Lisa Black

Lisa Black is the New York Times bestselling author of 14 suspense novels, including works that have been translated into six languages, optioned for film, and shortlisted for the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award. She is also a certified Crime Scene Analyst and certified Latent Print Examiner, beginning her forensics career at the Coroner’s office in Cleveland Ohio and then the police department in Cape Coral, Florida. She has spoken to readers and writers at numerous conferences and is one of two Guests of Honor at 2020 Killer Nashville.

Her new novel is Every Kind of Wicked.

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

My next book involves scammers and fraud, so I’ve been devouring books about con-men, grifters and cult leaders for well over a year. I read The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal, the story of Christian Gerhartsreiter. A German expat, he conned his way through the States for thirty years; during the last twelve he convinced uber-rich and not-wealthy Americans alike that he was a descendent of the John D. Rockefeller, with all the riches that family commands. Oh, and it turns out he also murdered a few people to do it.

Impeccably dressed and incredibly intelligent, Gerhartsreiter had been born in 1961, a slightly pampered boy who grew into a good-looking teenager, intelligent and charming. He might have been exceedingly full of himself, but what good-looking young man isn’t? He happened to meet an American couple on vacation, invited them to his parents’ for dinner, then used their names on an application to become an exchange student in the U.S. He actually showed up on their doorstep in 1985, but only after he’d floated through a few households and one identity--that of Christopher Chichester, film executive. As Chichester he rented a garage room from a somewhat dotty landlady, though he became expert at never letting the wealthy people he hung with see exactly where he lived. But after the landlady’s son and daughter-in-law mysteriously disappeared, he moved on to another coast and another name, becoming Christopher Crowe of Greenwich, Connecticut.

I’m always fascinated by grifters--how they can be such good actors, put so much attention and intelligence into their research, while so callous that they’ll take innocent people’s emotions, money and lives without the slightest shred of remorse. Unfortunately books can never really describe exactly how they manage to fool so many people. I think it’s impossible to put into words, and is a combination of many things--their ability to read people, their ability to absorb information that would make them incredibly successful in a legitimate occupation, and the tendency to accept people when they seem to belong where they are. Once he stepped inside the exclusive clubs and homes, no one thought to ask how he’d gotten there.

Visit Lisa Black's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julian Stockwin

Julian Stockwin was sent at the age of fourteen to Indefatigable, a tough sea-training school. He joined the Royal Navy at fifteen before transferring to the Royal Australian Navy, where he served for eight years in the Far East, Antarctic waters and the South Seas. In Vietnam he saw active service in a carrier task force. After leaving the Navy (rated Petty Officer), Stockwin practiced as an educational psychologist. He lived for some time in Hong Kong, where he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Reserve. He was awarded the MBE and retired with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Stockwin's latest Thomas Kydd novel, To the Eastern Seas, is now available in the US.

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

These days nearly all my reading is non-fiction and work-related, that is, some aspect of the great age of fighting sail. When I do get some down time, so to speak, I particularly enjoy memoirs of merchant mariners who served before the time of the ‘box-boats’. In their days, before the shipping revolution brought about by containerisation, cargo handling was a very labour intensive – and skilled – business. Also, because cargo needed to be hoisted out, load by load, a ship could be weeks in port (modern container ships turn around in hours only). This meant that much of the life of these pre-box boat sailors would be familiar to Kydd. With time to kill, the crew went on the rantan ashore in foreign ports, often returning somewhat the worse for wear. It was still the age of natural fibre so there was a need for skilled splicing and old-fashioned seamanship. Modern ships have polypropylene or wire ropes that are never spliced but metal moulded together. And before the era of satellite communications, once in Neptune’s realm only the radio operator knew what was going on beyond the world of their ship. It made for a close-knit community.

One such book I enjoyed recently is Under a Yellow Sky is a colourful memoir from Simon Hall who went to sea at a time when the British fleet was still one of the greatest in the world and the Red Ensign a common sight in almost every large port. He writes of the shipboard camaraderie and wild jaunts ashore in exotic places. As he tramped around the backwaters of the world he discovered the magic of the sea and encountered people from across the whole spectrum of human behaviour. A maritime world now gone forever.

Visit Julian Stockwin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue