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‘UNSUB’ A Conversation with Meg Gardiner

June 27, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Meg Gardiner is the author of 12 critically acclaimed crime novels, including China Lake, which won the Edgar Award. Her best-known books are the Evan Delaney novels. Her latest novel is a taut and terrifying thriller, UNSUB.

UNSUB features Caitlin Hendrix, a detective, whose childhood nightmare reemerges: a serial killer known as the Prophet. He’s an UNSUB—an unknown subject—who again begins terrorizing the Bay Area after a hiatus of 20 years. This series of ritualized murders virtually destroyed her father who had been the lead investigator on the case back then. Caitlin is assigned to the case and must avoid making her father’s mistakes, or worse.

I understand you had some terrifying experiences that led to your fascination with unsolved serial murders such as those appearing in “UNSUB.” Will you share those experiences with us?

The first experience I had was as a child when I saw a police drawing of the Zodiac killer in my local newspaper. It was a picture of a gunman wearing a black executioner’s hood with the Zodiac symbol on its front. Seeing that drawing, I asked my parents what it was, and my father told me it was a picture of the infamous Zodiac killer who murdered people for the hell of it. As a little kid, it shocked and rocked me to think someone could do something like that. It kept me awake at night.

Only a few years ago, I found out there had been two double murders in the neighborhood where I grew up—a safe, easygoing suburban area in Santa Barbara, California. At the time, the murders hadn’t been linked, and it’s only been since the advances in forensic science that investigators determined these murders were committed by that same person: the infamous and still uncaptured serial killer who roamed California. He was first called the Night Stalker and is now called the Golden State Killer.

Learning there was a walking path between where these murders happened and where my brother’s family lived—two-hundred yards away—freaked me out. The crime scenes were directly across the street from his house.

Simply realizing how close these things can come to you, even when your world seems completely normal and safe—knowing someone is out there masquerading as a normal person who has a job, goes to your local supermarket, and has a nighttime hobby of rape and murder—is very unsettling.

Do you think that early, fearful experience of the Zodiac has expressed itself in your writing?

I think the idea that someone is out there when we would all like our worlds to be orderly and predictable left its mark on me.

“UNSUB” features a troubled and conflicted detective, Caitlin Hendrix. Tell us a bit about her.

Caitlin is young, ambitious, green, and haunted by the fact that her father, a homicide detective, had been dealing with this serial killer who destroyed him emotionally and tore his family apart. One of the reasons she’s become a cop and a detective was to be involved with this case, not only to bring the killer to justice, but also to redeem the family name.

Caitlin is a fascinating character. What characteristics make for a good protagonist?

A protagonist must have some burning desire—maybe for justice, survival, love, or passion. I want to explore what my main character both wants and fears more than anything else because that will affect everything she does. What is the protagonist afraid of losing beyond all else?

The serial killer in “UNSUB” is terrifying. What makes serial killers such fascinating subjects for crime fiction?

I think the public has a sense that serial killers are clever; their motives are mysterious; they don’t kill for money or revenge; they’re sneaky and crawl through the cracks while hiding from society. We all want to have a glimpse into the dark side of human nature. We want to try understanding why someone would engage in these kinds of killings.

You became a commercial litigation attorney and worked in that field before becoming a novelist. Tell us about your journey to becoming an author.

I wanted to write from the time I was a child. I grew up in a family of attorneys with fulfilling careers and love of the law. When I finished college, my father suggested that if I wanted to be a writer, I could write while I was half-starving, or I could write when I took a break from my litigation practice.

So, I went to law school. It was a fascinating, challenging and rewarding career. I had three small children and knew I needed a break from going to court, so I took a job teaching legal writing at the University of California. Ultimately, that was my gateway to writing fiction. I eventually escaped from law [Laughter]. I wrote short stories and magazine pieces while I was teaching, and attempted to write a novel, but had no idea how to do it.

Then, my husband was offered a job in London. We moved from Southern California to the UK. I had no job waiting for me and I was the trailing spouse [More laughter] as they called it in the expat community. The kids were out of diapers. I’d told myself I was going to write a novel and I decided it was time to put up or shut up. I wrote a terrible novel which I put away. Then I wrote another which was published in the UK. Then a few more were published there.

