Foolproof Dreams and Foolish Schemes by Dianne Emley

Very happy to welcome back LA Times bestselling author Dianne Emley for a continuing look at her Iris Thorne series. I’ll be reviewing the series’s fourth entry, Foolproof, tomorrow. Originally published in the early 90s, it’s been an interesting experience for Dianne to revisit books she hadn’t looked at in a decade.

Dianne EmleyThank you, Elizabeth, for hosting my guest posts about my experiences revisiting my first mystery series which featured Iris Thorne–a single, sexy, and ambitious Los Angeles investment adviser. The books were originally published by Simon and Schuster in the nineties and were long out-of-print. They’ve been refreshed and are now available for the first time as e-books and trade paperbacks.

Before reissuing the Iris Thornes, I decided to reread them because I’d lost touch with their nuances over the years. Of course, I couldn’t help but polish them, just a little. In the process, I embarked on a more significant journey of reconnecting with the writer, and the person, I was back then.

Today, I’m discussing my path to Foolproof, the fourth Iris, recently again on-sale. The first three Irises, Cold Call, Slow Squeeze, and Fast Friends, are also out now. The fifth and final Iris Thorne mystery, Pushover, never before published in the U.S., will be out later this year.

In Foolproof, first published in 1998, Iris’s work life and personal life brutally collide when her dear friend Bridget is murdered by the backyard pool of her oceanfront mansion. The horrific crime is witnessed by Bridget’s five-year-old daughter, Brianna. The prime suspect is Bridget’s husband and Brianna’s father Kip, the volatile creative genius behind the couple’s computer games company, Pandora. Bridget shocked everyone when she left her majority stake in Pandora not to her husband but to her daughter and named Iris as administrator of Brianna’s trust. Iris is now responsible for a little girl’s financial future—and perhaps even the five-year-old’s life.

Day by Day by Shaun Jeffrey

Day by Day by Shaun Jeffrey“I told you they don’t care about you. Not like me. I’ll take care of you.” – Trevor

Fifteen-year-old Tina is living a life that is unfortunately all too common in today’s world. Her parents are divorced. She only sees her father occasionally. Her mother brings home a new boyfriend seemingly every other week and has no time for Tina. And then there’s her older sister, who Tina resents for getting to do all the things Tina isn’t allowed to.

Things start to change when Tina’s mother brings home her latest boyfriend, Trevor. Far from ignoring Tina, Trevor gives her little gifts and lets her “in” on jokes only the two of them share. Starved for attention and driven by her desire to be treated like an adult, Tina doesn’t sense the danger Trevor presents. By the time she realizes his true intentions, it may be too late.

Known mostly for his police procedurals and horror writing, Day by Day continues author Shaun Jeffrey’s slow branching out into new territory, something we first saw in Dead World. In many ways, however, Day by Day is actually the most horrific thing Jeffrey has written given its subject matter.

The Ninth Step by Grant Jerkins

The Ninth Step was one of my Top 10 Reads of 2012

The Ninth Step by Grant Jerkins“You do not ease your own burden by transferring it to others to carry. That strikes to the very heart of the ninth step. First, do no harm.” – Martha

To be fair, veterinarian Helen Patrice never set out to do harm. Not when she slowly slipped from college party girl into functioning alcoholic, slamming shots from mini bottles throughout the day at work at her vet hospital.

Not when she’d go out in the evenings to one of her rotating cycle of bars and get so hammered that the next day she’d barely remember the anonymous sex she’d engaged in with some stranger in the bathroom or parking lot.

And certainly not that fateful evening after one of those alcohol drenched bar hops when she was involved in a hit and run accident. No, Helen never set out to do harm. But what she did after the harm was done…

High school geometry teacher Edgar Woolrich was driving the other car involved in Helen’s accident. He and his wife, who’d announced her pregnancy earlier that evening, were on their way home after a night out celebrating the news. Unfortunately, their route home took a life-altering detour: Edgar’s through the ER, his wife and unborn child’s through the morgue.

