BOOKISHGAL

I don’t read a lot of crime or spy fiction (Le Carré has been an exception, though I’m even behind on his books lately), but I’m starting to look forward to checking out Minotaur Books’ Moments in Crime blog every Monday, to see which author is writing that week. I’m starting to build a new list of authors I’ll probably want to read.

This week, it looks like we get two author bloggers: Olen Steinhauer, whose latest book is The Tourist, and Brian Freeman, talking about his book, In the Dark.

As I peruse his website, I see that Steinhauer has had a fascinating writing agenda. His first five books chronicled the five decades of the Cold War, one book per decade, and most of these books either won awards or were on several “best of” lists for the years in which they were published. Now, with The Tourist, he’s starting a new series, a post-9/11 trilogy, about a former CIA undercover agent (a “tourist”) who finds himself having to leave his new life and go back undercover to help with an investigation.

And reading on, I see something really cool –  George Clooney’s Smoke House Films company has picked up the rights, and Clooney is going to star in the movie! So I’ll need to read the book for sure, so I can be ready for the film. Woo!

Brian Freeman, meanwhile, writes psychological suspense novels (ooh, that sounds good). The latest, In the Dark, is due out in hardcover on March 31. This book sees detective Jonathan Stride looking again at  the murder of his wife Cindy’s sister, Laura, which happened when they were teenagers, and which both had felt was committed by someone Cindy must have known.

I’m kind of tickled that, according to his website, he started his career as a published author at age 41. (I’m still going to beat him hollow, but anyway…) He describes all the novels he wrote before then, which have not been published, and then makes this comment:

I recall James Michener saying that you should only get published after you’ve written a million words … I must be just about there.

Isn’t that encouraging?? (She says, glancing at the 13 novels written in her 20’s.) (I’m surely working on my second million by now, so I’m waaaaay overdue.)

It looks like we’re in for some interesting insights from these two authors this week. If you’re into crime or spy novels, check it out and see what they have to say.

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