So, your novels were published in the UK. How did you become published and well-known in the U.S.?

I had a British literary agent who was shocked that I was published in the UK and almost everywhere else in the world, but not in the U.S. I’d written five books in the Evan Delaney series, but American publishers were uninterested in my fiction.

Then, an American author looked through his closet looking for a book to read on a flight to England. He found my book China Lake, which the publisher had sent him. He probably decided the print was large and easy on the eyes and he stuck it in his carry-on. He read it, and when Stephen King got off the plane, he decided he liked my novel. He read the rest of my books and didn’t understand why I had no American publisher. He kindly mentioned me on his website, urging people to look for my books. He then wrote a column for Entertainment Weekly, again mentioning my books. Strangely, within forty-eight hours of that column being published, fourteen American publishers were interested.

It was all due to the fact that Stephen King is an incredibly gracious and generous person. He supports other writers, artists and musicians and he uses his voice to bring attention to other artists. I’m eternally grateful to him.

You once said, ‘I put my demons on the page.’ What did you mean?

If something scares me, upsets or worries me, if it troubles my sleep, it’s likely to do the same thing to readers, and I can turn that into compelling fiction. I was once on a conference panel and another author said she writes to exorcise her demons. She felt it was cathartic. She asked me if I felt that way and I said, ‘I inflict my demons on my readers.’ [Laughter]. But I try to do it in an entertaining way.

You said you write crime fiction ‘because it gets to the heart of the human condition.’ Tell us more.

Crime novels—whether they’re thrillers, suspense books, or mysteries—always feature people facing the greatest challenges of their lives. Some evil has invaded their world, and chaos undermines everything they’ve known and they must rise to the challenge and put things right. The human condition, as I see it, isn’t about the English professor trying to suppress his crush on the sophomore coed.

A well-known critic once said crime writers lack real talent. You had an interesting response to that statement. What was it?

I thought the entire notion of talent was silly. The idea of talent being everything is really pernicious. The idea that if you don’t have sufficient talent you might as well just give up. As a writer and a parent, I think that can be undermining. Yes, talent is important, but on its own, it’s not enough. Hard work, training, dedication, observing the world, and putting in the work—sometimes joyfully, sometimes as a struggle—that’s how you get to be good at writing or any other endeavor. I said to the critic, ‘I once had talent, but I sold it so I could write a crime novel.’

Your blog is titled “Lying for a Living.” How come?

It’s labelled that because I get to make things up. Things come out of my imagination. It’s a little bit flip. Actually, I think fiction is the lie that tells the truth. The only lies on paper are non-fiction memoirs. [Lots of laughter]. Fiction is a metaphor for life.

What’s the most challenging part of being an author?

I think the most challenging part is executing an idea. Ideas are everywhere. It’s not only coming up with an idea, but turning it into something in three-hundred fifty pages, that’s the challenge.

I understand you were a collegiate cross-country runner and a three-time Jeopardy champion. Will you tell us a few things about your life that readers would find interesting?

I have an overdeveloped trivia lobe in my brain. Jeopardy is the most fun you can have standing up, I’ll just say that. [Laughter].

Is it true that “UNSUB” will also be a CBS-TV series?

Yes, that’s true. It’s been bought by the people behind Justified and Masters of Sex. They are great at developing cool and exciting dramas. I’m very thrilled by it.

Who do you see playing Caitlin Hendrix?

Oh, no. I can’t answer that because everybody who reads UNSUB creates the character in their own mind. In a way, every reader is a casting director and I don’t want to take over that job.

If you could meet any two fictional characters in all of literature, who would they be, and why?

Dave Robicheaux from James Lee Burke’s series, because I’m in love with him [Laughter] My husband won’t appreciate that. And…Kinsey Millhone from Sue Grafton’s series because she’s from my hometown and would be a great friend. If I ever got in trouble, I’d have her to call.

Will you complete this sentence: “Writing novels has taught me___________?”