Some Thoughts on the Ninth Step by Grant Jerkins

A Very Simple Crime was one of my Top 10 Reads of 2010. At the End of the Road was one of my Top 10 Reads of 2011. What do those books have in common (other than being spectacular)? They were both written by Grant Jerkins, whom I am thrilled to welcome today for a guest post in advance of his latest release, The Ninth Step (September 4th from Berkley). My review of The Ninth Step will be coming on Tuesday, but I’ll go ahead and tell you this much…Grant’s now 3 for 3 on that whole “Top 10 Reads” list thing.

Grant JerkinsI quit drinking. About a year ago. “Quit” may be too strong a word for it. Stopped. Let’s say I stopped drinking. I didn’t slow down my alcohol consumption, I stopped it. I had to. I was killing myself.

Reminds me of the joke where a cop pulls a guy over for running a stop sign. The guy protests and says, “But I almost stopped. I slowed down and made sure it was safe to proceed. That’s the same thing.”

The officer asks the man to exit his vehicle. He pushes the guy over the hood of his car and starts beating the shit out of him with his baton. “Now tell me,” the cop says, “you want me to slow down? Or stop?”

I think that’s a pretty good analogy for alcohol abuse. At some point, you realize you have to slow down or stop. And, as evidenced above, stopping is the far wiser (and ultimately less painful) choice.

The Ninth Step is about a lot of things. It’s about guilt and forgiveness, secrets and lies, chaos and order. It’s about getting clean. It’s about life and the cure for it. And it’s about drinking. Stopping. Not slowing down. But stopping.

Cadaver in Chief by Steve Hockensmith

Cadaver in Chief by Steve HockensmithThe Surgeon General has determined that prolonged exposure to online political “discussion” leads to self-righteous vitriol, the spread of semi-literate misinformation, toxic levels of perverse asshattery and absolutely nothing worthwhile.

The Surgeon General hasn’t really issued such a proclamation, but retiring Washington Tribune reporter Jan Woods is of the opinion every political blog and news website should be required to carry just such a warning.

So imagine her displeasure when a mere two days before her retirement kicks in she’s assigned to investigate a rumor about the President. A rumor that started on the political blog TruthBuffet.org (“Where Justice Is Served”). A rumor that the POTUS, Brick Bradley, is in fact a zombie.

The country may well be in the midst of a major battle to contain the undead, who’ve been rising from their graves at an alarming rate, but surely there’s no way the President could actually be a zombie without someone having noticed. Right? Well…

Much to her increasing curiosity, the more Woods pokes around trying to disprove the rumor the more it looks like there really is some kind of cover-up going on. With both her retirement and the election looming, it becomes a race against time to get to the bottom of things and determine once and for all whether the POTUS is just another brain dead politician, or an honest-to-goodness dead dead member of the shambling hordes who walk amongst us.

Politically Indirect: Why I Hide My Politics from My Readers by Steve Hockensmith

Cadaver in Chief author Steve Hockensmith is one of those wonderfully gifted writers who seems as comfortable writing short stories (Blarney: 12 Tales of Lies, Crime & Mystery) as he does novels (World’s Greatest Sleuth!). He also has a delightfully warped sense of humor – Exhibit A: His author photo – which he puts to great use in explaining why he chooses not to share his political beliefs on social media.

Steve HockensmithAs a genre author who’s achieved a certain level of success (that level: “not much”), I’m expected to cheerfully embrace social media in all its forms. After all, technology has handed me these wonderful tools for making new connections and strengthening old bonds — and, more importantly, selling people shit — all while I sit in a cluttered home office/glorified closet wearing sweats so smelly they could throw bloodhounds off the scent two counties away. Surely every writer’s dream come true!

Yet Facebook and Twitter and the like can be a double-edged sword for an author. On the one hand, now your readers can get to know you on a direct, personal level. On the other hand, now your readers can get to know you on a direct, personal level.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not stalkers I’m afraid of. I still don’t have any even after publishing five mysteries and two zombie novels. Not a single Randy Quaid mugshot lookalike has carved my name into his arm with a razor blade, nor have any albino book hoarders sent me postcards with messages like “I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE” written with the urine of their own half-feral cats. It’s disappointing.

No, my problem with Twitter and Facebook has nothing to do with the obsessed, psychotically possessive fans I’m not lucky enough to have. My readers seem to be, for the most part, decent, balanced, intelligent people. (I’m excluding the guy who keeps trying to get me to play FarmVille.)

