Guest Post: “The Beretta 9mm” by J.B. Turner

Here’s the thing.

If you’ve read an American thriller, there’s a fair chance the protagonist will use a gun. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. Read any James Lee Burke and you’ll see either Dave Robicheaux or Clete Purcell pressing a gun to some bad guy’s head in the swamps of south Louisiana. Same with the great Richard Stark’s ‘Parker’ character in The Hunter, which became a film with Lee Marvin or later, Mel Gibson’s Payback.

Guns, some people think, go to the heart of what it means to be an American. It’s even written into the constitution, the right to bear arms.

My protagonist in the conspiracy thriller Hard Road Jon Reznick, an ex-Special Forces operative, is assigned a Beretta 9mm semi-automatic pistol – amongst a host of other gadgets and hardware including electronic jamming equipment – to carry out an assassination of a government scientist.

An Interview with MATTEO STRUKUL

Italian author Matteo Strukul stops by to talk about his first novel in English, The Ballad of Mila, his broad and varied influences, his inspirational home country, why Chuck Wendig is a “badass wizard”, and much more…

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Matteo Strukul?

First of all, thank you so much Stefan for this opportunity to talk about my work. Well, about myself... I’m a man who loves life and rock ’n’ roll music (The Black Crowes, Rival Sons, Buckcherry and all the old stuff like Led Zep or Skynyrd). I adore American pulp-crime fiction authors (Jim Thompson, James Crumley, Joe R. Lansdale, among others), but at the same time I read so many European authors and literature (Friedrich Schiller, Wolfgang Goethe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Emilio Salgari), I love Italian red wine like Raboso or Grinton and I love my land that is Veneto in the Northeast of Italy. I’m so lucky to grow up in this area in towns like Padova, Venezia, Verona – so full of arts and beauty, I must confess that it’s an amazing place and for that reason I love to write about my land in my novels.

Guest Post: “Influences & Inspirations” by Robert Bailey

Robert Bailey is the author of THE PROFESSOR, a legal thriller to be published by Exhibit A Books late January 2014.

I was born from a family of storytellers and teachers. My mother taught English and reading, and my grandmother, a math teacher, was never without a book to read. My father, though a builder by trade, can still hold a room captive with his stories and jokes, and, as a little boy, I was always on the edge of my chair when he would rasp on about Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and the legends that played football for the Crimson Tide.

As far as writers, John Steinbeck was a major early influence. As a kid, I loved his shorter novels, The Red Pony and The Pearl. As a high school sophomore, we studied The Grapes of Wrath, and Tom Joad remains one of my favorite characters in all of literature. As a southerner and an Alabamian that grew up to be a lawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird holds a special place. I think every lawyer wants to grow up to be Atticus Finch, and the story just had everything. It was thrilling, historical, funny and tragic. Just a remarkable achievement.

An interview with DAN NEWMAN

Today’s interview is with Dan Newman, the author of The Clearing (published today by Exhibit A, the crime/thriller imprint of Angry Robot Books). To mark the release of his book, he was kind enough to answer a few questions…

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Dan Newman?

Stefan, thank you for the opportunity to stop by... with a new novel in the market I really do appreciate the chance to be part of your blog.

As for who I am, that’s probably best defined through my experiences growing up in-transit around the globe. My father worked in international development, so we moved a lot, and lived in some wonderful places. I was born in England, and currently live in Canada, but in between there’s been a tidy little list of places in Africa and the Caribbean. I was at a friend’s party a few days ago and a childhood pal of his spoke about how they had known each other and remained friends since they were four or five years old. That seems incredible to me, and something I can’t say of anyone, given how I grew up. Still, life’s a constant trade-off, and I what I missed in long-held childhood friends, I made up for in places around the world where I can stop in for a free meal and a night on the couch.

I thought we’d start with your fiction: Your latest novel, The Clearing, was published by Exhibit A in October 2013. How would you introduce the novel to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

The Clearing is really a book about our past, and how, if left unaddressed, it can inform every part of our future lives. It’s about being a parent, about being an adult, and about recognising youth as a root system that feeds the lives we grow into.

The Clearing was written such that it could stand alone as a complete story, but there are a number of things I’ve set in there for a sequel – which I’m just completing now. It follows Nate Mason at three key periods in his life, and traces the path he’s compelled to take back to his childhood to deal with a formative tragedy that happened there. It dabbles a little in the occult, a little in psychological thriller territory, and a little in crime.

Upcoming: “The Cambodian Book of the Dead” by Tom Vater (Exhibit A)

Exhibit A, the crime/thriller imprint under the Angry Robot banner, is still relative new (only three titles published so far, I believe). They seem to have a pretty good eye for stories, though. I haven’t had a chance to read any of the new novels, but I think that lapse is going to change, and soon. Today, I nabbed an eARC for Tom Vater’s intriguing-looking novel, The Cambodian Book of the Dead, which has the pitch, “where Apocalypse Now meets The Beach”…

Was I swayed by the cover? Well… yes, I admit I was a little bit. It certainly helped grab my attention. Then I read the synopsis, and my interest was well-and-truly piqued. I been meaning to read more thrillers, too… Here’s the synopsis:

Private eye and former war reporter, Maier is sent to Cambodia to track down the missing heir to a Hamburg coffee empire.

His search leads him into the darkest corners of the country’s history, through the Killing Fields of the communist revolution, to the White Spider, a Nazi war criminal who reigns over an ancient Khmer temple deep in the jungle.

But the terrifying tale of mass murder that Maier uncovers is far from over. And soon Maier realises that, if he is to prevent more innocent lives from being destroyed, he will have to write the last horrific chapter himself.

The Cambodian Book of the Dead will be published by Exhibit A at the end of June (North America & eBook) and the beginning of July (UK).