It’s taught me perseverance and patience. It’s taught me that we all have the possibility to be successful if we take the chance when it’s presented to us.

What’s coming next from Meg Gardiner?

Next is the sequel to UNSUB.

Congratulations on your career and on penning “UNSUB,” a novel Don Winslow compared to “The Silence of the Lambs” for its chilling plot, and about which he said, ‘The UNSUB, or Unknown Subject, at the heart of Meg Gardiner’s thriller is terrifying.’ I agree completely.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews Tagged With: detectives, fear, serial killers

‘Dying Breath,’ A Conversation with Heather Graham

June 17, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Heather Graham is an internationally renowned author of more than 150 novels and novellas, published in 25 languages, with over 75 million copies in print. She has been honored with nearly every award available to contemporary writers, including the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Thriller Writers’ Silver Bullet. She is an active member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America.

Her latest novel, Dying Breath, features Vickie Preston, who as a teen-ager, survived an attack by a serial killer. Now, Boston is being terrorized by a serial killer who kidnaps women and buries them alive. He leaves a glimmer of hope by contacting the police and sending them a clue about the victims’ locations. As a historian, Vickie has the knowledge to help uncover the graves the killer, known as the Undertaker, is choosing.

Special Agent Griffin Price, a member of the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters, the bureau’s unit for paranormal investigators, is assigned to the case. As law enforcement closes in on the Undertaker, Vickie’s every breath could be her last.

Dying Breath is a Krewe of Hunters novel. How did you arrive at a conceptualization of this series?

I conceptualized this group of paranormal investigators as being people with the ability to communicate on some level with the dead.  The man leading the group is Jackson Crow, who was introduced in the first book of the series, Phantom Evil.

Jackson is an extremely brilliant, very wealthy man who lost his son, and who realized that although his child was dead, a line of communication remained open to him.

He went to the FBI and convinced them to start this special unit, dubbed the Krewe of Hunters, and Crow was made its field director.

For those who may not be familiar with the series, tell our readers what the Krew of Hunters is all about.

 The Krew of Hunters is something of a renegade unit of people. They have the capacity to see the dead. They’ve discovered that ghosts can often lead them to the right places when it comes to solving crimes. I’m a huge history buff, so I get to tap into history when I create my ghosts, since many of them lived long ago. They have knowledge of things that happened in earlier times and often work with the krewe to solve murders.

Speaking of history, Dying Breath connects the past and present. Is the past ever truly dead?

I like to hope not. [Laughter]. We Americans have a terrible tendency to tear down history instead of acknowledging the bad things that happened in our country. We need to remember everything that has happened—the good and the bad—and not repeat our misdeeds.

In Dying Breath, the history of Massachusetts plays an important role in the story. The history of our founding fathers in Massachusetts is astounding—we had a group of men who brought about a new age of enlightenment. I agree the past is never really dead. It becomes part of us and influences us—individually and collectively—in more ways than we realize.

You’ve written more than one-hundred-fifty novels and novellas as Heather Graham, as Heather Graham Pozzessere, and as Shannon Drake. Why use different names?

I was writing in different genres—for instance, I wrote contemporary thrillers for one publisher, and historical thrillers for another. Writing them all under the same name could be a problem because I didn’t want someone buying a historical thriller who really wanted to read a contemporary thriller, or a horror or a paranormal novel. Using a pseudonym was a wise thing to do so readers preferring one genre over another wouldn’t be disappointed.

How did the name Shannon Drake come about?

The name ‘Shannon Drake’ came about because I was on the phone with the publisher who told me they wanted to publish my book under a pseudonym. I asked how long I had to think about conjuring one up and she said, ‘You have sixty seconds.’ At that point, two of my sons, Shane and Derrick, walked into the room, so I came up with the name ‘Shannon Drake.’

Tell us about your journey to become a published author.

I went to the University of South Florida and majored in theater. I then spent several years performing in dinner theater. I sang back-up for the Rhodes Brothers, who made a number of recordings at that time. I also performed in some theater performances, and bartended as well as worked as a waitress.

None of it paid very well. Auditions and dinner theater involved hours and hours away from home, and I wasn’t making enough money to make up for the time I was missing out with my children. That was when I began staying home and writing.

