Alafair Burke

Alafair Burke's new novel, Dead Connection, releases in July.

BookBitch interviewed her in May.

From the Q & A:

BB: Michael Connelly and Robert Crais tend to hide oblique references to one another's books within their own books. Laura Lippman claims she hides references to Robert B. Parker's books within her own. Your new book, Dead Connection, has a thinly veiled reference to the main character that is in most of your father's books, and let's face it, you share your name with one of his characters. Do you think your father will be referencing your characters in any of his books? Do you see this as an ongoing or one time only thing?

AB: I have tremendous fun with all of the crime fiction cross references. I was so delighted to see that in Lee Child’s new book, Jack Reacher spends two nights with a Portland prosecutor named Samantha, a reference to my earlier series character, Samantha Kincaid.

In past books, I’ve referred to Jack Reacher and Harry Bosch. In Dead Connection, Ellie Hatcher notices a woman reading Laura Lippman’s To the Power of Three. I hadn’t planned on bringing my father’s character, Dave Robicheaux, into Dead Connection. But when Ellie needed to contact a law enforcement officer in New Iberia, it only made sense that it should be Dave. After so many years of reading my father write the fictional Alafair Robicheaux, writing Dave’s voice was a blast.

I have no idea if the cross-over will ever happen again. Can you imagine Dave Robicheaux in New York? What a great story.

Read the entire interview.

Visit Alafair Burke's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tara McKelvey

Tara McKelvey is the author of Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.

Ken Silverstein interviewed her for Harper's Magazine.

Their opening exchange:

The general story of the abuses at Abu Ghraib has by now been well covered. What has the media missed?

The media only focused on the photographs. They missed the fact that the abuse was systematic and that the worst things were not even shown in the pictures. That’s what my book is about: what happened beyond the frame of the Abu Ghraib photos. Thousands of detainees have gone through U.S.-run facilities in Iraq, but thousands more — anyone held for less than fourteen days — were never registered or tracked. Human-rights reports and interviews I conducted show that some of the worst abuses took place at short-term facilities — a police station in Samarra, a school gymnasium, a trailer, and places like that, where individuals were held for up to two weeks. It’s also important to remember that reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as numerous military documents, show that 70 to 90 percent of the detainees had no information that would have been useful to the troops.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sean Chercover

John Kenyon interviewed Sean Chercover, author the terrific debut crime novel Big City, Bad Blood, at Things I’d Rather Be Doing.

Part of their dialogue:

TIRBD: This has the feel of the first book in a series. Were you conscious of that throughout, or did you drop things in later in the writing process as you began to flesh out ideas for subsequent books?

SC: It was always my goal to make Ray Dudgeon into a series character. After the fist draft was completed, I actually found myself taking things out, more often than dropping them in. I'd look at a scene and I'd say, "Don't need it here; save it for the next book," and I'd cut and paste it into another document. I wanted Ray to remain at least a little bit of an enigma, who we'd get to know over a series of books, and I didn't want Big City, Bad Blood to get bogged down in backstory.

You've said in other interviews that your idea for the second book featuring Ray changed a bit because of the things he experienced in Big City, Bad Blood. Assuming more bad things befall him in subsequent books, are you putting an expiration date on your character by taking these things into account?

I think it's a pretty safe bet that bad things are gonna happen to Ray in subsequent books, but I don't want to be sadistic about it. I mean, he really goes through hell in the first book. But it's a good question. I don't have a specific expiration date, but it is important to me that Ray grow and evolve as a character. Which means one of a number of things… He may get to the point where he just can't (or doesn't want to) do this for a living anymore, so he leaves Chicago and takes over the charter fishing business from his grandfather on St. Simons Island. Or he may come to a tragic end, either physically or mentally. Or he may find a way to do the job, while avoiding the really powerful bad guys and the really dangerous situations. In any of those scenarios, the series has a finite lifespan. But how long will it take him to get to that point? Six books? Ten books? More? I have no idea.

And of course there is another, even more horrific scenario: At some point, people may not want to read about him anymore.

Read the entire interview.

The Page 69 Test: Big City, Bad Blood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde has a new novel releasing this summer: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels.

In 2005 Simone Swink interviewed Fforde for January Magazine.

Part of the interview:

Who or what inspires you when you write?

Personally I have a great deal of fun doing it, which is an inspiration in itself really. It really allows me to daydream, as in "schooldream" which is daydreaming with ink and get paid for it which is something I don't say to schools when I go in and talk to them.

The inspiration comes from everywhere, from what I grew up with. There's so much silliness and nonsense in the world that we regard as normal working procedure. The satirical point of the view may be to counterpoint that. The way we look at classics has been hijacked by the intelligentsia -- Shakespeare is highbrow and seen as something clever people do, which isn't right at all. I basically pull inspiration from everywhere ... I'm interested in lots of stuff.

Read the entire profile.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sebastian Faulks

Stanley Pignal interviewed the novelist Sebastian Faulks for the Financial Times.

A few of the questions and answers:

What’s the last book you couldn’t finish?

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

* * * * *

What is the last thing you read that made you laugh out loud?

