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Science Fiction & FantasyMystery & SuspenseFictionThrillerSuspenseScience Fiction

Pushed to the brink

Review by Barbara Clark

In Normal, Warren Ellis’ exceptional new thriller, foresight strategist Adam Dearborn has just been admitted to a compound called Normal, located on the U.S. west coast. It’s where those who were previously hired to monitor Earth’s degrading civilization are sent when they’re so burned out they can no longer function, well, normally.

The word itself loses much of its meaning in a near-future world where surveillance is constant, and the Normal Head Research Station itself hardly seems a place of safety. One inmate describes the outside world as “a permanent condition of pervasive low-level warfare,” and explains, “We’ve all been sent mad by grief.” The patients at Normal have, they frequently say, spent too much time “gazing into the abyss.”

The compound is abuzz when there’s a bizarre murder the morning after Adam’s arrival. He noticed the strange figure of Mr. Mansfield the previous afternoon, lurking about the edges of Normal’s forest. But Mansfield is missing the next morning, gone from his room and seemingly replaced by a mound of hundreds of crawling insects.

Adam—no model of stability himself—begins a low-key quest to discover what exactly has happened, and whether there’s anyone in Normal who can be trusted. The compound’s inhabitants beguile each other with lies, hysteria or reclusive behavior, as they search for ways to cope with the loss of the normal society they remember. The search leads Adam to an area called Staging, the only place in the compound with access, through the Internet, to the outside. Staging could give access to some answers—or to something much worse.

It’s clear that things have gone badly wrong out in the wider world, where people are now constantly watched by interfering “microdrones.” Ellis excels by inference, offering a chilling picture of the emotional turmoil in a human society that’s come unhinged. More unsettling, at the end of the book, there’s a shocking description of the event that led Adam to untether from his own sanity. 

This slim sci-fi mystery will puzzle, engage your senses and stick with you, maybe popping up days later when one of its passages resonates uncomfortably in the real world outside the book’s pages. Normal chills not by overt action or gory effects, but by slyly transporting readers outside their comfort zone, offering a look into a future that seems increasingly plausible after all.

In Normal, Warren Ellis’ exceptional new thriller, foresight strategist Adam Dearborn has just been admitted to a compound called Normal, located on the U.S. west coast. It’s where those who were previously hired to monitor Earth’s degrading civilization are sent when they’re so burned out they can no longer function, well, normally.

YA FictionYAThriller

Two friends revisit a scarring childhood event

Review by Kimberly Giarratano

Ten years ago, a serial killer in rural Pennsylvania lured Lori Cawley from the home where she was babysitting two 8-year-old girls and murdered her. Best friends Tessa and Callie were those two girls. Manipulated by police and their parents into testifying against the suspected killer, the girls have always wondered if they sent the wrong man to death row. They haven’t spoken since Tessa moved away after the trial. Now 18, Callie relies on alcohol to suppress her anxiety, and Tessa, who has been abandoned by both her mother and sister, returns to Pennsylvania to say goodbye to her dying father. Tessa’s visit stirs up questions, sending her on a dangerous hunt for answers.

The Darkest Corners is a suspenseful ride that’s really two mysteries in one: the location of Tessa’s sister and what really happened the night Lori was killed. Could Tessa’s sister be involved? A thriller at its core, the novel presents a layered view of how family, friendships and even the flawed judicial system can tear people apart if they let it.

 

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ten years ago, a serial killer in rural Pennsylvania lured Lori Cawley from the home where she was babysitting two 8-year-old girls and murdered her. Best friends Tessa and Callie were those two girls. Manipulated by police and their parents into testifying against the suspected killer, the girls have always wondered if they sent the wrong man to death row. They haven’t spoken since Tessa moved away after the trial.
FictionThriller

The woman with the Dragonscale tattoo

Review by Joelle Herr

Draco Incendia Trychophyton—also known as Dragonscale—is a deadly spore that causes people to spontaneously combust. Theories on its origin range from the melting ice caps to biological weaponry to a simple evolutionary turn. Elaborate—beautiful, even—black and gold tattoo-like markings identify those who are infected. Because there is often no warning before a person ignites and there is no cure, paranoia and hysteria spread like, well, wildfire. Eventually, cities burn and civil order dissolves, with ruthless and sinister Quarantine Patrols and Cremation Crews driving the infected into hiding. 

The titular character of Joe Hill’s fourth novel (following, most recently, NOS4A2), John Rookwood, is not an actual fireman, but a mysterious, charismatic Englishman. He wears a firefighter’s uniform because it not only hides his markings, but also allows him to be in the open without arousing suspicion. The heart of the book, though, is Harper Grayson, an elementary school nurse with compassion, gumption and an affinity for Mary Poppins. Harper is infected, frightened, alone and pregnant when John leads her to an underground community of infected folk who show her that it is possible to live in harmony with the spore. Soon, though, it becomes clear that safety does not always lie in numbers and that there is as much to fear inside the camp as outside.

With plenty of pop-culture references and playfully meta moments (like when characters discuss what they would do if they were in a movie or book), The Fireman is a bona fide, post-apocalyptic page-turner that’s equal parts touching and pulse-pounding, surprising and awe-inducing. The icing on the metaphorical cake? Easter eggs referencing his father Stephen King’s works—ranging from Hill’s use of “shine” as a verb of the supernatural variety to one character murderously swinging a shovel “like a croquet mallet”—pepper the book, delighting this fan of both writers.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Draco Incendia Trychophyton—also known as Dragonscale—is a deadly spore that causes people to spontaneously combust. Theories on its origin range from the melting ice caps to biological weaponry to a simple evolutionary turn. Elaborate—beautiful, even—black and gold tattoo-like markings identify those who are infected. Because there is often no warning before a person ignites and there is no cure, paranoia and hysteria spread like, well, wildfire. Eventually, cities burn and civil order dissolves, with ruthless and sinister Quarantine Patrols and Cremation Crews driving the infected into hiding.
Mystery & SuspenseFictionThriller

A Second Life

Review by Tom Deignan

English audiologist-turned-author S.J. Watson made a big splash with his debut thriller, Before I Go to Sleep, in 2011. The book chronicled the struggles of a woman who suffers from an acute form of amnesia, and has to reconstruct the details of her life every day when she wakes up. Nicole Kidman starred in the much-anticipated (though tepidly received) big-screen version of Watson’s book, which was translated into over 40 languages.