After we had our third child, Derrick, it was getting to be overwhelming. My husband said, ‘You always wanted to write a book…’ and he came home with a typewriter that was missing an ‘e.’ Every night, I filled in the ‘e’s on whatever I’d written. I bought a copy of Writer’s Digest and another of Writer’s Market, to which I still subscribe, and started sending things off to publishers because I didn’t know anyone in the field.

I had a couple of stories published with horror magazines, and eventually sold the first book to Dell.

I then realized my strength was writing novels with murder, mystery and mayhem. I learned if I was going to survive as a writer, I had to produce a lot of books. I learned to simply sit down and write. And write some more. The notion of having a deadline keeps the fires burning. I must say that now, I can’t imagine not writing. It’s what I absolutely adore doing. If I won the Lottery, would I stop writing? No.

Were there early influences in your life that sparked your interest in writing?

My father and mother came from Scotland and Ireland respectively. They left very tough circumstances and arrived in the U.S. My parents read everything. My mother loved Gothic novels and mysteries of all kinds; my father loved reading anything that had to do with water and the navy. They were both huge fans of Edgar Allen Poe.

As a child, I was a voracious reader. I don’t ever remember not having a book in my hands. When I began writing, the popular industry notion of something being strictly one genre surprised me. That concept has changed over time, and now many popular books straddle various genres.

You’re immensely prolific and write in many genres. Do you have to switch your frame of mind to write a suspense novel after a Gothic tale or a paranormal, or vampire story?

I really don’t switch gears to enter into a different genre. It’s just a matter of thinking about whatever it is I’m writing. For me, it’s similar to this: if I’m reading a Jack Reacher novel, I expect a lot of excitement and action; if I pick up a Lisa Scottoline book, I expect a courtroom drama. I have no trouble going from one genre to the other.  I find myself simply thinking in whatever direction I’m writing. Maybe it’s the way I grew up—reading everything—and now, I just like writing everything. I love reading everything, too. If I have nothing to read, I’ll read the cereal box.

You’ve been a performer and a writer. How has each of these been gratifying?

I’m the luckiest person in the world to be able to do something I love so much for a living. In itself, that’s been gratifying. People have been wonderful to me. I’ve been on a USO tour with other writers and have gotten to experience so many things that have been a pleasure to do. As for the performance part of my career, we still have a little dinner theater skit every year at the Romantic Times convention, and I’m still a member of the Slush Pile Band. [Laughter]. We chose the name ‘Slush Pile’ because we were all lucky enough to get pulled out of that place.

With over one-hundred-fifty books out there, procrastination must be a foreign concept for you.

It is, because writing is how I make my living. It’s what I do. I’m always busy, even though the kids are older—I now have grandchildren—and I belong to all these different writing groups: horror writers, mystery writers, thriller writers and romance writers’ groups. So, I just keep going.

What’s a typical writing day like for you?

I don’t think I have a typical day, and never did. I had five children in the house, and I learned to write anywhere at any time—in a car, on a train, anywhere. I grew accustomed to a lot of commotion around me so I can work anywhere.

If you could host a dinner with any five people, real or fictional, living or dead, from any walk of life, who would they be?

I only get five? [Laughter]. Historically, I would love to have Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis over for dinner. Can you imagine their conversation? I would love to invite Edgar Allen Poe, who’s my ghost in the third book of the Krewe of Hunters. I’d invite Charles Dickens because A Tale of Two Cities is one of my favorite books. I’d also love to have Michael Shaara who wrote The Killer Angels, which is more about the relationships between people than about the Civil War. If I could have one more person it would be Vincent Price. I love him.

Congratulations on penning Dying Breath, a great addition to the Krewe of Hunters series, a heart-stopping story with elements of the paranormal in a supremely suspenseful read.

