Make the story good, then rewrite it: Mark Stevens on his new thriller

By Steve Weddle

The new thriller from Mark Stevens was released on May 1 as an Amazon First Reads selection and quickly racked up thousands of positive reviews. No wonder.

No Lie Lasts Forever is a smart, fast-paced thriller that keeps readers engaged and guessing through 450 pages of twists and turns.

Ahead of the book's official June 1 publication date, Mark and I chatted about this new book, whether his earlier Allison Coil series is really over, and what sort of reader he has in mind when he writes. 

Steve Weddle: So the tagline for No Lie Lasts Forever is “A reformed serial killer coaxes a disgraced journalist into finding the imposter trading on his name.” What a setup. How did that come about?

Mark Stevens: How? I have no idea. I was driving. It was night. I was alone. This was a long time ago. I had written three crime novels. All were safely out of the hands of readers. I had good agents for all three projects at that point, but I was still learning how to write. So, there I was. Driving. I wasn’t trying to dream up a plot. I wasn’t thinking about my next project or anything like that. To put it simply, I was minding my own business. And the whole concept of this book materialized in my head. At least, the general shape of it. I could feel it. I know, that sounds strange to say. I’m not a woo-woo guy. But I could grasp the general tension of the whole story. In a flash.

Steve Weddle: Which section of the book did you write first?

Mark Stevens: Act one, scene one, sentence one. I always start at the beginning. I have no idea how other writers manage to write a scene from the middle of the novel without knowing the beats and details for what has come before. To me, writing out of order is some sort of black magic that should be outlawed because it sets a dangerous precedent for intelligence and perception that is most likely the product of an evil alien presence. What else could it be?

Steve Weddle: How is this new novel impacted by your time at The Denver Post? And why is Flynn Martin a broadcast journalist instead of a print journalist?

Mark Stevens: Second question first: Because the incident that causes Flynn Martin citywide embarrassment, and gets her suspended from the station, is something that plays out as she’s covering an ongoing hostage situation at a convenience store. Flynn already has a bit of celebrity in Denver as a highly visible reporter who has been around for years and that celebrity. Print reporters, generally speaking, don’t have the same public persona and the print reporters don’t typically get put in those situations. Because television reporters have access to that little stick of dynamite: live television.

And I would say much of the book was informed by 20 years in journalism (three different newspapers in all and six years producing national television news for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour back in the 1980s). I also spent a long time working with reporters as director of communications for school districts and the state department of education here in Colorado. So I worked with lots of reporters from the other side of the communications fence, so to speak. The fact that reformed serial killer Harry Kugel works at the Colorado Department of Education is pure coincidence. It’s got to be.

Steve Weddle: Do you have a Mark Stevens reader in mind when you write? And, if so, has that idea of the reader changed for you since you started?

Mark Stevens: It sounds wrong, I guess, but I don’t have readers in mind. Sorry, readers. I guess that comes from years and years of writing without being published. And it’s possible you could think that was the reason WHY I wasn’t getting published, because I didn’t know my reader. But I also think it’s kind of a mistake to think you’ll only have one type of reader, right? So I write for myself. I try to make the story good and then rewrite it five or six times after that.

Steve Weddle: Which part of this book was the hardest to write?

Mark Stevens: Can I get away with saying “all of it”? No? I guess writing from Harry Kugel’s point of view was the hardest thing to try and get right. A guy who was once evil but who stopped, cold. And reformed himself. Maybe? It was a challenge to make him somewhat likable and engaging and then watch him squirm as the pressure builds.

Steve Weddle: What surprised you the most about this book?

Mark Stevens: I’d have to say I was surprised at the role that Michael Martin plays. He’s Flynn’s father. A longtime former print reporter who has retired from the daily Denver newspaper but still works as a citizen journalist. I was surprised at their relationship, especially how they treated each other less like father-daughter and more like friends. If the sequel gets published, he plays a pretty strong role in the follow-up, too.

Steve Weddle: This book and your 2023 novel, The Fireballer, were both Amazon First Reads picks. How has that experience differed from publishing your earlier books?

Mark Stevens: Well, it’s tremendous exposure. To be included as one of seven or eight titles promoted all month long to Amazon’s vast readership? It’s pretty hard to beat. And everybody I know who has worked with the editors at both Thomas & Mercer and Lake Union has nothing but praise for their work. The marketing is fantastic. But the bottom line is that editors at both houses made The Fireballer and No Lie Lasts Forever better books. That’s worth more than anything else. Truly.

Steve Weddle: And speaking of your earlier books, you had five novels focused on Allison Coil, a hunting guide in Colorado. These were all pretty outdoorsy – wildfires, dead hunters, environmentalism, and more. Why did you move away from that series? Have you completely left that series behind?

