Sam Wiebe

Sam Wiebe is an award-winning and best-selling author of Pacific Northwest crime fiction.

His Wakeland series includes Invisible Dead, Cut You Down, Hell and Gone, Sunset and Jericho, and the upcoming Wrath of Exiles. The series has been praised for its authenticity and social realism. He’s also the author of Ocean Drive, Last of the Independents, Never Going Back, and A Lonesome Place for Dying under the pen name Nolan Chase.

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

My last read of 2024 was Nicholas Nickleby, the novel Dickens started in the middle of writing Oliver Twist. It’s better (and less antisemitic) than Twist, but not as compelling as his latter masterpieces. What’s remarkable is that two years after Nickleby came out, the corrupt and brutal ‘Yorkshire schools’ the book takes aim against were nearly all out of business. Amazing to think a novel could have such an effect on the world.

Valancourt reissues a lot of great horror fiction, and I’ve also been reading their first two volumes of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, edited by Tara Moore and Allen Grove. Each volume has some standout tales.

Visit Sam Wiebe's website.

My Book, The Movie: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Cut You Down.

Q&A with Sam Wiebe.

The Page 69 Test: Hell and Gone.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (March 2022).

My Book, The Movie: Hell and Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Sunset and Jericho.

Writers Read: Sam Wiebe (April 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Sunset and Jericho.

The Page 69 Test: Ocean Drive.

My Book, The Movie: Ocean Drive.

--Marshal Zeringue

Clay McLeod Chapman

Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of novels What Kind of Mother, Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, story collections nothing untoward, commencement, and rest area, as well as The Tribe middlegrade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal, and Academic Assassins.

His new novel is Wake Up and Open Your Eyes.

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

Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson

Evenson is known for his economy. Within his stories, there's never a sentence that feels unnecessary. There's no fat to his fiction. It's all lean, efficient and effective and profoundly unnerving. His most recent collection expands upon this at such an exponential rate, which may be due to the fact that there's just as much scifi here as horror. Explorations of liminality, autonomy and parenthood run throughout. The minimalism within each sentence ended up creating a chasm in my imagination, where there was so much space -- dark, black space -- to fill in the Hemmingway gaps. I feel like these stories are portholes into other worlds and Evenson truly introduced me to a whole new universe of things to be afraid of.

Visit Clay McLeod Chapman's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Remaking.

The Page 69 Test: The Remaking.

My Book, The Movie: Whisper Down the Lane.

Q&A with Clay McLeod Chapman.

The Page 69 Test: Whisper Down the Lane.

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2022).

The Page 69 Test: What Kind of Mother.

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Cannell

Michael Cannell is the author of five non-fiction books, most recently Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation. His previous books are A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc., Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling, The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit, and I.M. Pei: Mandarin of Modernism.

Cannell has worked as a reporter for Time and an editor for The New York Times. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and many other publications.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Cannell's reply:

Some years ago a book editor took me to lunch at a Midtown Manhattan sushi restaurant. Over miso soup and tuna rolls, I proposed a complicated structure for the book he had hired me to write. His response was this: I don’t care what structure you employ, as long as you ask yourself what the characters want at the start of each chapter. It was the best advice I ever received.

I write in a style know as narrative non-fiction. I’m a journalist. I tell true stories drawn from history. I fabricate nothing. Nor do I exaggerate or embellish. My books may, however, read like fiction, at least I hope they do, because I borrow techniques found in novels. Among other things, I try to impart my subjects’ feelings and motivations — their inner lives — as my editor suggested.

Where might you observe the most skillful examples of character development? I direct you to Colm Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn, the story of a small-town Irish girl who emigrates to New York in 1951. Toibin is a master of subterranean emotions, of plumbing the complicated depths of feeling and motivations even as the surface of the story remains almost still.

Visit Michael T. Cannell's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Limit.

The Page 99 Test: The Limit.

My Book, The Movie: Incendiary.

My Book, The Movie: A Brotherhood Betrayed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Meryl Gordon

Meryl Gordon is an award-winning journalist and tenured NYU journalism professor. She is the author of four biographies; two have been New York Times bestsellers. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times.

