Suspense Radio

Peter James, International bestelling novelist

One of the world's premiere crime writers shares stories and advice, as we talk psychopaths (both fictional and real), what makes for a great crime story, and the three aspects of emotionally engaging fiction: character, research and plot. Also: learn about his writing process and get inside info about upcoming releases.

Peter James "Dead if you Don't":

A PARENT'S WORST NIGHTMARE IS GRACE'S DEADLIEST CASE . . .

Roy Grace, creation of the CWA Diamond Dagger award winning author Peter James, faces his most complex case yet in Dead If You Don't.

Kipp Brown, successful businessman and compulsive gambler, is having the worst run of luck of his life. He's beginning to lose, big style. However, taking his teenage son, Mungo, to their club's Saturday afternoon football match should have given him a welcome respite, if only for a few hours. But it's at the stadium where his nightmare begins.

Within minutes of arriving at the game, Kipp bumps into a client. He takes his eye off Mungo for a few moments, and in that time, the boy disappears. Then he gets the terrifying message that someone has his child, and to get him back alive, Kipp will have to pay.

Defying instruction not to contact the police, Kipp reluctantly does just that, and Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is brought in to investigate. At first it seems a straightforward case of kidnap. But rapidly Grace finds himself entering a dark, criminal underbelly of the city, where the rules are different and nothing is what it seems . .

Steve Hamilton "Dead Man Running": Alex McKnight--hero of Steve Hamilton's bestselling, award-winning, and beloved private eye series--is back in a high-stakes, nail-biting thriller, facing the most dangerous enemy he's ever encountered.

On the Mediterranean Sea, a vacationer logs on to the security-camera feed from his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Something about his living room seems not quite right--the room is bright, when he's certain he'd left the curtains closed. Rewinding through the feed, he sees an intruder. When he shifts to the bedroom camera, he sees the dead body.

Martin T. Livermore is the key suspect in the abduction and murder of at least five women, but he's never been this sloppy before. When the FBI finally catches him in Scottsdale, he declares he'll only talk to one person: a retired police officer from Detroit, now a private investigator living in the tiny town of Paradise, Michigan. A man named Alex McKnight.

Livermore means nothing to McKnight, but it soon becomes clear McKnight means something to Livermore...and that Livermore's capture was only the beginning of an elaborate, twisted plot with McKnight at the center. In a hunt that will take him across the country and to the edge of his limits, McKnight fights to stop a vicious killer before he can exact his ultimate revenge. And his grand finale will cut closer to home than he ever could have imagined.

Steve Hamilton "Dead Man Running": Alex McKnight--hero of Steve Hamilton's bestselling, award-winning, and beloved private eye series--is back in a high-stakes, nail-biting thriller, facing the most dangerous enemy he's ever encountered.

On the Mediterranean Sea, a vacationer logs on to the security-camera feed from his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Something about his living room seems not quite right--the room is bright, when he's certain he'd left the curtains closed. Rewinding through the feed, he sees an intruder. When he shifts to the bedroom camera, he sees the dead body.

Martin T. Livermore is the key suspect in the abduction and murder of at least five women, but he's never been this sloppy before. When the FBI finally catches him in Scottsdale, he declares he'll only talk to one person: a retired police officer from Detroit, now a private investigator living in the tiny town of Paradise, Michigan. A man named Alex McKnight.

Livermore means nothing to McKnight, but it soon becomes clear McKnight means something to Livermore...and that Livermore's capture was only the beginning of an elaborate, twisted plot with McKnight at the center. In a hunt that will take him across the country and to the edge of his limits, McKnight fights to stop a vicious killer before he can exact his ultimate revenge. And his grand finale will cut closer to home than he ever could have imagined.

Doug Burgess, Gray Basnight and Lynda La Plante are the guests on the show today.

Lynda La Plante: "Windows": THE BASIS FOR STEVE MCQUEEN'S UPCOMING MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, WIDOWS IS A FAST-PACED HEIST THRILLER WITH AN ALL FEMALE CAST YOU WON'T FORGET.