Mark Stevens: I didn’t purposely move away from the Allison Coil series. The fifth book, The Melancholy Howl, ends with plenty of room to pick up various threads and write another. But now No Lie has sent me in a different direction. I’ve written a sequel and the plan is for a third in a tight trilogy about Flynn Martin. There are other projects in the works, too. But, never say never. I’d love to get back to Allison and see what trouble she can run into next.

Get Yours

***

“I never thought I’d be so invested in a serial killer. The PDQ murderer is a character for the ages—complex, calculating, at times sympathetic—and he makes the pages shudder and howl. His relationship with a disgraced reporter is the stuff of classic crime fiction. In No Lie Lasts Forever, Stevens breaks free of all the old tropes, crafting a tense, surprising, and gritty tale about our darkest impulses, our quest for truth and redemption, and the lengths we go for the people we love. I adored this book.” —I.S. Berry, author of The Peacock and the Sparrow

What Does a Thriller Mean to You? Harlan Coben Provides One Answer in Nobody’s Fool

By

Scott D. Parker

I’m relatively late in reading anything by Harlan Coben, having read the first Myron Bolitar novel just last fall. I’ve since read three Bolitar books but never a standalone entry in Coben’s 37-novel career. When Nobody’s Fool was published, I checked out the audiobook from the library and settled into what is billed as a thriller.

What Does “Thriller” Mean To You?

“A stunningly twisty thriller” are the opening words to the book description so my mind conjured up an idea of what that meant. “Stunningly twisty” told me that I was going to get what Coben is famous for: a story that turned on itself, subverting expectations while truths were uncovered by the characters before that final moment and last page. “Thriller” to me has consistently meant something different than other genres words like mystery or suspense. Thriller is what the Mission Impossible movies are, or novels from Dan Brown or Gregg Hurwitz: fast-paced action filled with fights and gunplay.

Maybe I need to expand my definition of the word thriller because what Coben delivered didn’t align with what I thought I was getting. Were I to tag a genre word to this novel, I’d be more likely to use “mystery” because the tale Coben weaves is excellent, but much of it occurred in the mind and experience of the protagonist.

What is Nobody’s Fool about?

 

Years ago, Sami Kierce is in Spain after graduating from college. He picks up a girl in a club and they spend a week together. Until the morning he wakes up, covered in blood, a knife in his hand, and the girl, Anna, dead. Panicking, he does what he thinks is the best thing: he flees back to American, but the experience haunts him.

 

Cut to Kierce now. He’s a PI after getting himself kicked out of the NYPD. He’s married and has a young son. He also teaches night school for people who fancy themselves as detectives. His life is decent and predictable even if he is staring at a mountain of debt and few good prospects. 

 

Until Anna walks into his classroom. She flees. He pursues, and keeps going until he has discovered the answer to every question he’s had for twenty-two years and the new ones he consistently encounters.

 

How it plays out

 

The setup is splendid. In fact, the opening scene shows the events in Spain so you get a first-hand look at Sami’s trauma and fear. Within the span of one chapter, we’re already in the present day and the action goes on from there.

 

But, like I said, what I expected based on the word ‘thriller”—chases, gun fire, actiony stuff—isn’t what this book is about. It’s a suspense book, with a well-crafted, interweaved story that Sami must get through. I was thoroughly engaged from page 1 and eagerly finished the book—I snagged both the audio (for commutes) and ebook (for evening reading) from library—in a week.

 

What I found most fascinating and most rewarding is the relentless nature of Sami’s quest for the truth. Yeah, this is how books like this are supposed to go, but I sometimes found myself asking “Would I keep going?” Characters always do.

 

And let’s not forget the sub-plot, where a case Sami worked on as a police detective comes into play and interrupts everything. Well done.

 

The Side Characters

 

Templates exist for side characters in mysteries (or any genre, really) and when you start reading a book, depending on the skill of the author, some of those tropes come into play. In this book, Coben delivers some fine side characters that find them not only integral to the plot but actual real people you believe in.

 

Molly, Sami’s wife, has her husband’s back. Period. And narrator Vikas Adam voices her very well and with a spark of humor and gumption. But it is the group of people in Sami’s class that really felt like a breath of fresh air. They are misfits, a conglomeration of people from all walks of life. When we first meet them—in the scene where Sami sees Anna—I reckoned them as background characters. Little did I know Coben was going to keep them in on stage, enabling Sami’s investigation all the way to the end. And that we’d come to care for them. At one point during a stakeout, one character gives his backstory to Sami. As a story-within-a-story, I was all in and transfixed by the tale. Loved this.

 

This is only the fourth Coben book I’ve read and the first not involving Myron Bolitar* and I didn’t realize that this was a story that had a previous book and Netflix miniseries. So I can only imagine, perhaps, there will be future books featuring Sami Kierce. If so, then his band of “irregulars” has to be involved. 