A native of Rochester, New York and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Gordon has worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer, TV and radio reporter. She has covered a wide array of topics including national politics, influential New Yorkers, police and courts, economics and business, fashion, food, celebrities, pioneering women and book reviews. She is based in New York City.

Gordon's new book is The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington's Most Famous Hostess.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Gordon's reply:

Since I am a biographer, people expect me to read a lot of biographies and sometimes I do, to see how other authors frame their subjects and deal with the ambiguities. But for pleasure, I’m much more likely to read novels, mysteries, fantasy and books recommended by friends.

A few high points of this year: Martin MacInnes’ stunning novel In Ascension. Riveting, beautifully-written futuristic book, kept me up late at night, made me think. Satisfying ending, which rarely seems to happen.

Ian Rankin’s latest in the Inspector Rebus series: Midnight and Blue. I am addicted to this series, and in this new book, the writer is in top form.

My favorite book gifts to friends continues to be Rachel Joyce’s trilogy, beginning with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. So surprising, so meaningful, so fascinating to hear the same story from the perspective of three characters. Reminder of how we all experience life in different ways.

My reading has taken a different turn since the July death of my husband, political columnist Walter Shapiro. Another widow recommended, How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies, by Therese Rando. I initially resisted the suggestion but ultimately found the book to be tremendously helpful. It made me understand that I wasn’t going crazy, that a lot of my reactions are normal.

I also rediscovered the work of Anne Lamott, especially Traveling Mercies. She is so wise and honest and even funny at times, writing about loss and grief and healing. A comforting companion on life’s journey.

Visit Meryl Gordon's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Phantom of Fifth Avenue.

Writers Read: Meryl Gordon (October 2017).

The Page 99 Test: Bunny Mellon.

My Book, The Movie: Bunny Mellon.

My Book, The Movie: The Woman Who Knew Everyone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Vicki Delany

Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than forty books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: the Tea by the Sea mysteries for Kensington, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane Books, the Catskill Resort mysteries for Penguin Random House, and the Lighthouse Library series (as Eva Gates) for Crooked Lane.

Delany is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada and co-founder and organizer of the Women Killing It Crime Writing Festival. Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, the Bony Blithe, the Ontario Library Association Golden Oak, and the Arthur Ellis Awards. She is the recipient of the 2019 Derrick Murdoch Award for contributions to Canadian crime writing. Delany lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

Delany's new novel, her tenth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery, is The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

I’m not usually one for seasonal reading. I’ll read a book anytime, and not much care about the season. But, this year I’ve accidently found myself reading two Christmas set books.

First is Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson. This is a short book by the hugely popular author of Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, both of which I enjoyed enormously. The new book is in the same style as the earlier, with constant interruptions by the narrator, pointing the reader to important plot points, chatting about the rules of writing mysteries. It’s Christmas in Australia, which is considerably different from what we in Canada are used to, and that makes for a fun read too. Drinks around the pool on Christmas Day anyone?

My second Christmas read is Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon by James Lovegrove. In this book, Holmes and Watson (the ‘real’ ones) go to Yorkshire in the days before Christmas, summoned by a young woman who fears she is going mad because she’s seen a Christmas Demon from the stories her mother used to tell her. Suspects all gather in the castle for the holidays and the game is definitely afoot along with seasonal festivities.

Another book I recently enjoyed is One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware. I loved Ruth Ware’s previous books, but I shied away from this one for a while because the plot just seemed so cliched. A couple are chosen to participate on a reality TV show on a tropical island. A storm separates the contestants from the production crew and – gasp – people start dying. If you can get over that, the story is a good one and the characters interesting.

Visit Vicki Delany's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen.

The Page 69 Test: A Scandal in Scarlet.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in a Teacup.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (September 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Deadly Summer Nights.

The Page 69 Test: The Game is a Footnote.

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2023).

Writers Read: Vicki Delany (January 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Sign of Four Spirits.

The Page 69 Test: A Slay Ride Together With You.