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column Tagged With: creative arts, Gothic stories, paranormal FBI investigations, performing arts, pseudonyms, romance, serial killers, suspense

‘Ripper,’ A Conversation with Patricia Cornwell

February 28, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Patricia Cornwell is known to millions of readers as the award-winning and bestselling author of the Kay Scarpetta series. In 2001, she was pulled into a real-life investigation of her own—the long-unsolved “Jack the Ripper” murders that appalled and fascinated London in the late 1800s. Applying old-fashioned as well as modern forensic techniques to a century old crime, Patricia Cornwell’s research led to the publication of Portrait of a Killer, in which she identified the renowned British painter Walter Sickert as the Ripper.

The book created considerable controversy and thereafter, Patricia devoted countless hours and resources pursuing new evidence against Sickert. In Ripper, The Secret Life of Walter Sickert, she revisits, revises and expands upon her findings of the most notorious unsolved crime wave in history.

Give us a brief overview of Jack the Ripper’s crimes and the impact he had on London in the 1880s.

Jack the Ripper’s crimes began then, but there was nothing in the London newspapers about a “Jack the Ripper.” The first reports noted some fiendish killer was terrorizing the impoverished East End, an area of slums known as Whitechapel. A prostitute was killed at the end of August of 1888; she’d been stabbed more than twenty times. Nobody paid much attention to it.  Then, another woman was murdered soon afterwards; her throat was cut in the streets of the East End, in the early hours of the morning.

The murders became infamous when “Jack the Ripper” began writing letters to the media and to the police. He named himself “Jack the Ripper” and signed the letters using that name or others such as “Saucy Jack” or “Jackie Boy.” The letters were hateful, violent and mocking. By the end of September of 1888, there were five, if not six, murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. In the London slums where the prostitutes and immigrants lived in a sea of misery, they talked about “The Knife” and warned each other to be aware there was someone out there who killed.

Then the worst murder occurred which was the killing of Mary Kelly in early November of 1888. She was not murdered in the streets, but in her hovel. All her organs were removed but her brain, and she was flayed to the bone. Her right leg was flayed down to the femur.

We don’t know how many murders Jack the Ripper actually committed. There’s a great deal of evidence that there were at least seven, and probably many more as I point out in the book. These kinds of killers change how they commit murder. The stakes escalate for such a killer. From a psychological standpoint, it takes more to satisfy the compulsion to kill. I believe that’s when Jack the Ripper began to dismember his victims.

What made you so interested in solving these crimes?

It’s what happens to me with anything that gets my attention.

In the Spring of 2001, a Scotland Yard investigator gave me a tour of the Metro Police headquarters, and took me to the East End where these murders had occurred. I was simply being given a tour. I then asked a fateful question: ‘Who were the suspects?’ He rattled off the names, many of which were familiar to Ripperologists. He said they were suspects with no basis in fact or evidence. It was just speculation. I asked about any evidence and he told me the only evidence left in the case were the actual letters the Ripper wrote to the media and police. They were in the national archives. I considered the fact that documents can provide a plethora of forensic evidence.

There can be DNA evidence or even statement analysis, which can be a valuable tool in an investigation—the perpetrator’s choice of words, his language, the spellings and misspellings—can be revealing.

I decided to look at the letters.

The investigator told me an artist had been named as a possible suspect in the Ripper case: one Walter Sickert, a prominent English artist during the Victorian era.

I began looking at art books and the hair on the back of my neck stood up: Sickert’s paintings were very disturbing. They conveyed an undercurrent of morbidity and violence, particularly against women. But that wasn’t enough to make me think Sickert had committed the crimes.

I looked at the archived letters and was shocked. Readers will see in both the e-book and print edition of Ripper these paintings and letters. You can see how the watermarks match, and how  the paintbrush strokes where he painted a letter instead of writing it conform to each other. The art work itself presents a compelling and multi-layered and very clear case against Walter Sickert.

As the book notes, Walter Sickert was a well-known painter and student of James Abbott Whistler. Tell us a bit more.

The most amazing thing about the Ripper case is that nobody ever imagined that Jack the Ripper was part of the Victorian art world—the theatrical stage and the art studio. Sickert started out as an actor. Interestingly, his stage name was ‘Mr. Nemo’ which means Mr. Nobody. One of the telegrams Jack the Ripper sent was signed ‘Mr. Nobody,’ then it was crossed out and replaced with ‘Jack the Ripper.’

