Episode 53: Sharon Bolton

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In Little Black Lies, Sharon Bolton’s new stand-alone thriller that takes place in the Falkland Islands in the mid-1990s—twelve years after the invasion and subsequent war—three deeply damaged individuals confess to the same crime          

Episode 52: Marcia Clark

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In her foreword to the re-publication of Compulsion, Meyer Levin’s remarkable novel based on the 1924 Leopold and Loeb trial in Chicago, Marcia Clark—who knows a thing or two about “Trials of the Century”—reminds us that almost 60 years after its publication, Levin’s look at the justice system’s role in society continues to ring true… Read more »

Episode 51: Attica Locke

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In Pleasantville, Attica Locke picks up the story of activist-turned-environmental lawyer Jay Porter, who she introduced to us in her debut thriller, Black Water Rising     In her own words, Attica was thrilled that Pleasantville was published when it was. You see, for the foreseeable future she plans to be otherwise engaged with another… Read more »

Episode 50: Christopher Brookmyre

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In Christopher Brookmyre’s latest, Dead Girl Walking, Jack Parlabane—his journalism career going nowhere fast—decides to do an old friend a favor and investigate the disappearance of her wild child rocker client    

Episode 49: Tom Nolan

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Who better than Ross Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan to edit what we can only hope is the first of many anthologies of the California noir great’s mysteries for The Library of America?     Photo of Tom Nolan ©David Strick

Episode 48: Malcolm Mackay

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The Glasgow Trilogy—The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, How a Gunman Says Goodbye and The Sudden Arrival of Violence—is a trio of crime fiction tales told from the other side of the law     The first installment in Malcolm Mackay’s Glasgow Trilogy, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey… Read more »

Episode 47: M.J. Carter

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Exotic doesn’t even begin to describe the setting of The Strangler Vine, M.J. Carter’s debut crime fiction novel: India in the mid-1830’s complete with tiger hunts, bags of jewels and the pursuit of the mysterious Thuggee cult through the jungles and along the Grand Truck Road     Photo of M.J. Carter ©Roderick Field

Episode 46: Sara Paretsky

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In 1982 when most female characters in mystery fiction were femme fatales, victims or nosy neighbors, Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski started investigating on the mean streets of Chicago     Sara talks about how characters reveal things about themselves, as was the case with V.I.’s close friend Lotty in her current Critical Mass, her tenure… Read more »

Episode 45: Catriona McPherson

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According to Cat, when she learned about the Edgar Award nomination for her stand alone mystery, The Day She Died, the Scottish crime fiction writer lost complete control of her dialect and wrote to a U.S. editor that she was “chuffed as little mince balls”   Les Klinger and I also spoke to Cat about her Dandy… Read more »

Episode 44: Owen Laukkanen & Owen Matthews

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The Stolen Ones, Owen Laukkanen’s fourth installment of the Stevens and Windermere series, goes down some very, very dark roads as the pair of investigators criss-cross the U.S. hunting down human traffickers     And Owen Matthews, Laukkanen’s literary alter-ego, joins us to talk about his recently released YA crime fiction novel, How to Win at… Read more »