Elizabeth Heiter

Elizabeth Heiter likes her suspense to feature strong heroines, chilling villains, psychological twists, and a little bit (or a lot!) of romance. Her research has taken her into the minds of serial killers, through murder investigations, and onto the FBI Academy’s shooting range.

Heiter's new novel is Vanished.

From her Q & A at the Harlequin blog:

What kind of research did you do to put you into the mind of FBI profiler Evelyn Baine?

In order to create a realistic FBI profiler, I read up on how to write a criminal personality profile (there are a lot of books out there written by former FBI profilers), studied real-life cases to create my own profiles in order to test my understanding and visited the FBI Academy at Quantico for a firsthand look at the process of becoming an agent. I also talked to a number of current and former FBI agents because I really wanted to get the details right. As I was doing the research, I realized what a difficult job profiling was, and wanted to give Evelyn a deeply personal motivation for why she picked this kind of work: her best friend was abducted when Evelyn was twelve and never found.

Did you find inspiration for the Nursery Rhyme Killer in the news or elsewhere?

The inspiration for the Nursery Rhyme Killer came from...[read on]

Visit Elizabeth Heiter's website and watch the book trailer for Vanished.

My Book, The Movie: Vanished.

The Page 69 Test: Vanished.

--Marshal Zeringue