 

Nobody’s Fool is brand new and only two months in the bookstores, and I highly recommend you add it to your summer reading list.

The Worst Thing You Could Do is Not Read T.J. Newman’s Worst Case Scenario

By 

Scott D. Parker

I should have known that I’d cry.

When I listened to T.J. Newman’s first book, FALLING, last year, the story evoked an emotional response. The same thing happened when I devoured her second, DROWNING, but this second time, it was doubled. Now, with WORST CASE SCENARIO, she has tripled the emotional impact that a story can bring. 

And I’m so happy for it.

Pitch-Perfect Elevator Pitches

A former flight attendant, Newman’s first two thrillers take place on planes. The elevator pitches are short enough that you could speak them even if you’re going up a single floor. FALLING: A pilot is given a choice: crash the plane or we kill your kidnapped family. DROWNING: How do you rescue survivors trapped in a plane that is slowly sinking in the Pacific Ocean? For WORST CASE SCENARIO (WCS): What do you do if a plane crashes into a nuclear power plant?

It’s the kind of situation you hope never, ever happens in real life, but Newman tells this story using characters that you really start caring for from the moment they step into the story.

A Visceral Opening Sequence

As I wrote in my earlier reviews, Newman wastes zero time getting into the action. For WCS, she puts you on the plane when the pilot suffers a fatal heart attack. His body causes the plane to nose dive and nothing can be done. But expert author that she is, Newman puts you on the plane, with the flight attendants and the co-pilot, as they try to right the plane. She makes you care for the almost instantly and you find yourself praying they’ll survive. 

Same thing for the folks on the ground who see and hear the plane crash. The detailed descriptions of what happens to the folks on the ground unfortunate enough to be caught by the falling debris is sobering. What physically happens to a human body when a plane’s wing rams into a van filled with a family? The descriptions are not gory, but they are clinical. You, as the reader, get to fill in the rest. 

Newman excels at writing this type of action scene. You feel it. Your heart beats faster. You might break out in a sweat. But what you’ll be breaking out next is a box of tissues.

Real Characters in a Surreal Situation

So, really, what would happen if a plane crashes into a nuclear power plant? Newman focuses on a few locales and situations to bring home the human element. The crash itself is near Waketa, Minnesota, a small town in proximity to Minneapolis. At her author event here in Houston at Murder by the Book, Newman said she wanted to set the story far away from a big city that would have all the resources and equipment necessary to solve the issues. That decision actually opened up the story and examined what it is like to live in a small town and deepened the character development.

There’s the firefighter who is a single dad/widower with an estranged son.. There’s the team at the power plant who must address the impending catastrophe in less time than they have. There’s the President who must confront the potential worst nuclear incident in the history of the world. And there are the local firefighters who must try and rescue a child on a bridge.

By switching the multiple viewpoints, you get a broad sense of scope of the challenges they all face. But Newman never lets us forget that these are ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances and choices. Narrator Joe Morton does a wonderful job at giving these various characters a voice of their own, and the production even went so far as to make things like radio broadcasts sound like they’re coming from a walkie talkie. It’s a little thing, but it goes a long way.

As a human, I became terrified at how easily something like this might happen. As a reader, however, I was enthralled and emotionally engaged throughout the entire book. 

And I will read everything T.J. Newman writes.

You should too.

A Flawed Hero Anchors The #1 Lawyer by James Patterson and Nancy Allen

By

Scott D. Parker

Sometimes, you need a lawyer. And sometimes, you want to read about one.

Fresh off my first political thriller in many a year (as reviewed last week), I wanted to dive into a legal thriller. Probably stemmed from my enjoyment of the Apple TV version of Scott Turrow’s “Presumed Innocent” but the book I selected was part of the original group of books at a local grocery store. And, yeah, it’s another James Patterson book.

The #1 Lawyer by James Patterson and Nancy Allen was published earlier this year so it’s still in hardback. It’s also in audio which is how I consumed this story. Kevin Stillwell does a great job at narrating the exploits of Stafford Lee Penney, trial lawyer from Biloxi, Mississippi. Now, the best thing Stillwell does is not affect a deep Southern drawl. But he’s got just enough of an affect that you never forget where this story takes place. 

Stafford Lee (you know he’s from the South when he goes by two names) is, well, the #1 trial lawyer in southern Mississippi. He’s never lost a case. And the case we get from the start is a doozy. Doctor Daniel Caro is accused of murdering a patient, one in which he was intimately involved. Author Nancy Allen is an attorney herself and the nuances of trying this case were fully fleshed out. The entire first act of the book is the Caro case, and it was enthralling. It was exactly what I was looking for. In fact, all of Act I, the portion of the book devoted to the Caro case, could have been its own novel.

