I interviewed Wiley Cash earlier this year for his debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home. He just won the Crime Writers Association's John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Congrats, Wiley! Enjoy the interview!

The Big Interrogation: Michael Wiley just received a Shamus for best hardcover p.i. novel at last week's Bouchercon 2012 in Cleveland. I went to Bouchercon last year in St. Louis and interviewed Michael about his third Joe Kozmarski book, A Bad Night's Sleep, which just won the Shamus. During the interview, my microphone pre-amp started to die. About 15 minutes in, my channel starts to sound pretty rough, but Michael's sounds great all the way through. Because of the audio problems, I wasn't able to use the interview for Book Talk, but I thought it'd be a great time to resurrect it given his recent triumph. And here's my interview with him about his 2010 mystery, The Bad Kitty Lounge.

Tale of True Crime: Lawrence Norfolk is a journalist and award-winning novelist. His first novel in twelve years, John Saturnall's Feast, follows an orphan who becomes England's greatest chef during the period leading up to and including the English Civil War in the 17th century. You can hear my interview with him about John Saturnall's Feast on Book Talk.

For the big interrogation this week, we wade into the swamp that is southern gothic. Michael Morris's third novel, Man in the Blue Moon, offers up transgression, revenge, and a crooked preacher. Set in Florida's panhandle during the closing weeks of World War I, this is not the genteel south; this is a land full of drinkers, scheming bankers, and mysterious strangers.

Gregg Hurwitz gets a little too much local color at a Moscow bar in this week's tale of true crime. His latest novel is The Survivor, which is available from St. Martin's press.

And finally this week is a bit of my conversation with Tim Hallinan from our interview this past summer that didn't make it into the podcast. He recently published the e-book Making Story: Twenty-One Writers on How They Plot. It's available for Kindle from amazon.com for 3.99, for free if you have an Amazon Prime account.

Gregg Hurwitz is a man on fire. He just took over scripting the comic book series Batman:The Dark Knight. Shawn Ryan (The Shield, Lie to Me) and Gregg are teaming up to turn his U.S. Marshal Tim Rackley books into a series for TNT, and St. Martin's has just published his twelfth novel, The Survivor, about an Army vet who thinks he has nothing to lose when he gets caught in the middle of a bank robbery. 

Julia Keller offers up this week's Tale of True Crime. A Killing in the Hills, her first mystery starring West Virginia prosecutor Bell Elkins, is available from Minotaur.



   

 The team behind the late Los Angeles Times Magazine, Nancie Clare and Rip Georges, have decided to turn to a life of crime. Well, not quite, they're developing the first tablet magazine dedicated to thrillers, mysteries, and true crime, and it's called Noir. Currently in the process of raising funds, you can check out their Kickstarter page for more info on the project.

This week's big interrogation is with Andrew Cotto about his second novel, Outerborough Blues: A Brooklyn Mystery. Caesar is a young man in a rough section of Brooklyn in the early 1990s. He's just trying to cook good food and fix up his house when a beautiful stranger walks into his boss's restaurant and changes the neighborhood forever.

Courtney Miller Santo looks back at her great-grandparents who had too much felonious fun in San Francisco back in the day. Courtney's novel, The Roots of the Olive Tree, is about five generations of women who are being studied for a possible genetic link for longevity, and secrets and crimes are unearthed along the way.

Megan Abbott is this week's Big Interrogation. Her new novel Dare Me looks at the dangerous world of competitive cheerleading, and in this world, acrobatic stunts aren't the only things that go bad. I've interviewed Megan twice before. Go here for our chat about The End of Everything and here about Bury Me Deep.

And in place of the regular feature segments this week, here's a sneak peek of my interview with New York Times best seller Peter Heller about his literary post-apocalyptic thriller, The Dog Stars, where almost everything has gone bad after a super-flu has decimated the world's population. The interview was conducted for my radio show Book Talk, but I'll give the Mysterypod faithful first crack at it.

Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Keller is this week's Big Interrogation. A Killing in the Hills is the first thriller in her Bell Elkins series, which takes place in rural West Virginia, as the small town of Acker's Gap is going to hell in a handbasket due to the illegal prescription pain pill trade and it's attendant violence.

Steve Usery takes the BaD tour from ABQ Trolley Company in Albuquerque, which lets riders check out many of the locations from the hit TV show, Breaking Bad. For more of Steve's pictures from the tour click here.