Stephen Usery interviews authors of mysteries, thrillers, and crime fiction.


Karen Abbott is one of America's most popular historical investigators. She wrote about the prostitution trade of gilded age Chicago in Sin in the Second City and about Gypsy Rose Lee in American Rose. Her newest book is Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War.

Direct download: KAREN_ABBOTT_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:06pm EDT
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James Ellroy is perhaps America's greatest historical crime novelist and one of its most polarizing. Best known for his L.A. Quartet of novels, which included The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, as well as the Underworld USA Trilogy, as well as the autobiographies My Dark Places and The Hilliker Curse. 2014 finds him launching his second LA Quartet, which is a prequel series, pulling characters from his previous books, and seeing how they had navigated World War II. The first book is Perfidia, and it begins in southern California on December 6, 1941.

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Direct download: JAMES_ELLROY_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 2:13pm EDT
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Alexis Coe is a former research curator for the New York Public Library and has had her writing published in publications such as The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Modern Farmer. Zest Books has published her debut Alice + Freda Forever, which is a true crime story of same sex romance which ended in murder in the 1890s in the American South.

Direct download: ALEXIS_COE_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 8:57am EDT
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Emily St. John Mandel has published four novels Last Night in MontrealThe Singer's Gun, and The Lola Quartet, her newest one, Station Eleven, was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for fiction. It's the story of apocalypses, personal and global, and people who knew a famous actor before and after a superflu decimates humanity.

Direct download: EMILY_STJOHN_MANDEL_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 8:45am EDT
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Brock Clarke has published two collections of short stories and four novels including the provocatively titled An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. His newest one, The Happiest People in the World, is the story of real and would-be assassins, editorial cartoonists, witness protection, and faculty-versus-student sporting events.

 
Direct download: BROCK_CLARKE_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 9:00am EDT
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Reed Farrel Coleman. Reed is best known for his Moe Prager private detective series which concluded earlier this year with the ninth book in the series,The Hollow Girl. Reed is well-respected having won Macavity, Anthony and three Shamus Awards. The Robert B. Parker estate recently asked him to pick up the Jesse Stone series, and today we'll talk about his first entry into it, Blind Spot, and it's published by Putnam.

Direct download: REED_FARREL_COLEMAN_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 1:27pm EDT
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I've spoken to Tim about two of his Poke Rafferty thrillers before, Breathing Underwater and The Fear Artist. (The new one, For the Dead is scheduled to drop in November.) But in this episode, we're mainly talking about his Junior Bender series about an ethical burglar who is often strong-armed into being a private eye for the criminal set. What started of as a fairly comic series has deepened with the melancholy of realization that his criminal enterprise has cost him dearly in his personal life. Herbie's Game is the fourth book in the series, and it's published by SOHO Crime.

Direct download: CASE052-TIM_HALLINAN-HERBIES_GAME.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 10:43am EDT
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C.J. Box is and Edgar-winning novelist best known for his Joe Pickett series, which started in 2001 with Open Season, and the fourteenth one, Stone Cold, was published earlier this year. He's also started a series of stand alone novels, in which a different character carries over to the next book. We'll be talking about his first collection of short stories, Shots Fired: Stories from Joe Picket Country, and it's available from Putnam.




Direct download: CJ_BOX_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 1:19pm EDT
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Earl Swift is a veteran journalist and author of non-fiction books. His latest book Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream, had its genesis as a feature piece he wrote in 2004 about the many owners of a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon. The outlaw motorhead in question is one Tommy Armey, whose tumultuous upbringing contributed to his being the meanest brawler in the Virginia Beach metro area, as well as an entrepreneur whose regard for legal restrictions was minimal at best.

Direct download: EARL_SWIFT_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 11:16am EDT
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Smith Henderson has won a 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award for fiction and a Pushcart Prize. Ecco/Harper Collins recently published his debut novel, Fourth of July Creek, the story of a Montana social worker who faces a crumbling personal life while he's trying to help the young son of a religious survivalist living in the hills above his small town.

Direct download: SMITH_HENDERSON_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 12:00pm EDT
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Here's a second chat I had with Charles Graeber a few months after we originally spoke about his true crime book, The Good Nurse: The True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder. This conversation hits a few different points from the first time around, and now the book is available in paperback.

Direct download: CHARLES_GRAEBER_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 1:26pm EDT
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Lisa Turner's first novel A Little Death in Dixie featured police detective Billy Able searching for a missing socialite. Her new novel, The Gone Dead Train, has detective Able back on the track looking for the person responsible for the suspicious deaths of two musicians.

Direct download: LISA_TURNER_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 7:00pm EDT
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Peter Heller's written several books of non-fiction in addition to many years of fine writing for magazines. When last on the program, we spoke about his debut novel, The Dog Stars, and in this episode, we'll talk about his new one, The Painter, about an artist with a violent temper who has to deal with the life or death consequences of his actions.

Direct download: PETER_HELLER_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 10:37am EDT
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Dennis Tafoya has published three novels: Dope Thief, The Wolves of Fairmount Park, and most recently, The Poor Boy's Game, the story of U.S. Marshal Frannie Mullen whose life is haunted by the reality of her violent father, a former enforcer for a mobbed up labor union in Philadelphia.

Direct download: CASE051-DENNIS_TAFOYA-THE_POOR_BOYS_GAME.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 5:56pm EDT
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I last talked to Daniel Friedman about the novel Don't Ever Get Old, featuring the retired octogenarian Memphis police detective Baruch "Buck" Schatz. This time we talk about the second entry into the series, Don't Ever Look Back, which is published by Minotaur/St. Martins.

