What’s next for you?
I’m lucky enough to have a lot of projects in the horizon. In December, Unspoken, a book I recently rewrote will be available and I’m also working on another “colony” book, Something Wicked, with sister Nan (author Nancy Bush.) Those are always fun! Also, next year I’ll have Ready to Die, the next in the Alvarez/Pescoli Montana series and a new book, which I think will be called Tell Me that brings back some of my popular characters, Detective Pierce Reed and reporter Nikki Gillette (first introduced in The Night Before and The Morning After) and set once again, in one of my favorite cities, Savannah, Georgia. So, I’m pretty busy and I LOVE it!!! How lucky am I?

Copenhagen cold case investigator Carl Mørck rocketed onto the Scandinavian noir scene with last year’s The Keeper of Lost Causes, and he returns in The Absent One to seek justice for a decades-old unsolved murder. This tale of revenge and sociopathic socialites is proof that Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen has easily joined the front of the Nordic thriller pack.

Adler-Olsen answered our questions all the way from Iceland. He kept things short and sweet—well, maybe more salty than sweet.

Describe your book in one sentence.
Thrillastonishinggood.

Would you make a good investigator?
Oh yes, I solved my first mystery in 1960: Who scratched Per’s father’s car? (It was Per’s younger brother.) It took me 10 minutes to solve.

The report of each nation’s happiness index ranks Denmark as the happiest country in the world. Why are you guys so happy?
We are happy from absolute necessity. With the damp, cold winters and rainy summers, we have to, or else the suicide rate would go sky-high.

Why does happy Denmark make such a great setting for your crime novels?
Because I know everything about it.

What is one book you think every thriller fan should read?
A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin.

What is the greatest writing advice you’ve ever received?
Use the bathroom before taking your seat in front of the PC.

What are you working on next?
My next book.

On a blustery Sunday during Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books, local thriller author J.T. Ellison sits down to talk about Dr. Samantha Owens, the heroine in her new series about a medical examiner with a painful past. Owens will be familiar to Ellison’s many fans. She’s the best friend of homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson, the star of Ellison’s seven previous books. Sam was even a point-of-view character in 2011’s Where All the Dead Lie, which was nominated for a RITA Award for Best Romantic Suspense.

Before Ellison could start a new series about the intelligent and intense medical examiner, though, she had to figure out a single crucial detail: She had to kill off Sam’s husband and two kids. (When the author invented Sam as a character in the Taylor Jackson books, she didn’t know that the medical examiner would eventually get her own series.)

“I fought against that,” says Ellison, who describes Sam as “the woman I’d want to take care of me.” (“Taylor is the chick I’d want to go get a drink with,” she quips.) But she wanted a clean break for Sam as she stepped forward as a main character. Ultimately, Ellison did not want her encumbered with a family. She wanted Sam to be broken at the beginning of A Deeper Darkness, the first book in the series, in order for her to be able to grow and develop as a character.

When the novel starts, we find out that Sam’s husband and children died in Nashville’s flood of May 2010, an event that was personal to Ellison, as she and her husband live in the city’s Bellevue neighborhood, which was majorly affected by the rising waters. The flood has terrible repercussions for Sam, who becomes convinced that her family members’ deaths were all her fault, and she develops Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in her grieving.

At the beginning of A Deeper Darkness, Sam is in this guilt-ridden emotional state when she gets a call from an ex-boyfriend’s mother in Washington, D.C. Eddie Donovan, her former love, has been murdered. His mom would like for Sam to perform a second autopsy, and she reluctantly agrees. Thanks to her astute observation in the D.C. morgue, it becomes obvious that Eddie’s death was not merely the result of a random hit-and-run. Sam gets drawn into a D.C. detective’s investigation of the murder, which blossoms into an investigation of several different murders of former military men, all members of Eddie’s Company in the 75^th Ranger Regiment. Are the deaths connected?

If one of Ellison’s goals is to accurately portray the lives of medical examiners or homicide lieutenants, she also wants to raise awareness of issues that are important to her.

Sam’s search races across the nation’s capital and even to a creepy off-the-grid cabin. Fans of the medical thriller genre will relish this fast-paced and emotional read, which is bolstered by Ellison’s thorough research.

For her Taylor Jackson books, Ellison went on ride-alongs with the Metro Nashville Police Department in order to make her scenes as real as possible. For A Deeper Darkness, she consulted with both soldiers and a medical examiner—and she even did autopsies on four bodies at a facility in Nashville. (When prodded to share the most surprising thing about the process, she says: “That I didn’t pass out!”)

At the book festival, Ellison jumps up from her chair to demonstrate how far she was from the bodies when she walked into the morgue—about 10 or so feet. But by the end of that day, she says, “I had my head in a chest cavity.” The author describes this very hands-on research trip as a “spiritual experience,” especially after it became so obvious that “we’re all exactly alike inside.”

If one of Ellison’s goals as an author is to accurately portray the lives of medical examiners or homicide lieutenants, she also wants to raise awareness of issues that are important to her. In the case of A Deeper Darkness, that would be the problem of fratricide and rape in the U.S. military. Instances of both horrific events are integral to the novel’s plot, and the book is dedicated to David H. Sharrett II, a real-life Private First Class who was killed in Iraq in 2008 as a victim of friendly fire. He was the son of Ellison’s favorite teacher in high school.

A Deeper Darkness is, indeed, a very dark book, but Edge of Black—its follow-up, which comes out in November 2012—has “lots of humor.” Ellison says that the “Sam books” are funnier than the “Taylor books,” and this second installment is gentler than A Deeper Darkness. Luckily for fans, the author recently signed a contract to write three more books in the series, so there will be much more of Dr. Samantha Owens to look forward to. Next year, Ellison’s fans can anticipate her new collaboration with best-selling romantic suspense author Catherine Coulter, with whom she is writing a series of thrillers called “A Brit in the FBI.” The first book in the series, Jewel of the Lion, is currently slated to come out in late summer of 2013.

When asked what scenes she looks forward to writing the most in her books, Ellison says without hesitating, “You want every scene you write to be something you look forward to.” Otherwise, she explains, readers won’t want to read them. And in fact, readers will happily devour Sam’s new series. A story of hope—with breakneck chase scenes, to boot—it is an exciting introduction to a new heroine of the forensic thriller genre.