Jo Perry

Jo Perry earned a Ph.D. in English, taught college literature and writing, produced and wrote episodic television, and has published articles, book reviews, and poetry.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, novelist Thomas Perry. They have two adult children. Their three cats and two dogs are rescues.

Perry's latest novel is Dead is Good.

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

I am reading a bunch of things at once, among them Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Mary Roach's hilarious history and account of the search for life after death––and when it's not found––a catalogue the inventive and grotesque fakes produced to con the gullible, the heartbroken and the wishful. I've learned that the desire for the immortal is immortal.

I just finished Hack by Duncan MacMaster, a very funny mix of 80's popular TV culture and murder mystery. As a former TV writer, I enjoyed the 80's TV stuff and enjoyed the gruff, rough around the edges, smart protagonist, Jake Mooney, a professional ghost writer whose once-famous actor client is killed.

I loved Timothy Hallinan's spectacularly original and satisfying Pulped. It's a mystery yes, but also a meditation of the author's relationship to the reader, and a contemplation of imagined worlds. I loved it.

And I just started Jacqueline Chadwick's dark thriller, In The Still. The protagonist, Ali, is a successful, troubled and talented forensic pathologist/psychologist who's exchanged her career for full-time motherhood in a remote Canadian village. Ali is terrific (with an emphasis on terror). Ali's complexity as a person and as a woman really interests me and impresses me. Ali is at once a highly competent professional, a resentful housewife, a worried mother whose head is filled with the quoditian minutiae required of parents, a person fighting the encroachment of mental illness, and an outsider in a small, tightly bound community. Ali's foul-mouthed rant against life-sapping housework is magnificent.

Visit Jo Perry's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Jo Perry & Lola and Lucy.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Is Good.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Is Good.

--Marshal Zeringue