--Marshal Zeringue

Katie Tallo

Katie Tallo has been an award-winning screenwriter and director for more than three decades. After winning an international contest for unpublished fiction, she began writing novels, including Dark August and Poison Lilies.

She has a daughter and lives with her husband in Ottawa, Ontario.

Tallo's new novel is Buried Road.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

Wayne Ng’s Johnny Delivers. I'm absolutely loving this rollercoaster of a mystery. Can’t wait to get back to it every time I have to put it down. It’s wonderful, charming, funny and fast-paced. Dripping with 70s nostalgia, it’s as much an action-packed thrill ride as it is a poignant, funny, nuanced story about a Chinese teenager coming-of-age amidst complicated family dynamics. Equal parts naïve and wise, scared and brave, Johnny finds comfort in imaginary heroes like Atticus Finch and Bruce Lee, but Ng skillfully transforms Johnny into the real hero of the story. I’d recommend it for readers of all ages.

Visit Katie Tallo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dark August.

Q&A with Katie Tallo.

Writers Read: Katie Tallo (June 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Buried Road.

--Marshal Zeringue

D.W. Buffa

D.W. Buffa's newest novel to be released is Evangeline, a courtroom drama about the murder trial of captain who is one of the few to survive the sinking of his ship.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Here is Buffa's take on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary:

In 1986, Gore Vidal, as only he could, made a lethal distinction between what Flaubert tried to do in what he wrote and what, more than a century later, American writers of fiction considered adequate: “To the end of a long life, he kept on making the only thing he thought worth making: sense, a quality almost entirely lacking in American literature where stupidity - if sufficiently sincere and authentic - is deeply revered and easily achieved.” Vidal then added: “In our post-literary time, it is hard to believe that once upon a time a life could be devoted to the perfection of an art form, and of all the art forms the novel was the most - exigent, to use a modest word. Today the novel is either a commodity that anyone can put together, or it is an artifact, which means nothing or anything or everything, depending on one’s literary theory.”

If this seems to prove the accuracy of Nietzsche’s prediction that when everyone learned to read, no one would know how to write, and the prescience of Schopenhauer’s remark that with the advent of mass publications, “everyone can now read themselves stupid,” a hundred years before Gore Vidal made his complaint about the state of American literature, Henry James made his own complaint, not about American fiction, but about Gustave Flaubert.

“M. Flaubert and his contemporaries have pushed so far the education of the senses and the cultivation of the grotesque in literature and the arts that it has left them morally stranded and hopeless.” James describes Flaubert as “Sedentary, cloistered, passionate, cynical, tormented in his life of magnificent expression…..” But, as James understood, it was only this “sedentary, cloistered, passionate” life that allowed Flaubert to write Madame Bovary, the novel about which James is unstinting in his praise. “The perfection of Madame Bovary is one of the commonplaces of criticism.” And it is only because of Flaubert’s obsession with perfection that James can call Flaubert the “novelists’ novelist.”

Which is not to say that Henry James liked it. The story is “too small an affair,” and the characters “abject human beings,” and Emma Bovary “not the least little bit complicated.’’ And James is right. There is nothing heroic; nothing, or almost nothing, that would make anyone who reads it wish they had known any of these people. Charles Bovary nearly fails medical school, becomes an ‘officer of health,’ which is one degree below a doctor, and marries a widow, a much older woman, because he thinks her wealthy. When she dies, three years later, he marries Emma who, after eight years of marriage in which she has two tempestuous love affairs and contracts debts she cannot pay, kills herself and leaves behind a distraught husband and a motherless child.

The question is how could Flaubert - how could anyone - turn a story as drearily predictable as this into one of the greatest novels ever written? The answer, or part of the answer, the first part of an answer, is style; the form, the way Flaubert managed to turn prose into poetry; or, rather, into something close to music. This did not happen because of a natural gift, as if he could, without conscious effort, dash off whole paragraphs in no more time than it took to move his pen across the page. He spent five full years writing Madame Bovary, five years in which the constant every day effort was to find the one right word to make the perfect sentence, perfect because, as he explained, “A really good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, something you cannot change, and just as rhythmic and sonorous.”

