Charlie Price

Charlie Price lives in northern California. He is an executive coach for business leaders and has also worked with at-risk teens in schools, hospitals, and communities. His novels include Desert Angel and The Interrogation of Gabriel James, winner of the Edgar Award.

Price's latest novel is Dead Investigation.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:

I usually keep a dense non-fiction going and read it a chapter at a time so I can better incorporate the content. If I don’t remember tomorrow what I read today, I reread the same chapter. I’m currently on The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin. His neuroscience gives me usable guidelines for managing the growing amount of information I attempt to juggle. Since working on psych locked units I’ve studied brain research looking for a better understanding of memory and inspiration. It’s particularly reassuring to me that brains were developed to solve mysteries and that, as an organ, it has evolved hidden but effective ways of operating. Just before Levitin I was astounded Yuval Noah Harari’s revolutionary Sapiens, tracing human development through the incremental imaginations that allowed man to organize and be productive in larger and larger groups. I majored in the history of ideas at Stanford but I have never before encountered such a broad and engrossing perspective – something like the Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Between non-fiction chapters, I break this more intense reading with noir detective pleasures like Harry Dolan’s David Malone series, a very fresh and compelling approach to crime fiction. I have read so many detective novels in the last forty years I’m always looking for something smart that puts characters ahead of the plot. Jess Walter did that with Land of the Blind, featuring a woman police officer who struggles with her personal and professional relations as she doggedly works through a complex case that haunts her.

Raised in Colorado and Montana, I pay attention to contemporary Western authors. McGuane’s essays, Some Horses, was detailed and visceral. During its pages I felt like I was working with him on his Montana ranch in the country around the Boulder River that I particularly like to fish.

Visit Charlie Price's website.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Investigation.

--Marshal Zeringue