Lawyer, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Director of Life After Innocence, author of 14 novels—including her just released The Dog Park and the Izzy McNeil series of mysteries—and the non-fiction Long Way Home: A Young Man Lost in the System and the Two Women Who Found Him. … Read more »
Posts Categorized: Podcast
Episode 17: Roger Hobbs
The protagonist of Roger Hobbs’ debut novel, Ghostman, may not be a nice guy, but he’s a great character. This is the second in our two-part series on fixers. Roger Hobbs is nothing if not thoughtful and methodical. He timed the seven years of rejections that writers endure to coincide with his time… Read more »
Episode 16: Lyndsay Faye
The Baker Street Babe talks with Les Klinger about the next book in the Timothy Wilde trilogy, writing for the Watson and Holmes graphic stories and how Jane Eyre can coax out the dark side for a character in her new novel. By her own admission Lyndsay Faye thinks it’s a good idea… Read more »
Episode 15: Mike Lawson
Political Fixer Joe DeMarco is back in House Reckoning, which takes him back to his hometown of Queens, New York, to rekindle old friendships and make new enemies. I like what Mike Lawson had to say about choosing a fixer as a central character. Not a private investigator, police detective, or lawyer, a… Read more »
Episode 14: Becky Masterman
Becky Masterman describes Brigid Quinn, the 59-year old protagonist of her debut novel, Rage Against the Dying, as a cross between Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker. It turns out people are interested in female characters over the age of 30, in spite of what one agent to whom Becky Masterman initially sent… Read more »
Episode 13: Julia Keller
Later next month, just in time for a good Labor Day read, Summer of the Dead—the third in Julia Keller’s series about Raythune County, West Virginia prosecuting attorney Bell Elkins—will be released. If you haven’t read Ms. Keller’s previous two works A Killing in the Hills and Bitter River, I suggest you start reading… Read more »
Episode 12: Paul Doiron
Toto, I don’t think we’re in Cabot Cove anymore. For the most part, popular culture associates the intersection of mysteries and the state of Maine with Murder She Wrote. You know, the circa ‘80s episodic TV series that featured the quite brilliant Angela Lansbury as a bicycle-riding, Miss Marple-esque mystery writer in a fictional Maine… Read more »
Episode 11: Megan Abbott
“The suburbs are filled with secrets.” –Megan Abbott Read any of Megan Abbott’s last three books and you’ll find there is no darker heart than that of a teenage girl. I think she’s invented a genre: teenage girl suburban noir. Reading one of Megan’s novels is a little like looking at the American… Read more »
Episode 10: Alan Furst
The author of Midnight in Europe talks to SoM about everything from good and evil to romantics and two-lane blacktop roads in France. Book tour for Midnight in Europe photo: © Rainer Hosch
Episode 9: Annie Jacobsen
The New York Times best selling author on her book that delves into the secret program the U.S. employed to sanitize the relocation of Nazi scientists to America after the end of World War II. Annie Jacobsen and I sat down at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books to discuss her most recent book,… Read more »
