Might Sam, who is in both books have his own story?
I don’t have one for him yet. It’s always more fun to write people who are really messed up or really vicious. Frank is huge fun to write because his moral sense is not like most people’s. He’s very much “the end justifies the means,” and in the third book he really will do just about anything to anyone else or to himself to get what he wants.
What's your process?
When I start writing, I don’t have a clue as to what happens. I have a premise, a narrator, and a load of caffeine, and that’s it. That’s what keeps me writing through the entire process of the book. For The Likeness, the premise was: what would it be like to show up at a crime scene and see your face on the victim? What would it do to your sense of identity? What would you have to do about it? I start out with something that I’m interested in so I can keep writing. It makes for huge amounts of rewriting.
For In the Woods, it was the archæological dig. I was actually working on a dig in between two shows. I found the 16th-century penny that shows up in In the Woods. I was so overexcited! And there was a woods nearby, and I thought that would be a great place for kids to play. And I think that what turns someone into a mystery writer, as opposed to another kind of writer, is that we’re always looking for the potential mystery in everything. I thought, that would be a great place for kids to play. What if three kids ran in there to play and only one ran out — and he had no memory of what happened?
Related:
The pro, Local colors, Rhode Island’s man of mystery, More 
- The pro
During dinner parties nowadays, everyone, writers included, talks about movies. Rarely does a “serious” novel dominate conversation, but crime novels sometimes have a moment.
- Local colors
Two and a half years after publication of the well-received debut novel, Carom Shot , fans of the Providence-set mystery novel are finally seeing a series get underway.
- Rhode Island’s man of mystery
The hard-luck obit writer has just made his literary debut, in Gravewriter , a fast-paced mystery that represents a promising new chapter in Providence Journal reporter Mark Arsenault’s budding sideline as a fiction writer.
- More the mystery
What’s the big deal about Kate Atkinson? If you read the rapturous reviews of her previous novel, Case Histories , you’d conclude she had written an engrossing mystery that was, you know, more than just a mystery.
- Bytes of knowledge
Once upon a time, we thought it was novel to be able to buy books in our bathrobes.
- Magical Mystery Tour
A thoughtful tribute to the pulp classics of the 1940s and 50s, The Colorado Kid is just the latest installment in an increasingly diverse and interesting body of work written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.
- Med noir
It all starts with murder.
- Appetizers
Before Dennis Lehane found success — or success found him — with the publication of Mystic River in 2001, and even before he built his reputation with the Kenzie/Gennaro crime novels, he wrote short stories.
- Flying high
There’s nothing new about the complaint as literature, says author Jonathan Miles.
- War and peace
Since September 11, publishers have been rushing to supply Americans with non-fiction books about the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and anything relating to the upheavals in the Middle East.
- Last man standing
Here’s my favorite movie trivia question: what living film director can claim the earliest extant film? The answer: Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira, born in 1908 and still directing.
- Less
Topics:
Books
, Media, Books, Mystery Novels