Watson mines similar themes—the slippery nature of memory and reality, a married woman confronting some serious inner demons—in his follow up, A Second Life. The crippling effects of amnesia are here replaced by the rabbit hole of social media, where people are free to reinvent themselves—sometimes to disastrous, even murderous, results. Julia leads a seemingly placid life in London, though it’s not long before we learn about her dark past: alcoholism, a son who is, in fact, not hers biologically, a youthful bohemian phase she can’t quite let go of. When the tragic news arrives that Julia’s sister has been murdered, old wounds severely aggravate new ones.

Watson’s depiction of Julia’s familial and domestic struggles are convincing, particularly the little wars husbands and wives wage. Julia—whose sister’s death “sliced [her] life in two”—literally becomes another person (online) in pursuit of her sister’s killer. She also drifts into a romantic affair that quickly becomes disturbing on a number of levels, though it must be added that Watson’s portrayal of the dark side of Internet hook-ups feels rather dated, even if it is meant to be a reflection of Julia’s naivete. The eventual solution will either read as bold and risky, or simply frustrating. Either way, Watson can’t be accused of skimping on the twists and turns.

A life sliced in two in A Second Life.
FictionThriller

The secrets we keep

Review by Arlene McKanic

At first, this reviewer wanted to warn readers not to be taken in by the light tone of Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret. On second thought, maybe readers should let this rather crafty novelist’s deceptive breeziness and humor sweep them along. It makes the shocks just that much more deliciously nasty, including the gob-smacking twist in the epilogue.

On the surface, the story is about a group of nice, middle-class, mostly Catholic women living in modern-day Australia. There’s Cecilia, the disconcertingly chipper and organized Tupperware salesperson with her mysterious, moody husband John-Paul and their beautiful young daughters. There’s Tess, who embarks on an affair of her own after she discovers her cousin Felicity is sleeping with her husband. And then there’s poor Rachel Crowley, whose daughter Janie was found dead in a park many years ago as a teenager. The case has never been solved, but Rachel’s sure she knows who killed Janie.

A constellation of spouses, children and co-workers surrounds these women, giving the proceedings a cozy normality that we know can’t last. Though men tend to be background figures, the most developed is Connor Whitby, the P.E. teacher at the school attended by Cecilia and Tess’ kids. Handsome and fit, Connor has everyone wondering why he remains unmarried well into his 40s.

Perhaps there’s a reason that most everyone in the book is Catholic, given its themes of sin, both venal and mortal, of guilt and redemption, forgiveness and confession—as well as its images of Easter eggs and hot cross buns and wrong­doings that erupt on Good Friday like the undead. The genius of The Husband’s Secret is that it makes us start to wonder what in our own lives would—or would not—have happened if, say, we had waited just five more minutes before we walked out the door, had not said that hurtful thing, had applied a bit of logic to that situation. The Husband’s Secret is as scary as it is familiar.

At first, this reviewer wanted to warn readers not to be taken in by the light tone of Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret. On second thought, maybe readers should let this rather crafty novelist’s deceptive breeziness and humor sweep them along. It makes the shocks just that much more deliciously nasty, including the gob-smacking twist in the epilogue.

Mystery & SuspenseThriller

A Most Wanted Man

Review by Michael Lee

The nightmare and shame of humanity is that there is always a war going on somewhere on the planet. And yet, for writers such as John le Carré, this sad fact is great fodder for stories. Where there is conflict, there are spies, and le Carré—a former secret agent himself—is a writer in complete command of the spy genre. In the aftermath of 9/11, his spies have made a seamless transition into the modern world. They are just as devious, just as two-faced and, thanks to their creator, just as riveting a collection of characters as he brought us when writing about the Cold War and MI6 operative George Smiley.

A Most Wanted Man opens with a slender young man in a dark coat named Issa (a Persian name for Jesus) following a Turkish mother and son on a dark street at night in Hamburg, Germany. The young man is a devout Muslim and asks for shelter in their home. This sets off a chain of events that involves an unlikely trio of central characters—Issa, whose real background is that of a Russian aristocrat; Annabel Richter, a young idealistic lawyer who acts as Issa’s attorney; and Tommy Brue, a retiring wealthy British banker. Issa has been smuggled into Hamburg to retrieve a huge sum of money held for years by Tommy Brue’s bank. But Issa wants nothing to do with what he considers a tainted fortune, given that it originated with his father, Col. Karpov of the Red Army.

Where le Carré excels, perhaps better than anyone, is in the gray areas of plot and characterization. This is a complex and multi-layered work with a roll call of memorable characters that still manages to distill the theme into Western thought versus Islamist philosophy.

At 77 years of age, le Carré (né David Cornwell) shows no signs of slowing down. You’re never in for a breezy read with him, but as in the works of most master craftsman, the demands put upon the reader are small compared to the intense and lasting rewards.

Michael Lee is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

This complex and multi-layered work features a roll call of memorable characters and a dynamic setting.
Mystery & SuspenseFictionThriller

Paula Hawkins

Interview by Amy Scribner

With The Girl on the Train, British author Paula Hawkins has written one of those books with a plot so delicious, you wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself. 

Rachel Watson takes a commuter train from her slightly grubby suburb into London every day. It used to be to get to work. After she gets fired for drinking on the job, Rachel still takes the train so her roommate won’t know just how far she has fallen.