Direct download: DANIEL_FRIEDMAN_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00pm EDT
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Megan Abbott is an Edgar-winning novelist who started her career writing classic noir stories like Bury Me Deep and The Song is You, but has moved her focus to more contemporary settings for her last three novels, The End of Everything, Dare Me, and the brand new one,The Fever, about a mysterious illness causing violent seizures among high school girls in a tight-knit community.

 


My previous interviews with Megan:

Bury Me Deep

The End of Everything

Dare Me

Direct download: CASE050-MEGAN_ABBOTT-THE_FEVER.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 3:49pm EDT
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Keith Thomson blogs about national security matters for the Huffington Post. In addition to his journalistic duties, he's also a screenwriter and has written several novels. He's appeared on book talk to discuss Once a Spy and Twice a Spy about a retired CIA agent with Alzheimer's, but today we about his new one, Seven Grams of Lead, where a journalist learns too much and goes on the run to discover the truth and save his own life.

Direct download: KEITH_THOMPSON_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 11:02am EDT
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Greg Iles is a superstar thriller writer who has sold millions of books around the world. In 2011, he was grievously injured in a car crash. He's worked hard to recover and has just released his fourth novel to star Penn Cage, a former writer and Prosecutor who is the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. The new book, Natchez Burning, the first of a trilogy, looks at how the crimes of a domestic, racist terror group in the 1960s have affected contemporary Mississippi and Louisiana.

Direct download: GREG_ILES_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 11:28am EDT
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Scott Phillips stopped by last year to talk about his novel Rake, in which an amoral American soap opera actor becomes a star on French television and attempts to make a movie while dealing the shadiest sides of the Parisian wealthy. His new western novel, Hop Alley, sees the return of Bill Ogden, who was introduced in the novel Cottonwood. Ogden is a good-natured sociopath who skates through life with little thought to consequences in the American Wild West.

Direct download: SCOTT_PHILLIPS_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:55am EDT
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 (photo copyright: Carrefour, Ltd., 2014)                                         
                                            

Ace Atkins is an Edgar-nominated writer known for his incredible historical true-crime novels, his current Quinn Colson series about an Army Ranger who returns home to become a sheriff in north Mississippi, and he has also written the last three books in the Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. The newest of which is entitled Cheap Shot and is available from Putnam.

 Ace will be at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis, TN on Thursday, May 15th at 6:00 p.m. to sign books.

Direct download: ACE_ATKINS_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 6:00pm EDT
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Jedidiah Ayers is one of the driving forces behind Noir at the Bar and has been making a name for himself among the Grit Lit set for his books Fierce Bitches, A F*ckload of Shorts, and Peckerwood. It's a fairly serious interview with a guy known for his sharp wit. And if you couldn't tell by the titles for his books, this interview is very NSFW. Also, this isn't the typical highly edited interview, it is rawer than road rash.

 

Direct download: Case049_-_Jedidiah_Ayers.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 9:23am EDT
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Wylie Cash's first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, the story of a death of a small boy in a Holiness Pentecostal church in the hills of western North Carolina, won the Crime Writer's Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award as well as the SIBA Fiction Book of the Year Award. His new novel is This Dark Road to Mercy, and it is published by William Morrow.

Direct download: WYLIE_CASH_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 11:56am EDT
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Sheila Turnage's first novel for middle graders and up, Three Times Lucky, received a 2013 Newbery Honor and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Book. Kathy Dawson Books, an imprint of Penguin, has just released the second episode following the preteen Desperado Detective Agency, and it's entitled The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing.

Direct download: SHEILA_TURNAGE_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 10:27am EDT
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Since I'm getting ever pressed for time, I'm going to be releasing my interviews from Book Talk that will be of interest to Mysterypod subscribers as bonus episodes, instead of rebadging them with different intros and closes. Rest assured,  I will only include books in the mystery/crime/thriller/true crime genres.

James Scott's debut novel, The Kept, has garnered praise from reviewers, having been named a Best Book of the Month by Amazon and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Set in upstate New York at the end of the 19th century, a woman and her 12 year-old son set out into the deep, winter snow for revenge, while harboring secrets from each other.

Download here.


Direct download: JAMES_SCOTT_2014_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 10:45am EDT
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James Magnuson heads up the Michener Center for Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He draws upon that experience for his new novel, Famous Writers I Have Known. Small-time grifter Frankie Abandonato gets in over his head in in New York and heads out to Austin, Texas, where he gets sucked into the world of literature and MFA programs. Could this be the longest and biggest con in Frankie's career?




Journalist Denise Parkinson learned about an infamous 1930s murder case from her native Arkansas County. In Daughter of the White River: Depression-Era Treachery and Vengeance in the Arkansas Delta, she tells the story of a community of people living on the White River and the strange tale of Helen Spence, who avenged her father's murder by shooting the accused dead in a county courtroom and the bizarre spiral her life took as the country was plunged into the depths of economic depression and hunger.

Direct download: CASE048-MAGNUSON-PARKINSON.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 4:30pm EDT
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The nominees for the 2014 Edgar Awards were recently announced. I was lucky enough to interview four writers on the short lists last year.

Jenny Milchman was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Prize for her novel Cover of Snow.

Marcus Sakey was nominated for Best Paperback Original for his thriller Brilliance.

Charles Graeber got a nom for Best Fact Crime for The Good Nurse.

And finally, Matthew Guinn was nominated for Best First Novel for The Resurrectionist. I had the chance to talk to Matthew last summer for my other program Book Talk. The Resurrectionist is the story of a slave in the 1850s ordered to steal other slaves' corpses for dissection for a South Carolina medical school, and the parallel storyline of a 1990s doctor who learns of the past misdeeds which jeopardize his school's reputation.


 

Direct download: CASE047-MATTHEW_GUINN-THE_RESURRECTIONIST.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 2:44pm EDT
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