Trouble is the engine of fiction, and a novel set during World War II has the advantage of plenty of trouble. Soldiers, spies, diplomats, refugees, commandos, secret police, prisoners of war: they are all there, and surely the war is more fun to read about than it was to live through. Some of the best […]

I suppose I should’ve seen it coming. After all, I’m the one who wrote a book about a hitman who hits hitmen. It’s no surprise folks want to know which hitman novels inspired it. The fact is, while I’m as fond of hitman stories as any lifelong crime-fic fan, only one of the books that […]

When Strand asked me to name what I considered to be the top ten spooky mysteries, I had to step back and look at what spooky meant to me. As the word spooky crosses my lips, I literally get the chills. I can vividly recall the first novel I read where this happened. I was […]