The effort was exhaustive. In January of l853, after he had already been working on the novel for two years, he wrote to one of his few friends, “It has taken me five days to write one page.” This was not unusual. It took three months to write thirty pages describing “my great scene of the county fair.” It was worth it. He had been able to accomplish something that had not been done before, turn the written word into music, classical music. “If ever the values of a symphony have been transformed to literature, it will be in this chapter of my book. It must be a vibrating totality of sounds. One should hear simultaneously the bellowing of the bulls, the murmurs of love, and the phrases of politicians.”

Flaubert was not interested in writing something that, as agents and publishers would put it today, would sell; he had nothing but contempt for those who thought of literature - or anything else - in terms of what people might want to buy. “Mankind, for him,” insisted Henry James, “was made up of the three of four persons, Ivan Turgenev in the number, who perceived what he was trying for, and of the innumerable millions who didn’t.” And of that small number who understood what Flaubert was attempting, Marcel Proust, having spent his own long years creating a work that deals with time, discovered how Flaubert was able to convey the sense, the feeling, of time passing, of the flow, the unity and continuity of time. It was the use of the imperfect. This is lost for readers of the English translations of Madame Bovary. What should read: “She would begin by looking around to see if,” reads instead, “She began by looking.” What should read, “Her thoughts, aimless at first, would wander,” reads instead, “Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered.” A characteristic quality is changed into a single event, an event without any necessary connection to any habitual feature of conduct or personality. The sense of time has been removed.

The question remains, and becomes more interesting - Why did Flaubert, a writer who would spend days sitting alone in his study, the study in the house he had inherited from his father, a study in which he worked for forty years, a study where he was constantly trying to get a single sentence exactly right, a writer who fully expected to produce a classic when he began Madame Bovary, write about the depressing lives of philistines and mediocrities? Why, in other words, did he decide to write about the bourgeoisie? What was he trying to do?

Flaubert began to write Madame Bovary in l851. The story, however, is set not in the present, the middle of the nineteenth century, but in the past; not the distant past, just a few decades earlier, the first third of the century. Charles Bovary is born in l815, just after what one of the most insightful writers of the 20th century called the “last event of truly European significance…the French Revolution and Napoleon’s attempt to unify politically and legally the European states and peoples.” From that point forward, Europe “no longer lived with faith in a genuine mission; it simply disseminated its wares and its scientific and technological civilization in every direction.”

This was the bourgeois revolution. History, after this, according to Hegel, and not just Hegel, would be a history without heroic deeds. Everyone would think of themselves not as citizens, willing and even eager to perform their duties, all sharing a common belief in how they should live, but as private individuals free to think for themselves and get for themselves whatever seemed good to them. Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary to show the result.

Charles Bovary is dull as dust. He attends medical school, but the courses “were to him as so many sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.” He fails, and then, finally, passes his examinations by “ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart.” Bovary is lazy, without much intelligence, but sufficiently methodical to be capable of achieving a minimal competence. And that is all he wants. He marries, the first time, for financial security. A comfortable existence is his only real ambition. He falls in love with Emma because of the way she looks. Her hands are not beautiful, but her eyes are. They seemed black, “because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.”

Emma is in love with Charles, or thinks she is, because, later, after they are married, she thinks she must have been mistaken. She does not find the happiness she had expected. What she thought would happen, what she thought her happiness would be, was what she had learned from the reading she done, the novels she had read, the novels that had taught her that a man should “know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries.” But Charles, her husband, was nothing like this. At the end of the day, “he ate dinner, went to bed, and lay on his back and snored.” Emma began to imagine what it would be like married to someone “handsome, distinguished, witty.”

Charles thinks Emma is happy, but she resents his “easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.” She dreams of Paris where everything is “full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy.” The closer things are to her, the more she dislikes them. She would have liked to have a famous name; she knew she was every bit as good as the women who had one. “She wanted at the same time to die and to live in Paris.” She is supremely discontented. She reads all the latest authors, like Balzac and George Sand, and sees in them “imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.”