Often on those train rides, Rachel catches a glimpse of a couple sitting on their back terrace, a “perfect, golden couple” whom she names Jason and Jess. She is sure they are blissfully happy, just as she used to be when married to Tom, before he cheated on her (which she found out about by reading his email, “the modern-day lipstick on the collar”).

Rachel is an exasperating mess, and she makes for a wonderfully unreliable narrator. She drinks on the train—a little Chenin Blanc, or gin and tonic in a can. She calls Tom late at night when she’s blackout drunk, annoying his new wife and waking up their baby. She builds a whole story around Jason and Jess based on her view from the train, imbuing in them all the things she misses about her own marriage. So it’s no wonder she’s outraged when, on one sunny morning, she sees Jess kissing another man in her garden.

“I am furious, nails digging into my palms, tears stinging my eyes,” Rachel says. “I feel a flash of intense anger. I feel as though something has been taken away from me. How could she? How could Jess do this? What is wrong with her? Look at the life they have, look at how beautiful it is! I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.” 

Rachel only learns that her Jason and Jess are actually Scott and Megan Hipwell when Megan goes missing. When Rachel realizes she was in their neighborhood the night Megan disappeared, she frantically tries to retrace her drunken steps and finds herself drawn into Scott’s life and, in the strangest of ways, her own past.

The Girl on the Train is the kind of slippery, thrilling read that only comes around every few years (see Gone Girl). Hawkins, a former financial journalist, has written a couple of other books under a pseudonym, but this is her first crime novel.

“[My books] got sort of darker and darker, and the characters got more complex,” Hawkins says by phone from her London home. “I’ve always read crime fiction, and it’s always been in my head as something I wanted to do.”

The voyeuristic roots of The Girl on the Train came from Hawkins’ own commuting days.

“I used to commute when I was a journalist, from the edges of London,” she says. “I loved looking into people’s houses. The train went really close by apartments, so you could see in. I never saw anything shocking, but I wondered, if you saw anything out of the ordinary, an act of violence, who would you tell and would anyone believe you? I had a germ of it in my brain for ages. The voyeuristic aspects of commuting, everyone has. Even if you commute by car, you look into other cars.”

In Rachel, Hawkins has created a complex, heartbreaking character whose penchant for self-sabotage is breathtaking. She’s lost everything that mattered to her and can’t quite find a way forward.

Like 'Gone Girl,' Hawkins’ novel hinges on a late-in-the-game twist, and this one is a doozy. As you might expect, this sleight of hand is not easy to pull off.

“I feel more affection than most people will toward her,” Hawkins admits. “She was living this normal life and then had this incredibly rapid fall from grace. She’s obviously gotten herself into a mess with the drinking. She’s teetering on the edge, but could get back on track. I understand she’s a really frustrating character. You just want to shake her and say snap out of it.”

Like Gone Girl, Hawkins’ novel hinges on a late-in-the-game twist, and this one is a doozy. As you might expect, this sleight of hand is not easy to pull off.

“It’s a really tricky thing to do, actually,” Hawkins says. “It’s all about feeding tiny pieces of information, but hopefully keeping them slightly ambivalent. You have to have different people see different things in different ways, and hold back particular pieces of information.”

Her book has been optioned for film by DreamWorks, something that Hawkins is trying to take in stride.

“It’s very exciting, yet I’m trying to not be too excited,” she says. “These things take a really long time. It could be years, it may not happen. It feels unreal. I haven’t cast Rachel. Possibly because she’s not beautiful, and it’s impossible to find not-beautiful actors.”

(She has pondered Michelle Williams as Megan, with her “slightly dreamy, lovely blond prettiness.”)

A longtime London resident, Hawkins wrote about financial issues for a variety of publications for 15 years. She’s lived in Paris, Oxford and Brussels, and was born and raised in Zimbabwe.

“My parents still live there, actually,” she says. “It was a very lovely upbringing. When I was a child, it was a white-only government, effectively an apartheid system, although they didn’t call it that. As a 5-year-old, it didn’t really hit home. It was a nice place for me to grow up, but I am aware that the pleasantness of my childhood was bought at a high price.”

Now a full-time novelist, Hawkins is working on a follow-up while awaiting whatever comes her way with the hotly anticipated release of The Girl on the Train.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With The Girl on the Train, British author Paula Hawkins has written one of those books with a plot so delicious, you wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself.
Mystery & SuspenseThriller

Christopher Reich

Interview by Jay MacDonald

International thriller writer Christopher Reich admits his new standalone nail-biter, Invasion of Privacy, lacks the globetrotting savoir faire of his bestsellers Numbered Account, The Patriot’s Club and The Prince of Risk. But what it so deliciously serves up instead is a visceral fear feast centered on a simple premise: What if your iPhone turned against you?

Forty miles west of Austin on the dusty doorstep of the Texas Hill Country, FBI special agent Joe Grant is gunned down along with an informant in a shootout with parties unknown. Minutes before his wife, Mary, becomes a widow, she receives a cryptic voicemail from Joe that will lead her to question the FBI’s version of his death. To vindicate her husband, she’ll ultimately be forced to confront Ian Prince, the ruthless telecom billionaire behind a terrifying top-secret surveillance system every bit as plausible in our hyper-connected age as George Orwell’s Big Brother was during his.

Reich hatched the premise for Invasion of Privacy while watching news coverage of British media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s celebrity phone-hacking scandal. The topic hit close to home for the father of two teenage girls whose hands are rarely free of a phone, tablet or laptop.

“It’s a completely different kind of book for me—more of a family-oriented, inside-the-home thriller,” Reich says. “I wanted to write this David and Goliath story to show that it’s still personal grit and family love that ends up overcoming sheer megalomania and greed.”

To dial up the domestic dynamics, Reich set his tale in Austin, where his daughters were born and where he earned his MBA at the University of Texas. However, his research into the lexicon and subtleties of computer surveillance and phone hacking, which included meeting with an electronic payments expert, friends in the FBI and a reporter for Wired, was specifically intended to spare his readers geek overload.