Before PRIME SUSPECT there was WIDOWS . . . Facing life alone, they turned to crime together. Dolly Rawlins, Linda Pirelli and Shirley Miller are left devastated when their husbands are killed in a security van heist that goes disastrously wrong. When Dolly discovers her husband Harry's bank deposit box, containing a gun, money - and detailed plans for the hijack - she realises that she only has three options: 1. Give up and forget she ever found them; 2. Hand over Harry's ledgers to the police, or to the thugs that have been hassling her for information they think she has; 3. She and the other widows could carry out the robbery themselves Novices in the craft of crime, the three women make their preparations. Along the way they discover that Harry's plan required four people, not three. But only three bodies were discovered in the carnage of the original hijack - so who was the fourth man, and where is he now? Recruiting hooker Bella O'Reilly as their fourth, the widows are determined to execute their plan. Facing mounting pressure from DI Resnick, and local thugs Arnie and Tony Fisher, can they stick together and finish the job their husbands started . . .

Nicolas Obregon, crime novelist

Travel writer turned novelist Nicolas Obregon read hundreds of crime novels to research the genre before penning his stunning debut novel BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA. His insights are invaluable for storytellers of all bents, and especially for anyone thinking of writing a novel.

Visit www.thestoryblender.com for more information on all the shows. Also please know that all shows are brought to you by Suspense Magazine and Suspense Publishing, please visit www.suspensemagazine.com for more information. You can email the show at [email protected]

We have David Bell, Michael Brandman and Howard Kaplan live on the air today. We will also play the exclusive interview we did with #1 NYT and International Bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton.

Laurell K. Hamilton: "Serpentine": Vampire hunter Anita Blake has managed to overcome everything she faces. But this time there's a monster that even she doesn't know how to fight...

A remote Florida island is the perfect wedding destination for the upcoming nuptials of Anita's fellow U.S. Marshal and best friend Edward. For Anita, the vacation is a welcome break, as it's the first trip she gets to take with just wereleopards Micah and Nathaniel. But it's not all fun and games and bachelor parties...

In this tropical paradise Micah discovers a horrific new form of lycanthropy, one that has afflicted a single family for generations. Believed to be the result of an ancient Greek curse, it turns human bodies into a mass of snakes.

When long-simmering resentment leads to a big blowout within the wedding party, the last thing Anita needs is more drama. But it finds her anyway when women start disappearing from the hotel, and worse--her own friends and lovers are considered the prime suspects. There's a strange power afoot that Anita has never confronted before, a force that's rendering those around her helpless in its thrall. Unable to face it on her own, Anita is willing to accept help from even the deadliest places. Help that she will most certainly regret--if she survives at all, that is...

Steven Alten "Meg": On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean’s deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he’s sure he saw but still can’t prove exists – Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a Ph.D. in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he’s never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.

Steven Alten "Meg": On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists – Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a Ph.D. in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.

Andrew Mayne - TV Personality, Illusionist, and bestselling author

Andrew was the star of A&E's magic reality show Don't Trust Andrew Mayne. As one of the most innovative illusionists in the country and a critically acclaimed novelist, his passion is tollways entertain audiences and readers. Andrew gives insights into his writing process including how to write a novella in 24 hours.

All shows are brought to you by Suspense Magazine. Check out www.suspensemagazine.com. Also check out www.thestoryblender.com. If you want to email the show to contact any guest, etc: [email protected]. Subscribe on ITunes.

We will have our conversation with #1 NYT Bestselling author Jim Butcher along with having Bestselling author Alan Jacobson live on air. 

Alan Jacobson "Dark Side of the Moon (OPSIG Team Black book 4): The OPSIG team must literally leave Earth to save it in this “thriller ride of a lifetime” from the USA Today–bestselling author of The Lost Codex (Gayle Lynds).

In 1972, Apollo 17 returned to Earth with two hundred pounds of rock—as well as something far more dangerous than they could have imagined. For decades, the military concealed the crew’s mysterious discovery. But now a NASA contractor has leaked the intel to conspiring foreign powers, putting in their hands the most powerful weapon of mass destruction yet created.

 

While FBI profiler Karen Vail and OPSIG Team Black colleague Alexandra Rusakov try to root out the NASA mole and break up the spy ring, covert operatives Hector DeSantos and Aaron Uziel prepare for a mission beyond anything they’ve ever attempted—a spaceflight to the moon itself—to avert a war that could not only disrupt the global balance of power, but also end in catastrophic annihilation . . .

 

Dark Side of the Moon is the 4th book in the OPSIG Team Black series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.