Emma, like everyone else, is free to think what she wants and to read what she likes. Everyone becomes not different, but the same, all driven by the same desire to have more of what, as far as they can see, everyone wants, all the pleasure, all the thrilling, but safe, adventures money makes possible. This is the world of the bourgeoisie, a world in which the search for excitement becomes the boredom of routine, the world in which Emma Bovary believed the only life worth living was what she had learned through the eyes of authors she has had the misfortune to take seriously. It is an interesting question whether her life would have been different, whether she would have found contentment with a husband who adored her and a child who depended upon her, had she been able to read in advance the novel Gustave Flaubert would later write about her.

Flaubert would have doubted that it would have made any difference at all. In his unfinished novel, Bouvard and Pécuchet, he attempted to compile a catalogue of human stupidity. The catalogue included everything that was considered truth in an age that had abandoned both religion and thought. It is a catalogue of nearly everything we now believe.

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Third reading: The Great Gatsby. 

Third reading: Brave New World.

Third reading: Lord Jim.

Third reading: Death in the Afternoon.

Third Reading: Parade's End.

Third Reading: The Idiot.

Third Reading: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Third Reading: The Scarlet Letter.

Third Reading: Justine.

Third Reading: Patriotic Gore.

Third reading: Anna Karenina.

Third reading: The Charterhouse of Parma.

Third Reading: Emile.

Third Reading: War and Peace.

Third Reading: The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Third Reading: Bread and Wine.

Third Reading: “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities.

Third reading: Eugene Onegin.

Third Reading: The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Third Reading: The Europeans.

Third Reading: The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction.

Third Reading: Doctor Faustus.

Third Reading: the reading list of John F. Kennedy.

Third Reading: Jorge Luis Borges.

Third Reading: History of the Peloponnesian War.

Third Reading: Mansfield Park.

Third Reading: To Each His Own.

Third Reading: A Passage To India.

Third Reading: Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Third Reading: The Letters of T.E. Lawrence.

Third Reading: All The King’s Men.

Third Reading: The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.

Third Reading: Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt.

Third Reading: Main Street.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II.

Third Reading: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Third Reading: Fiction's Failure.

Third Reading: Hermann Hesse's Demian.

Third Reading: Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July.

Third Reading: Caesar’s Ghost.

Third reading: The American Constitution.

Third Reading: A Tale of Two Cities.

Third Reading: The Leopard.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tracy Clark

Tracy Clark is the author of Echo, the third novel in the Detective Harriet Foster police procedural series. She is also author of the Cass Raines PI series, a two-time Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author, the 2024 Anthony Award-winner for Best Paperback Original, the 2024 Lefty Award-winner for Best Mystery and the 2022 winner of the Sara Paretsky Award.

Clark is a board member-at-large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland and a member of International Thriller Writers, and serves on the boards of Mystery Writers of America Chicago and the Midwest Mystery Conference.

Recently I asked Clark about what she was reading. Her reply:

I’m always reading something. I read when I should be writing my own stuff (don’t tell my editor). My latest deadline looms. I am reading Barbara Nickless’ The Drowning Game. It’s wonderful.

I won’t give it away because in this one, discovery is the fun part. Fundamentally, it’s about two sisters, Nadia and Cass Brenner. When Cass falls from the 40th floor of a Singapore hotel, ruled suicide, Nadia isn’t having it, and begins investigating. The Drowning Game is twisty and ominous and foreboding. Nothing is as it seems. Nuff said. I don’t want to ruin it.

Nickless is a wonderful writer. The words practically jump off the page. I like when they do that.

Visit Tracy Clark's website.

Q&A with Tracy Clark.

My Book, The Movie: What You Don’t See.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (July 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Hide.

The Page 69 Test: Fall.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (December 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Echo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Catriona McPherson

Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the Dandy Gilver historical detective stories, the Last Ditch mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist The Day She Died and Mary Higgins Clark finalist Strangers at the Gate. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters’ Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.

McPherson's new novel is Scotzilla.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

This writer certainly reads. I love writing and I’m a writer in all of my daydreams but if I was one of those writers who couldn’t read while working on a book I’d be something else for work and keep reading.