“Once a story starts getting all technical and cyber-geeky, I just shut the book,” Reich admits.

He didn’t have to search far for a prototype of mega-mogul Ian Prince, however.

“He’s an amalgam of the leading brains and business personalities in Silicon Valley and around the world,” he says. “Apple’s founder Steve Jobs was elevated to this position of something more than a man but less than a god, and we all worshipped this guy and absolutely forgave all of his failings because he was able to design an amazing iPod and iPhones. We worshiped him, but when you get down to nuts and bolts, he was not the nicest human being to his family. I think on any other scorecard, he would get very low marks.”

For an additional twist, Reich places Ian and the National Security Agency on the verge of a lucrative, game-changing partnership with chilling implications for privacy in America. The reader is left guessing as to whose side the FBI is on until the final pages.

“How much would our nation allow some of these leading tech companies to get away with in the interest of furthering our own national security?” he wonders. “We live in an era where we’re made to be so afraid of even the slightest risk that we allow the government to take extraordinary measures regarding our privacy in the name of national security.”

The more he learned about cutting-edge surveillance technology, the less convinced Reich became that lawmakers can effectively restrict its use.

“The NSA, with their computers, are just being spies, and the whole point of spying is to collect information. You don’t tell a spy, ‘Only get half of the information you can.’ You tell them, ‘Get everything you can!’ That’s the whole point of having a spy agency.”

Ultimately, Reich came to a very Orwellian conclusion about the intrusion of cyber-surveillance into the American home.

“I’m a big believer in what President Dwight Eisenhower said in his farewell speech: ‘Beware the military-industrial complex.’ This is a whole sector of society that needs adversaries, needs conflict, and really requires even armed conflict in wars to drive their bottom line and become successful,” he says. “I don’t really think that the issues they’re screaming about are as life-threatening or endangering to our national security as they say. The more I research the various government military and intelligence sectors, I feel we really don’t need to be so heavily involved in a lot of these areas.”

To inject a little levity, Reich borrowed one of his daughters’ favorite pastimes: watching pet videos on YouTube.

“My daughters were always looking at a video about this sloth trying to pull itself out of a cradle, so as I was writing the book, it worked into kind of a MacGuffin [plot twist] in the book,” he recalls.

Invasion of Privacy marks the start of a busy year ahead for Reich, a one-time Swiss banker and watch company CEO who launched his writing career with the million-selling 1998 debut Numbered Account (and an assist from James Patterson, an enthusiastic early reader of the manuscript).

Reich’s Rules of Deception series featuring mountaineering surgeon Dr. Jonathan Ransom has been optioned for three 12-episode seasons by Paramount Television and Skydance Productions (Terminator, Mission: Impossible); he’s halfway through writing a fourth book in that series. And next summer, he’ll launch a new series called The Amateur’s Hour, about a cynical government contractor whose predictions about upcoming world events prove a little too close for some people’s comfort.

“I’ll be doing the David Baldacci two-books-a-year thing,” quips Reich. “I’m a little bit scared, but I’m happy to have that problem!”

Does the author fear his own phone may be hacked in the near future?

“I don’t really feel so vulnerable, because I don’t think I’m interesting enough for someone to want to look into what I’m doing,” he chuckles. 

But he does worry about consumers who share so freely on social media. 

“Most Americans put more stuff about themselves on Facebook than they would probably tell anybody. They don’t realize that that information is so readily accessible. We’re already very open with our information in this society. It’s all right out there,” he says.

As for the reception of Invasion of Privacy, the author says he’s already won over two very important new readers.

“This is the first one of my books that both of my daughters have read, and they both just loved it; they just disappeared into it with the teenage characters and the mom,” he says proudly. “Having tried to give my kids my other books, they would go, ‘This is so boring!’ When I saw my daughter disappear and read my book for four hours straight, that was like, OK, I wrote a good book.”

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

International thriller writer Christopher Reich admits his new standalone nail-biter, Invasion of Privacy, lacks the globetrotting savoir faire of his bestsellers Numbered Account, The Patriot’s Club and The Prince of Risk. But what it so deliciously serves up instead is a visceral fear feast centered on a simple premise: What if your iPhone turned against you?
Mystery & SuspenseThriller

Gina Wohlsdorf

Interview by Jay MacDonald

Debut thrillers tend to fall into two categories: the perfectly plotted handshake that introduces us to the promise of a series to follow and, very rarely, the unexpected high dive that turns convention on its head, dazzling us with its sheer audacity.

Count Gina Wohlsdorf’s Security among the high-board thrillers, both for its narrative daring and successful weaving of horror, humor and Fifty Shades of Grey hotness into one unforgettable reading experience.

We enter the luxurious 20-story Manderley Resort in Santa Barbara less than 24 hours before its grand opening. Tessa, the general manager, rides roughshod over housekeeping, front desk and food & bev on the lower 19. The 20th floor remains off-limits to all but the resort’s elite security team, which monitors a state-of-the-art security system specifically designed to protect the world’s one-percenters.

But behind this behind-the-scenes, pre-grand opening frenzy lurks a masked killer who is systematically retiring the help, one by one, in gruesome ways.

Why the carnage? And who’s narrating this grim tale? Wohlsdorf offers clues in the chapter headings, which simply consist of security camera numbers. Then, less than 20 pages in, she doubles the intrigue by splitting the descriptive narrative briefly into two columns. Then three. Then four.

Wohlsdorf breaks into laughter when I admit my first reaction was, “Oh God, no!”

“Yeah, this could go so wrong!” she admits during a call to her home in Denver. “I was aware that it was a really, really sensitive device, and I didn’t want it to come across like a device. Whenever the head of security was seeing two or three things at once, I split the page. But I was aware of it as an instrument to sometimes get something across thematically, like splitting the page between a very graphic sex scene and also a staff member’s flight—this duality of sex and death, which is classic to the slasher genre.”