The government’s Iraqi WMD dossier.

* * * * *

What book changed your life?

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence.

Read the entire Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Vicki Hendricks

Vicki Hendricks's new book Cruel Poetry is new in bookstores this month.

Here are a couple of exchanges from an interview in which she talks about an earlier novel, Iguana Love:

In Iguana Love Ramona has a voracious sexual appetite -- do you think that women will have a difficult time coming to terms with her sexuality?

People told me something similar about Sherri in Miami Purity, and I was surprised. These are first-person narrators, so the reader is privy to all their inner thoughts. I really don't think either woman falls outside the normal range -- near the top, perhaps. A man would be considered "virile," with a similar capacity for sex -- maybe we need a word for a woman with their degree of heat, because I don't think it's unusual.
* * * *
What about Ramona Romano makes her the predatory female that she becomes in Iguana Love?

Ramona becomes predatory in response to Enzo's manipulation, which she has allowed to overcome her through her obsessive love for him. Enzo and Ramona are two of a kind, both in need of challenge, both bored by easy pickings, both like the reptile, the iguana, that cannot love and, therefore, presents a challenge. If the cold-blooded reptile or person ever returns love, the challenge is over and the positions reverse. Ramona is the iguana to her soon-to-be ex-husband, and Enzo is the iguana to her. Iguana love makes the world go 'round and 'round.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lev Raphael

Julia Buckley recently interviewed Lev Raphael.

Part of the interview:

Aside from seven Nick Hoffmann mysteries, you’ve authored fiction and non-fiction, and your “stories and essays are on university syllabi around the U.S. and in Canada; [your] fiction has been analyzed in books, scholarly journals and at scholarly conferences, including MLA.” Do you have a work that you consider your best? Or do you have an “I don’t love one child more than another” philosophy?

Because I write so many different kinds of things, I have lots of favorites. I think the new mystery,Hot Rocks, has the best plot. I think the story “The Tanteh” in my collection Secret Anniversaries of the Heart is my best story. I’ve done hundreds of reviews, and I know the one I did of an Alan Furst book, a very long one, for Boston Review, was my best. Then there’s the literary historical novel I recently finished that really still blows me away — I never expected to work in that genre, but when the idea hit me last April, it wouldn’t let me go. I’ve never written anything this complex, and it’s definitely the strongest novel I’ve done.

Read the entire interview.

Visit Lev Raphael's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brent Ghelfi

From an interview with Brent Ghelfi, author of the forthcoming Volk's Game:

PC: When did you first become interested in Russia?

BG: Russia first hit my radar screen in high school (late-seventies) when I read War and Peace. I started reading the other great Russian writers and, for the first time, read excerpts from Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. Around this time I also read his classic One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I think this short novel captures prison life during those years better than anything else I've read. The name Volkovoy comes from a character (a prison guard) in that book. I first visited Russia in the mid-eighties while still a student. My overwhelming impression of the country then was the color gray. Foreboding buildings, pale citizens in dark clothes, musty hallways, a shared bathroom with standing water covering the tiled floor, vinegary food. The world was changing, but we certainly didn't know it, and I don't think the people we came into contact with had any idea either. I suspect the fanciful notion that the Soviet Union would dissolve within a decade would have seemed absurd to nearly everyone in Moscow at the time, including me.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Leslie Schnur

From a Q & A with Leslie Schnur, author of Late Night Talking:

Where did you get the idea for this book?

I am obsessed, to say the least, with rude behavior. My kids beg me to ignore it when we see it, my husband thinks I'll get shot one day. I have, sometimes, gone too far, and have been rude myself in the quest for justice. But, for some reason, I think it is my duty, my calling, to rid the world of rudeness, one annoying person at a time.

So when it was time to write my second novel, I knew it had to be about a woman who felt the same way, who dreams of becoming a rude behavior avenger. But, since I love romantic comedy, since my favorite books and movies are about romantic longing, about searching-and perhaps finding-your soul mate, I knew it had to be written in this spirit.

My protagonist, Jeannie Sterling, is from Berkeley, where I grew up. Though my family was quite different from hers, some of Jeannie's experiences and the references to growing up in the 70's in the Bay Area come from my memories.

As a writing teacher once said to me, "It all goes into the stew."

So, using His Girl Friday, with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, as a model, I devised a story about love and righteousness, about pursuing justice while fulfilling the desires of the heart.

Read the entire Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Victor Gischler

Steve Allan recently interviewed Victor Gischler at Noir Writer.

Part of the interview:

Noir Writer: Criminologist Lonnie Athens has stated that people who have never experienced violence should not write about it. He was talking about sociological studies, but I think he would extend that to crime fiction as well. Do you think his statement is true or is he full of shit?

Gischler: Oh ... probably full of shit. Speaking just for myself, the violence in my novels has a pulp cartoon quality. I think there are times when imagination trumps experience. Other authors can successfully transfer their experiences to the page. I respect that, but it's not where I live.

Read the entire interview.

The Page 69 Test: Victor Gischler's Shotgun Opera.

--Marshal Zeringue