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1987: The Thrilling-est Year in Hollywood HistoryRecently, I saw an article that claimed that 1999 was the best year in Hollywood history. Then another claimed it was…1971? I beg to...
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My First Thriller: Joseph FinderJoe Finder must have thought he knew the secrets to selling a book. His first, a work of nonfiction, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the...
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Thrillers Where Natural Disaster Looms LargeIt’s a perennial question at readings and signings: Where do you get the ideas for your books? I usually mumble something that amounts to...
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Kenneth Branagh and De-Poiroting Hercule PoirotA man with his back to the world waits for two impossible and perfect eggs. He follows an officer to the transport as a dream-generated...
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An Argument for the Unintentional VillainA good villain is essential to a good mystery. He or she is the author of the crime, the driver of the plot, and the key to solving the ensuing...
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Healing Through HorrorOh, the Horror! It doesn’t often come up but when it does, people are often surprised when I tell them I never set out to be a horror writer....
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Inside the Early Days of Investigating the Murdaugh FamilyBefore Mandy Matney was the award-winning host of the #1 Murdaugh Murders Podcast, she was a local Hilton Head reporter practiced in viral...
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How the True (and Still Unsolved) 1986 Assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Inspired My Nordic Noir NovelThe movie was a spur-of-the-moment idea. The prime minister had had a stressful week. Seeing a comedy with his wife and son and his son’s...
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A Journey Into the Heart of the Everglades, and the Alligator Poacher Sting that Divided a CommunityIn January 2020, I drove down from Orlando to the easternmost edge of the Everglades and booked a room in the neon-dazzled Miccosukee Casino...
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What Spy Fiction Taught Me About Breaking the RulesAs a kid, I broke what I like to think was a normal amount of rules. There was the time in kindergarten when we were sitting on the rug for...
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Difficult Women In Historical Fiction: A Reading ListI try to be good but fail every day. My natural state is lazy, self-indulgent, resentful, and dangerously avoidant. The damage I’ve done in...
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The Regency Mystery Arrives to the BallI’d wager a box of my favorite tea that you’ve heard of Bridgerton by now. Maybe even that it’s that occasionally spicy period drama based upon...
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Shakespeare’s First Folio has been Stolen Many, Many TimesLate at night on July 13th, 1972, an unknown person entered the University of Manchester’s Library and violently smashed the plate glass top of...
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Love and Cannibalism: Five Short TalesLike many fans of dark fiction, I’ve had a long-standing fascination and love affair with twisted tales of cannibalism. The horror genre is the...
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The Many Poisons of Crime FictionFor all of recorded history, poisons have been a means of death, both deliberate and accidental. Greek philosophers, kings, emperors, actresses,...
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What To Read While You’re Waiting for the Next Season of YellowjacketsHow do you know someone just finished binging both seasons of Yellowjackets ? A. They roam around in a daze grabbing random people and asking,...
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Elizabeth Hand on Playwriting, Haunted Houses, and Shirley JacksonThis interview has been edited for clarity and concision. A Haunting on the Hill is now available from Mulholland Books. Olivia...
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Love Behind Bars: On the Complicated World of Incarcerated RomanceOf all the correspondents I’ve had in my life, Sam Israel has been among the most consistent. Sam was serving a twenty-two-year sentence in...
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The Best Locked Room Mystery You’ve Probably Never Heard OfFrom the very first sentence…we are into the realm of nightmare. Miracles gather and explode. A dead man returns—or does not return. A flying...
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The Dalton Gang’s Final, Doomed Heists in the Twilight of the Old WestI n February 1891, hoping to help his brothers find steady work, Bill Dalton wrote a letter to the superintendent of the nearby Muller and Lux...
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Rhys Bowen on Using Real Experiences As InspirationMy new book, The Proof of the Pudding , is the 17th in the series featuring Lady Georgiana, 35th in line to the throne in the nineteen thirties....
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Killing the Rich: Why Privilege Has Always Been at the Heart of the WhodunnitFor more than a century we’ve been addicted to a particular flavor of murder mystery story. A group of wealthy, upper-class people are gathered...
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Psychology Is Important For Motivation, But Your Characters Need More Than DiagnosesI teach creative writing at a public arts high school in Chicago. If you’re picturing Fame , with students breaking into song and dance in the...
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On Horror and Humanity’s Enduring Love Affair with FearHold, friend. I only have fifteen hundred words to save your life. You and I are bound in a bargain spanning hundreds of years, across dozens...
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Fighting Toxic Masculinity Through Young Adult FictionWhen I was dreaming up the plot of my latest young adult thriller, The Revenge Game, I posed the following research question to my social media...