And she would know. Growing up in Bismarck, North Dakota, Wohlsdorf dealt with her own preadolescent anxiety by immersing herself in the big-screen mayhem of such cinema slashers as Halloween’s Michael Myers, Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees and Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. Little did she realize that life would soon nudge her into exploring horror from a whole new perspective: her own.

“When I was 13, I got hit by a car going a good 30 miles per hour; it whacked me into the gutter and broke my upper arm clean in half. I looked up from the gutter and just started screaming, and people came to help,” she recalls. “As I was lying there, I suddenly realized: This is what you’ve been afraid of your whole life. You might die here, but you’re OK; it’s a beautiful day, the sun is out, birds are singing and that’s awesome. Lying in the gutter, I realized, you know, it’s really ridiculous how much time you’ve wasted being scared when this is it—you’re here and you’re fine.”

Several years later, she took her first stab at writing a slasher novel.

“I loved Stephen King, read everything by Stephen King and loved reading horror, but there was no ‘slasher’ novel,” she says. “So I sat down and tried to write one, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s why; that’s awful!’ It didn’t work at all. It just read wretchedly, and I kind of gave up.”

“As a kid, I was always wondering what Michael Myers was doing when he wasn’t on screen. Does he snack? Does he make phone calls or do laundry?”

To her surprise, her page and screen influences—including the Daphne du Maurier classic Rebecca (set in part in the Cornish estate of Manderley) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (with its creepy deserted hotel)—combined to inspire a new horror novel idea. But where to set it?

“I’m notoriously spatially challenged; you turn me in a circle and I get lost, even in places that I’m very, very familiar with,” Wohlsdorf admits. “So when I had the initial idea for Security, I sat down and drew a very simple schematic of the hotel. I knew there were 20 floors and an external pool and a glass cover. So I had a really good grasp of the grounds.”

She knew from experience that her killer would have to be three-dimensional to carry off such a locked-room mystery. She fashioned hers after one of her screen favorites.

“As a kid, I was always wondering what Michael Myers was doing when he wasn’t on screen. Does he snack? Does he make phone calls or do laundry?” she says. “So in my book, the killer is kind of the most human character, because you see him do all of those things. He’s human; he makes mistakes and he’s funny. He drags a liver along the floor like a tin can. Come on, that’s funny! You almost like him. You almost want to hang out.”

Recent public concerns over privacy and security, including Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews’ hotel stalking lawsuit, provide the powerful subtext that drives Security. And once again, Wohlsdorf’s personal experience helped bring the security fears to life.

“I had this boss I once worked for who was bugging her breakroom. And we tested it, as workers will, and it was very strange to know that she could be listening at any time to our conversations, which she did quite often,” Wohlsdorf recalls. “Why would she need that? I’m sure that her rationalization was, that’s when you’re safe, when you just know everything that goes on. But that’s also when you’re so vulnerable, because that’s when your megalomania can really hobble your relationships. You see that in Security as well.”

For Wohlsdorf, whose works-in-progress include a father-daughter thriller and a “zombie romance,” facing some of life’s darkest fears has opened up more than just literary possibilities. “It’s life possibilities, too,” she says. “Writing’s scary, and trying to make a living is akin to suicide! Being fearless helps a lot.”

 

This article was originally published in the July 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Debut thrillers tend to fall into two categories: the perfectly plotted handshake that introduces us to the promise of a series to follow and, very rarely, the unexpected high dive that turns convention on its head, dazzling us with its sheer audacity.
Mystery & SuspenseFictionThriller

Dean Koontz

Interview by Hilli Levin

Bestselling author Dean Koontz's new thriller, The Silent Corner, introduces a tough-as-hell heroine with a very big heart. Respected young FBI agent Jane Hawk sets off on a harrowing search for justice after her beloved husband mysteriously dies by suicide. But Jane is convinced there's a shadowy, powerful global tech company at the root of it all, and she goes on the lam, tracking down leads and dodging mercenaries, in order to prove that her husband's hand was forced. 

We caught up with Koontz to ask a few questions about his bold new heroine, the implications of developing technologies, the upcoming TV adaptation and more. 

Can you describe your new novel in one sentence?  
When Jane Hawk, an FBI agent, determines to prove her much-loved husband didn’t kill himself, she’s targeted by powerful people with a terrible secret agenda, becomes the most wanted fugitive in the nation—and proceeds to give me the most pleasure I’ve ever had at the keyboard!    

What do you love most about rogue agent Jane Hawk?
Her indomitable spirit and her intelligence appeal to me, but I’m most fascinated by how tough she can be when necessary, in spite of an essential tenderness. She’d be a generous and loving friend, but if she were coming after me, I’d be terrified.    

You so rarely write series, what is it about Jane that has inspired you to continue expanding her story?  
I just finished the third book, and Jane surprised me with ever greater depths. I have a long way to go before I fully know her. And though each book is a standalone, I realize I’ve fallen into an epic tale.    

Technology’s ability to influence behavior plays a central role in this story. Were you inspired by any real-world stories or technological advances?  
All the tech in the book exists or is pending, though it’s not a story about technology. It’s about the human heart. But I did just see that Elon Musk is starting a company to develop brain implants to “help us think better.” Uh-oh.    

Are you an eager adopter of new tech, or do you prefer to limit yourself?  
I understand it all—but I adopt a minimum. The simpler life, the better. An hour of conversation with my wife or a walk with my dog is more interesting than a lifetime on Twitter.    

In many thrillers, the protagonists can seem a bit cold and cut off from humanity. Why was it important for you to show Jane’s compassionate, human side?  
The best FBI agents and cops I’ve known have profound compassion for the suffering of innocents. I wanted to capture that. Jane’s good heart is what empowers her to be so tough when she has to be. She realizes how others will suffer if she fails.  

