Laura Sims

Laura Sims's new novel is Looker.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Looker?

A: Until fairly recently I lived in a Brooklyn neighborhood comprised mostly of middle- to upper-middle class families, with the odd celebrity mixed in.

In Brooklyn, whether you’re just barely managing to rent a basement apartment or living in a fully renovated brownstone that’s only one of several homes you own, you can’t help mixing and mingling with everyone around you, at least to some extent. It has an equalizing effect, but class differences still stand out in sharp relief—especially in the case of a celebrity.

Though they walk the same pavement you do, you see they don’t have to hustle quite as much; city life isn’t such a struggle for them as it might be for you. Their lives can look exalted from the outside, contained in a bubble.

So one day I was walking home from the grocery store in the middle of the dead heat of August, lugging bags of food up the street, dreading the long climb up the stairs to my apartment, when a movie star passed by.

This was not an uncommon experience, but it always gave me a little frisson: I know that face! Something we all do, I think, when this happens.

She was groomed to perfection, even on this unbearable day, and was striding weightlessly, it seemed to me, up the block. I watched her for a moment, and while I felt a slight twinge of envy, as we all probably do, this voice popped into my head that was rife with bitterness; it would not be silenced.

I knew instantly it was the voice of a woman whose disappointments, frustrations, and rage were pushing her with increasing velocity to the edge of...[read on]

Visit Laura Sims's website.

See Sims's list of five fully immersive novels of psychological suspense.

--Marshal Zeringue