Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of Monkey Justice and Home Invasion and co-editor of Discount Noir. She won a Derringer award for her story "My Hero."Abbott's new novel is Concrete Angel.
From her Q & A with novelist (and her daughter) Megan Abbott at The Life Sentence:
Megan: We were definitely a book-loving household. But how do you think it came to be that we both wrote crime fiction?Visit Patricia Abbott's website.
Patricia: I’ve sporadically kept a log of books I read. The list is pretty evenly divided between crime fiction and so-called literary fiction. I just gobbled down Ross Macdonald, Margaret Millar, Ruth Rendell, Nichols Freeling, John D. MacDonald, Rex Stout, Patricia Highsmith, Sjöwal and Wahlöö. But my favorite books from more general fiction were also always stories about people pushed to the limit, people who desperately wanted something, be it Jay Gatsby, Lily Bart, or Holden Caulfield, I can’t think of many books that sidestep this yearning. Crime fiction just pushes them a little further. They act in more violent ways, perhaps.
With you, I remember crime first coming in through movies. You watched every noir movie Bill Kennedy (“Bill Kennedy at the Movies,” which aired on WKBD in Detroit) showed on Sundays. Even as an eight- or ten-year-old, you were drawn to them. I especially remember you watching a movie called The Locket.
Megan: The Locket, of course! Freudian noir at its best, and the only movie I can think of with a flashback-in-a-flashback-in-a-flashback. As far as mysteries, as a young kid, I remember beginning with a few Nancy Drews, but not many. But I read a lot of Agatha Christie and we had them all. And all those Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines we used to find for me at used bookstores.
Patricia: But what you were attracted to from a very early age was true crime. Although we never censored your reading, I sometimes wondered how...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Concrete Angel.
Writers Read: Patricia Abbott.
My Book, The Movie: Concrete Angel.
--Marshal Zeringue