We’re excited about the upcoming TV adaptation of The Silent Corner! Will you be involved at all? Do you plan to watch?  
I have certain approvals. Otherwise, I’ll just write books about Jane. If the show is as good as I hope, I’ll watch and be buried with DVDs of it, but only after the 40th and final season!    

In honor of Private Eye July, what’s one mystery or thriller you think everyone should read?  
James. M. Cain’s Double Indemnity. I’ve read it 6 or 7 times, and I’m always chilled.    

Aside from Jane, who’s your favorite fictional female investigator?  
There are so many good ones, but I have to say Thursday Next in Jasper Fforde’s wildly inventive series.    

What’s next for you?  
I’ve just started the fourth Jane Hawk, and at the end of each day I regret having to stop. I’ve got to know what happens next.

Author photo © Thomas Engstrom.

A portion of this article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.
 

Bestselling author Dean Koontz's new thriller, The Silent Corner, introduces a tough-as-hell heroine with a very big heart.

Mystery & SuspenseFictionThriller

Meg Gardiner

Interview by Jay MacDonald

As a young girl, Edgar-winning mystery writer Meg Gardiner lay awake nights wondering if the headline-seizing San Francisco killer known as the Zodiac might one day drift south to her Santa Barbara neighborhood. Years later, her childhood fears became reality when two neighborhood couples were murdered by another notorious serial killer, the Night Stalker.

“By the time they announced this, it was just a deep, sick feeling that you couldn’t believe you’d been so close to something this dark and massive,” Gardiner says.

“The killings were 18 months apart, so they weren’t immediately connected like he went from one house to the next, but it just echoes and reverberates. Then you start thinking, did this guy literally walk by the bedroom where my sister was sleeping? Did he walk up the creek where I used to play and catch tadpoles before he climbed the bank and broke the back window of these peoples’ houses? It does knock down your sense of security.”

What’s a bestselling author to do with such a gut punch from the past? In Gardiner’s case, she harnessed her personal horror into UNSUB (FBI shorthand for “unknown subject”), a gripping, Zodiac-inspired thrill ride guaranteed to turn nighttime readers into daytime readers. It’s so visceral, CBS has already bought the rights to adapt it into a TV series.

Set in the Bay Area where Gardiner spent seven years earning her undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford University, UNSUB centers on newbie detective Caitlin Hendrix, herself a victim of a similar childhood trauma. Caitlin’s father, Detective Mack Hendrix, spent years as the lead investigator in pursuit of a brazen, cryptic serial killer known as the Prophet, wrecking himself and his family in the process. As the book opens, the Prophet’s trademark symbol is found carved into a new set of victims 20 years later.

For Caitlin, the suddenly red-hot cold case poses an irresistible opportunity to vindicate her father, but at what price? Mack’s entreaties to steer clear are no match for Caitlin’s resolve to capture the killer who stole her childhood.

Gardiner welcomed the opportunity to dive into a new world with a female detective at the helm, a nice fit alongside her other two successful series featuring feisty freelance journalist Evan Delaney (China Lake) and forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett (The Dirty Secrets Club). In addition to researching unsolved murder cases and speaking with psychiatrists and investigators, Gardiner had to take a journey back in time to put herself in Caitlin’s shoes.

“It is fiction, but I’m drawing from the idea of how a case would have been handled 20 years ago versus how it would be handled today, with greater coordination and crisis response,” Gardiner says. “You can find all the original files for so many of these real-life UNSUB cold cases and read through them and see how the investigations ran and the frustrations and the dedication of the law enforcement officers. It affected them terribly. I know that some retired cops every year still go to the cemetery on the anniversary of one of the Zodiac attacks and leave flowers on the victims’ graves.”

Bringing Caitlin’s broken, bitter father to life as a central character proved something of a balancing act.

“He is the person who has taken on all of the pain, and that aspect comes out in his character throughout the story. But it’s also got to be a story of him as a father. That’s as much a part of everything as the killer in the story,” she says.

"The Zodiac was the first modern serial killer who really lusted for publicity and wanted to invoke terror and bring it all back to feed his own ego, really."

Conversations with actual law enforcement officers proved crucial to presenting a realistic picture of a family driven to the brink by a psychotic killer.

“It just trickles down to every level. For cops, being able to draw the line between work and home so they can turn off, that becomes difficult,” Gardiner explains. “I’ve spoken to cops who needed to switch from night shift to day shift because the cases they were getting were bleeding over to the breakfast table with their first graders. How do you take care of yourself when you’re responsible for taking care of the community?”

While it would have been accurate to cast a fellow cop as Caitlin’s love interest, Gardiner added a humorous twist in creating Sean Rawlins, an FBI-trained federal explosives expert who shares custody of a young daughter with his ex.

“It is true that female police officers often do end up in relationships with male officers or another policewoman because it’s so unusual for them to be in this world that they find it easier to deal with someone who understands the job and why they are doing it,” Gardiner says. “And their relationship is fun as well; he’s a bomb explosives specialist, not a botanist.”

While it’s often Sean who helps Caitlin unwind, Gardiner has beaucoup experience conjuring fully formed, flawed and funny female protagonists.

“I’m glad you think she’s fun!” the author cheers when I ask about Caitlin’s humorous side. “She takes her work seriously but she doesn’t take herself that seriously. I write thrillers that are supposed to make you gasp and hold your breath and bite your nails out of concern for the characters, but the thing I would never, ever want to write is something that anyone would describe as bleak. If a character can’t laugh at themselves, then I want them to leave.”

It wouldn’t be a Gardiner book without at least one child in the mix. The author and her husband raised three, and she considers it a must to invoke the joys of family life when writing thrillers.