Recently, because I was coming to Washington DC for the season, a friend pressed Jackie, by Dawn Tripp, into my hands. It’s a fictional account of the life of Jackie Kennedy, from when she was Jackie Bouvier up until after she was Jackie Onassis. It’s not at all the kind the of book I would normally read (although I enjoyed Curtis Sittenfield’s American Wife, a novel about Laura Bush) but I devoured it. Walking the streets of Georgetown where Jack and Jackie lived certainly helped, but it’s a lush novel wherever you might read it.

The last book I finished was Delia Pitts’ Trouble In Queenstown, a series opener about a PI in NJ. Vandy Myrick is an African American woman with a bruised heart, who takes on a murder case mired in small-town politics of the very murkiest kind. I got it signed when Delia and I were at a mystery conference together in Chicago recently. It went straight to the top of the TBR pile, because it’s a novel bursting with originality and wit, and it gets increasingly “up all night” as it goes hurtling to the denouement. I’m so glad it’s a series. I’ll be back.

One that’s in my TBR pile for next month is Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone This Christmas has a Secret. I was one of the millions who admired his debut (Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone) and I do like a Christmas book or two in the pile I curate for the holidays. I’ll read this in Santa pjs by the fire in a houseful of food. Lovely!

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

--Marshal Zeringue

Timothy Jay Smith

From a young age, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. En route, he’s found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that had him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.

Smith has won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays in numerous prestigious competitions. Fire on the Island won the Gold Medal in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel, and his screenplay adaptation of it was named Best Indie Script by WriteMovies. Another novel, The Fourth Courier, was a finalist for Best Gay Mystery in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. Previously, he won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the de Groot Prize) for his novel, Checkpoint (later published as A Vision of Angels). Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012.

Smith's latest novel is Istanbul Crossing.

One novel on his recent reading list:

Havoc by Christopher Bollen

The best way to hide a secret is to keep it from yourself, or so muses Maggie Burkhardt, an octogenarian who’s perfected the practice of ignoring the dark secrets in her own life. Widowed when her “perfect” husband Peter died, and only days later losing her daughter, Maggie has fled her once-idyllic but ultimately grief-filled life in Wisconsin to live in Europe, where she develops a penchant for meddling in other people’s – mostly couples’ – lives.

Occasionally, a couple’s problems arise from infidelity, but in most cases it’s Maggie’s perception that they are temperamentally mismatched, and she sets out to liberate them from relationships in which they don’t even know they’re stuck. Frequently, she concocts evidence of extramarital sex that she backs up with false accounts of what she’s witnessed. She has a remarkable list of success stories in breaking up couples, preventing marriages, and stopping adoptions; but when one situation becomes homicidal, she needs to flee again.

Eventually, she ends up at the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel, a colonial grande dame on the banks of the Nile River, where she’s been living for three months when the story opens. She’s continued her meddlesome activities and is caught red-handed by eight-year-old Otto, a recent arrival traveling with his flappable mother.

Otto, smart and devilish, quickly realizes that what he’s witnessed gives him power over Maggie. He blackmails her to pay for an upgrade from a shabby room to a royal suite. He demands expensive gifts. The boy seems to be everywhere; spying on her, stealing sentimental objects from her room, and unnerving her to the point that she fantasizes killing him. Adept at internet research, the boy also unearths things from her past that lead to her confronting long-buried secrets, in the process unleashing a madness that she’d barely managed to keep at bay.

Bollen is a master storyteller and he’s at his best in Havoc. Told entirely from Maggie’s point of view, the reader is shoulder-to-shoulder with her as she slides into a state of murderous paranoia. Her battle of wits with Otto remains dark and dangerous all the way to its gut-wrenching end.

If there were a single book defining psychological suspense, Havoc is it. Trigger warning: once you start, you can’t put it down.

Visit Timothy Jay Smith's website.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (May 2019).

My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Courier.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Courier.

Q&A with Timothy Jay Smith.

The Page 69 Test: Fire on the Island.

The Page 69 Test: Istanbul Crossing.

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (October 2024a).

Writers Read: Timothy Jay Smith (October 2024b).

--Marshal Zeringue