Jack the Ripper wrote letters he signed ‘Nemo.’ He wrote many letters to the editor of a newspaper. This perpetrator had graphomania; he was a compulsive writer. Sickert was also a compulsive writer. He would apologize to friends for writing so often. He had a psychological compulsion to murder. It was an addiction that took the place of sex and other normal things people seek for gratification.

Speaking of psychology, in Ripper you compare Walter Sickert’s compulsion to murder, likening him to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Will you talk about that?

This all sprang forth from the London stage.

Sickert went from being a failed actor to becoming an apprentice of James McNeill Whistler, the painter of ‘Whistler’s Mother.’ Whistler was flamboyant and famous for running around the streets of London with Oscar Wilde. He was like a modern-day rock star. Sickert felt diminished around this famous man, which added to his feelings of belittlement and rage. This tapped into his sexual inadequacies concerning a deformity of his genitalia, as detailed in the book. Sickert had three surgeries for a fistula on his southern hemisphere by the time he was five years old. He underwent these surgeries without anesthesia which left him physically and emotionally scarred for life.

In the summer of 1888, A famous American actor, Richard Mansfield, wanted to bring Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the London stage. Mansfield mounted the production in August of 1888. Sickert knew all about this because he was an actor in that same theater, and in fact, the stage manager was none other than Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. They all knew each other.

The theme of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde concerns a duality of someone who, on the surface is respectable, but who transforms into a monster. It’s a metaphor for the psychiatric pathology of a compulsive killer. It’s a picture of the two faces of this type of person. I once asked an expert who had dealt with sexual psychopaths—people like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer—when do we know when someone who is charming and attractive is truly evil, and a killer? He said, ‘You know it about one minute before they kill you.’

This book shows people what this kind of killer really is like. It speaks to the need to get away from mythologizing him.

Jack the Ripper was not a charming top-hatted man in the London fog. He was a monster in the fog, with whom you might have coffee in the morning and think he’s witty, nice-looking, but a bit cold, not empathic, and who never feels guilt or regret about anything.

Tell us about the modern forensic techniques you brought to this investigation.

My investigation was an alchemy of the lowest and highest forms of technology imaginable. I used both in this case. I put letters on an old-fashioned light box or under a microscope. I even used a magnifying lens to examine the paper on which the Ripper wrote. I brought in experts to examine the paper which involved taking precise measurements of the hand-made paper and studying its watermarks. It became like fingerprints in the case.

As for the latest technology, we used spectroscopy and DNA analysis—non-destructive techniques to learn more about these hundreds of letters. Because they’re considered national treasures, we couldn’t take these letters to a laboratory and run forensic tests because they cannot leave the archives or risk being damaged. I brought over a Harvard scientist to look at colored pencils, lithography instruments, etching materials, and paint brushes. In one of the letters, Ripper penciled the letters first and when looking at it under a lens, you can see he dipped a paint brush in red ink and painted the letter. That wasn’t done by some deranged miscreant living in the London slums.

Congratulations on writing Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert. It’s a highly readable expose of perhaps the world’s most famously chilling case of serial murder; the vain efforts of the police to solve the crimes; and the compelling revelations your exhaustive research has unearthed.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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Filed Under: About Books, crime, Huffington Post Column, Interviews Tagged With: DNA, Jack the Ripper, police procedures, research, serial killers

Field of Prey: A Talk with John Sandford

May 5, 2014 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

2014-05-04-JohnSandfordDavidBurnett-thumbWe know him as John Sandford, but that’s his nom de plume. As journalist John Camp, he won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his five-part series about an American farm family faced with an agricultural crisis. He eventually turned to writing thriller novels, and his twenty-fourth Prey novel, Field of Prey, featuring Lucas Davenport, will be available everywhere on May 5th, 2014. Lucas and his team must use all possible resources to try capturing an elusive killer or killers who claim at least twenty victims over a course of years.

Read more on the Huffington Post >>

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Filed Under: About Books Tagged With: journalism, music, painting, Pulitzer Prize, serial killers, thrillers, writing

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