“People do enjoy families, and you want to have a sense that it’s just a little beyond the tunnel focus of whatever is going on out on the crime scene,” she explains. “You want there to be a larger life that people find rewarding and want to preserve and nurture. I like writing about kids, too. My [grown] daughter doesn’t play with My Little Pony anymore, so I have to find some way to slip that in!”

She grants no such levity to the Prophet however. His sick mind-games to baffle law enforcement prove as disturbing in UNSUB as it was in real life for those who remember the Zodiac.

“That’s part of the intrigue of both reading and writing a novel, to give readers what they want but not in the way they expect it,” Gardiner explains. “The Zodiac was the first modern serial killer who really lusted for publicity and wanted to invoke terror and bring it all back to feed his own ego, really. That still horrifies and fascinates me, that somebody would try to gain self-importance in that way, and I tried to give the Prophet something mysteriously similar to that.

“Certainly, with the Zodiac, who wanted people to think perhaps that he was smarter and deeper than he actually is or was, the cops were all over every possible connection, because there were all these cyphers, cryptograms and references to the afterlife; all these symbols. The Zodiac symbol itself, what does it mean? Did it have to do with astrology? Astronomy? Devil worship? Everybody was starting to pull at every possible thread. In a mystery novel, you want people to wonder what’s going on, and you want to offer ambiguous signposts that let them try to figure it out for themselves.”

Odds are we’ll once again be day reading and signpost heeding in January when Gardiner’s Ted Bundy-based second UNSUB thriller, Into the Black Nowhere, hits bookstores.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo credit Stuart Boreham.

Meg Gardiner has harnessed her personal horror into UNSUB (FBI shorthand for “unknown subject”), a gripping, Zodiac-inspired thrill ride guaranteed to turn nighttime readers into daytime readers. It’s so visceral, CBS has already bought the rights to adapt it into a TV series.

FictionThriller

John Grisham

Interview by Jay MacDonald

John Grisham’s fans await his annual legal thriller the way a starved jury anticipates free donuts in the break room. Through 30 novels, the master behind such big-screen bestsellers as The Firm and The Pelican Brief has kept us guessing about the fate of lawyers in love and peril.

Still, even the seasoned author was surprised to find the plotlines of his latest thriller popping up in the news as he was bringing them to life in his arresting new tort-ture tale, The Rooster Bar.

As the book opens, the suicide of third-year law school student Gordy shocks friends Mark, Todd and Zola into realizing that they’ve been suckered into acquiring six-figure student loan debt to attend the third-tier, for-profit Foggy Bottom Law School in Washington, D.C. Not only is the school so mediocre that its graduates stand only a 50-50 chance of passing the bar exam, but according to Gordy’s parting notes, it’s one of a chain owned by Hinds Rackley, a New York hedge-fund manager who also happens to own the very bank that will collect on their student loans.

Disheartened and desperate, the trio forgo their last semester of law school, assume false identities and form the bogus law firm Upshaw, Parker & Lane (short for ­Unlicensed Practice of Law), a high-stakes gamble designed to sustain them until they can win back their futures by exposing Rackley’s scam. To complicate matters, Zola’s immigrant family is simultaneously being deported to Senegal.

Student debt? For-profit schools? Brazen billionaires? Immigration issues? Grisham had no inkling when he started the book that its themes would soon play out on MSNBC.

“This story goes back two or three years when I read an article in the Atlantic called ‘The Law-School Scam’ that I was fascinated by, because I was not aware that we had such institutions as for-profit law schools in this country,” Grisham says by phone from his office in Charlottesville, Virginia. “I was stunned and became captivated by the issue.”

Intrigued, the former lawyer visited a few law schools. In one public law school, every third-year student carried debt, the average being $75,000. In another top-tier school, a third of students graduated without debt, but for the two-thirds who had debt, the average was $260,000.

“It’s astonishing, and the amounts were even greater when you combine grad school and undergrad,” he says. “Once they’re out, they can’t afford to start a family . . . to buy a house or a car. They’re mired into this unbelievable debt that’s choking them.”

While rare, some debt-strapped students choose the risky track Grisham’s fictional trio takes and hustle clients without a license in hospital and court waiting rooms.

“I always worry about the story as I’m writing it—how much of this can I make plausible and believable—and it’s probably a bit implausible that they would go to this extreme to actually set up a law firm with business cards and fake names,” Grisham admits. “But if you’ve ever been through the suicide of a friend, it really can knock you off your stride; it’s not something that you can deal with easily. That’s why I introduced the tragedy of Gordy’s death, to kind of push these guys over the edge.”

Grisham targets sky-high student debt in an intriguing thriller that parallels real-life events.

He had no such challenge bringing Hinds Rackley to life; news reports did that for him. “Trump loves these for-profit schools. He couldn’t make one go. . . . He tried . . . and it crashed,” Grisham says. “But with the Department of Education now, you can’t walk in Congress for all the lobbyists hired by the for-profit college industry. They have tons of money, and they’re getting whatever they want because they have all the money. It’s a rotten system.”

Likewise, Zola’s DACA-esque immigration battle parallels real-life events. “The more I wrote about Zola and her family, the more I really enjoyed that subplot,” he says. “And then I had the benefit of Trump taking office in January, and with all the anti-immigration stuff and the ramped-up ICE raids, that just fell into my lap.”

Grisham was a practicing lawyer when he attained superstardom with the release of The Firm, which became the bestselling novel of 1991. He now has more than 300 million books in print worldwide, including novels, short stories, nonfiction and a children’s series.

Though he was taken with the cutting-edge storylines he rather presciently wove together in The Rooster Bar, Grisham says he felt compelled to make one adjustment.

“I set the book in 2014 and not 2017, because the bubble is bursting with these for-profit law schools because they’re too expensive, they’re not any good, you can’t pass the bar, and you can’t find a job,” he says. “It’s not sustainable because of the job market. That’s why we’re watching it blow up.”

