Part of the interview:
You have four novels with cat references in the title (well, two are cat, one is “tiger,” and one is “feline.”) Do you like cats? Is there a significance to the repeated theme?Read the entire interview.Actually all of the books in the John Thinnes/Jack Caleb series were submitted with cat titles. Incendiary Designs was supposed to be called Cats Burning (no actual cats were injured in the production of that story) but St. Martin’s refused to publish it under that title. In those books, cats are a metaphor for detectives, who have a great deal in common with feline hunters.
Cool. What made you start writing mysteries? When did you start?
Just for the hell of it, I took a screenwriting course and had to write a screenplay about something. I’d seen a bad police/buddy film and decided to try to write a better one. That became a screenplay for The Man Who Understood Cats, which no one in Hollywood would look at. On Barbara D’Amato’s advice, I novelized the story and entered it in the Malice Domestic contest. After the story won the contest, my editor asked if I was going to write a sequel. What can you say to that but “yes”?
My Book, The Movie: Michael Allen Dymmoch's Death in West Wheeling.
The Page 69 Test: Michael Allen Dymmoch's White Tiger.
--Marshal Zeringue