But here’s the rub. I’ve been followed and “friended” by hundreds of people who’ve read my books. And because I get to see the things they post and share and comment on, I’ve learned something important about them.

At least half of them would hate my guts if they really knew me.

Criminal by Karin Slaughter

Criminal by Karin SlaughterWill Trent had never been alone in someone else’s home before unless that person was dead. As with many things in his life, he was aware that this was a trait he shared with a lot of serial killers.

Also as is the case with a lot of serial killers, Will Trent is in many ways not the person he appears to be on the surface; the face he chooses to present to the world, strangers and acquaintances alike, is one carefully constructed to give the appearance of normalcy. In reality, however, Will is anything but normal.

Now 40 years old and a highly successful agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Will still carries the scars, physically and psychologically, of a dark childhood during which he spent most of his time in state foster homes hoping to be adopted. It’s a painful past that, like his dyslexia, he doesn’t reveal to people for fear of the judgment – and pity – he believes they will heap upon him.

One of the few people who knows about Will’s past is his boss and mentor at the GBI, Deputy Director Amanda Wagner. Far from treating Will with kid gloves, Amanda gives Will no quarter, demanding excellence from him at all times and knowing she will get it. Which is why Will is perplexed when Amanda explicitly cuts him out of the case when a young co-ed goes missing from a local college. Little does Will realize that not only does Amanda know things about him he’d prefer others not, she knows things about him that he doesn’t even know about himself.

Let the Devil Sleep by John Verdon

Let the Devil Sleep by John Verdon“Evil, Mr. Gurney. At the bottom of this case, there is an incredible evil.” – Max Clinter

Retirement isn’t working out quite like Dave Gurney anticipated. When he left the NYPD as the most decorated homicide detective in its history, Gurney thought he was leaving all the death, puzzles, and headaches behind. Yet he keeps finding himself mixed up in exactly the type of investigations he was trying to get away from, the most recent of which ended with him shot three times and in a coma. (Shut Your Eyes Tight)

He’s still trying to recuperate from his injuries, both physical and mental, when an old journalist acquaintance contacts him with a seemingly innocent request for a favor. Her college-age daughter, Kim, is putting together a reality show based on the infamous, unsolved Good Shepherd case. Gurney isn’t being asked to investigate the case, merely handhold Kim while she interviews family members of the victims for her documentary exploring the emotional toll murder – especially unsolved murder – takes on the survivors.

Of course, Gurney didn’t get to be the most decorated homicide detective in NYPD history without having an intensely curious mind, and he can’t help but start poking around in the case. A series of murders in which six individuals driving black Mercedes were shot while driving in remote areas, The Good Shepherd case has become literally a textbook case for law enforcement agencies to study as an example of a manifesto driven serial killer. The more he looks, however, the more convinced Gurney becomes that no one involved in the original case, from the locals to the feds to the forensic psychiatrist, correctly assembled the pieces of the puzzle and, in fact, they actually all came to the wrong conclusions about the killer’s motive.

And Gurney just can’t let that go.

Kick It With Conviction by Fiona ‘McDroll’ Johnson

Fiona McDroll JohnsonIt’s appropriate Fiona Johnson has chosen the moniker “McDroll” as both her pen name and online persona; the “Mc” represents her Scottish heritage, the “droll” her unique, dry sense of humor. Both of which are on display in her short story collection, Kick It With Conviction.

Sweeper opens the collection with the story of Donald “Sweeper” Henderson. A mentally challenged young man, Donald’s job is to sweep the streets of his village’s shopping district, a task in which he takes much pride. This particular Christmas season finds Sweeper a bit distracted, however, leading to a practical joke which goes horribly wrong.

Maw’s Jewelry is proof that it’s a good thing criminals aren’t too bright. When Beeny and Jango decide to play things “smart” and take a shortcut to getting Beeny’s maw’s jewelry back from the pawn shop, they get a lot more – and less – than they bargained for.

Saying Goodbye is a both an amusing and disturbing look at two young siblings’ experience at their grandmother’s wake, while Ferry Late is the tale of a family which unfortunately chooses to go on holiday to precisely the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.