Without revealing the book’s ingenious ending, suffice it to say that Mark, Todd and Zola ironically reveal themselves to be exactly the kind of creative, caring problem-solvers and risk-takers that the best lawyers are made of.

“Well, that’s the beauty of fiction!” Grisham chuckles. “At some point, you suspend disbelief and you make them a whole lot smarter and a whole lot luckier than they really should be. That’s when storytelling kicks in. Of course, they’re your heroes and you want them to succeed. Even though they’re doing some bad things and breaking a bunch of laws, you’re on their side. Let’s just say they’re smart and they’re lucky.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

(Author photo by Billy Hunt.)

John Grisham’s fans await his annual legal thriller the way a starved jury anticipates free donuts in the break room. Still, even the seasoned author was surprised to find the plotlines of his latest thriller popping up in the news as he was bringing them to life in his arresting new tort-ture tale, The Rooster Bar.

FictionThrillerDebut Fiction

A.J. Finn

Interview by Jay MacDonald

In suspense fiction, as in life, things aren’t always as they appear. We view events through similar, although by no means identical, lenses. And therein lies the fun, both between the covers of The Woman in the Window, the new year’s most audacious psychological suspense debut, and in the intriguing, real-life turn of the table by its pseudonymous author, A.J. Finn.

As The Woman in the Window opens, we meet Dr. Anna Fox, a New York child psychologist turned thoroughly modern mess following her unexplained separation from her husband and daughter 11 months prior. Now an agoraphobic, voyeuristic shut-in, Anna whiles away the days within her Manhattan brownstone, wineglass in hand, monitoring her park-side neighbors through her digital camera, binge-watching classic movies (Rear Window, anyone?) and counseling other agoraphobics online.

Then Anna observes and reports to police a shocking act of violence at the residence of a new neighbor. Did she imagine it? Can police (and the reader) trust her interpretation of the event? Suffice to say, the plot twists that follow blow the roof off her carefully insulated world.

While fans of Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and Alfred Hitchcock’s films will feel right at home in Anna’s wine-addled reality, the unusual backstory behind its provenance bears a touch of suspense fiction as well.

A.J. Finn is actually Dan Mallory, a 38-year-old senior vice president and editor for William Morrow who studied literature,* inspired by his love of Agatha Christie, Ruth Ware and his dissertation subject, Patricia Highsmith. Like many in publishing, Mallory admits he’d fantasized about tasting life on the other side of the editing desk. Unfortunately, timing was an issue.

“It was a flicker in my mind for some time—this idea that I could write something—but [it wasn’t something] that I pursued with any intent whatsoever,” Mallory says by phone from his Manhattan office. “I never wrote so much as a poem as an adult, in part because, for the longest time—probably since 1988 when The Silence of the Lambs was published—the market was dominated by serial killer thrillers by the likes of Thomas Harris, James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell. I enjoyed the serial killer thriller as much as the next reader; I just didn’t have one in me.”

That changed dramatically in 2012 with the publication of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which ushered in a new era of psychological suspense. "This was the sort of book that I had read and studied, that I might try to write,” Mallory says. “It was only after the market seemed propitious and readers demonstrated an appetite for this sort of literature that I thought to myself, right—if I come up with a story, perhaps now is the time to strike. And lo and behold, this character strolled into my head, dragging her story behind her.”

As Anna made herself at home, Mallory found her overactive, incessantly introspective mind to be a “comfortable fit.” Like Anna, the author has struggled with severe depression, and explains that Anna’s experience with agoraphobia closely matches his own. “Since I wrote the book, I’ve been in a much better place psychologically than I was for over a decade,” Mallory says. “At the same time, I developed a pretty keen sense of empathy. That’s the silver lining of depression, or at least it was in my case. So I felt for this character.”

“‘Is this really plausible? Wouldn’t people shut their blinds?’ NO! No one in New York shuts their blinds!”

As easy as it was to channel Anna, Mallory also effortlessly accessed the inner voyeur of his readers.

“I wrote the book in my flat in Chelsea, and my desk is right beside the window in my living room. Across the street is a pair of beautiful brownstones, and the windows are never shuttered, the curtains never drawn,” he says. “A few readers, on finishing or even getting a couple chapters into the book, have said to me, ‘Is this really plausible? Wouldn’t people shut their blinds?’ NO! No one in New York shuts their blinds!”

But why the pseudonym? This is where Mallory performed his own third-act twist.

“Because I work in publishing, I wanted to hedge my bets when it came time to submit the book,” he explains. “It would have been embarrassing for me had the book not been acquired, which was what I expected. But we submitted the book, and within 36 hours, we were fielding offers. At which point my agent and I said, ‘Right, it’s time for me to come clean and introduce myself as myself, so they know what they’re getting into.’ Happily, no one backed out.”

One thing’s for sure: The format of The Woman in the Window, with exactly 100 chapters, each no more than five or six pages, is a thriller editor’s dream.

“I don’t know that I consciously tapped into much of my [editorial] experience, but then I wouldn’t need to, would I? Because it’s built into me, it’s baked into me by this point!” Mallory chuckles. “Man, I love a short chapter. This is a technique that I admired in James Patterson’s work.”

Mallory’s success with his debut thriller, which sold in September for a rumored seven figures and will be marketed in 38 territories, may have set a record for a newcomer. Having successfully jumped the table from editor to author, Mallory bid farewell to William Morrow in December to craft his next psychological thriller, set in San Francisco.

Until then, we’ll start closing our blinds.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

*The original version of this interview stated that Mallory obtained a doctorate at Oxford. A February 2019 article in the New Yorker revealed that this was not true and alleged that several other aspects of Mallory's biography had been falsified. 

In suspense fiction, as in life, things aren’t always as they appear. We view events through similar, although by no means identical, lenses. And therein lies the fun, both between the covers of The Woman in the Window, the new year’s most audacious psychological suspense debut, and in the intriguing, real-life turn of the table by its pseudonymous author, A.J. Finn.

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