But it’s the major twists that keep coming that make this book enjoyable. And I use twists in the plural. It’s not a spoiler—it’s right there on the cover—to say that Stafford Lee becomes himself a suspect in a murder. But you’ll never guess who or why until the very end.

A Flawed Lead Character

In a decent amount of the stories I consume—including books, TV, and movies—the lead characters don’t get hurt too much. Maybe that’s some sort of internal thing in my head steering my decisions a certain way or maybe the kinds of stories I like involve likable lead characters who don’t often suffer. Stafford Lee is likable—even when he stumbles—but it’s his vulnerabilities that really drew me in. 

He’s an excellent attorney, and we see that in Act I. And you kind of think he’ll just skate through to the end of the book. But the subsequent events hurt him and he finds himself not knowing what to do. The deeper he gets, the more things are just piled on top of him and you don’t really know how he’s going to get out of his predicament. And he’s stubborn so that doesn’t help. There are multiple times when I wanted him to just shut up and let someone help him, but no. He’s got to do things his way. 

He emerges from the story not unscathed, but he has grown. That makes for a very satisfying ending. 

Guest Post: Enter Sloane Donovan

I have a treat for everyone today, a guest post from PI thriller writer J.T. Siemens. He has not-your-average inspiration story for his tough, conflicted, bipolar PI heroine, Sloan Donovan. I’ll let him explain, but not without first recommending the just-released second novel in his series, Call of the Void, from NeWest Press. Take it away, J.T.!     -   Claire Booth

 By J.T. Siemens

            It all started with a murder at my workplace. That’s where the character of Sloane Donovan was born. A colleague of mine—an extremely tough-minded and athletic woman—happened across the victim’s body when she arrived at work just before dawn one morning. She didn’t witness the murder, but in ensuing days and weeks, seeing the brutal aftermath clearly left her unhinged, and as a result she suffered from PTSD.

            The event inspired me to write a short story, told through the eyes of an ex-cop named Sloane, who stumbles across the body of her friend. Sloane became a composite of several exceptionally strong and dynamic women I’d known, and I took a gamble in writing the story in first-person from a female perspective. In truth, Sloane’s voice came to me ready-made, and I understood her from the get-go. The story was well received, but even if it hadn’t been, I knew I had a character residing in me that was simply too powerful and too interesting to be contained in a single short story.

            Sloane deserved a novel. Heck, she deserved a series.

            Deciding to stick with the first-person narrative throughout, I churned out the first draft of To Those Who Killed Me, largely in secret to avoid any naysayers. Sloane was already in my head, so I knew that third-person wouldn’t cut it. She is a fun character to write because she’s a bit of a wildcard; I often don’t know what she’s going to do from one scene to the next, or how far she might go to get the job done—in this case, uncovering the reason behind her friend’s murder, which is the premise of To Those Who Killed Me.

            In between drafts, I became acquainted with a couple of female police officers, both of whom had been involved in significant undercover operations. This helped imbue Sloane’s character with more depth and authenticity. The officers I met, as well as the women I based her character on, all exuded edgy, warrior vibes, and I loved that for the character of Sloane.           

In addition to PTSD, Sloane also struggles with a bipolar diagnosis. In early drafts, I avoided labels as much as possible, but it wasn’t until a medical professional had read the manuscript that I was informed that Sloane’s issue sounded a lot like bipolar disorder. This led to a ton of research, but more importantly, I discovered that I already knew some people who lived with the disorder. The anecdotes they graciously bestowed allowed Sloane to become even more fully fleshed out, especially her backstory. It was very important to me to portray mental illness through the most truthful and respectful lens possible. I also used aspects of Sloane’s diagnosis as an asset, such as when she is able to channel that obsessive, high-energy output into solving cases—albeit to the detriment of other aspects of her life.

In To Those Who Killed Me, Sloane is determined to get to the bottom of her friend’s suspicious death, and is nearly killed in the process. In the just-released book two, Call of the Void, Sloane is now a fully-fledged P.I., who, with the help of her partner, Wayne Capson, takes on the case of Emily Pike, a young woman who has been missing for seven years. The sequel takes place six months following the events of the first book, leaving Sloane still nursing wounds inflicted during the earlier case. The missing persons case triggers Sloane’s obsessive nature to new heights, leading her and Wayne to find clues linking Emily to a series of disappearances of women over the past forty years.

The idea for Call of the Void came when I saw a missing person poster of a young woman hanging from a telephone pole. It was in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside, a place where an inordinate number of marginalized women go missing each year. When I looked the woman up, I came across the Missing Children Society of Canada, and I was staggered by the sheer volume of missing kids and teens who have disappeared over the decades. Few want to spend any time considering what may have happened to them, or the devastating effects their disappearances have on their families. Thinking about this affected me on a deep, visceral level, and I thought, this would get to Sloane, too. If there’s anyone who would stop at nothing to track down a missing teen, it would be her.

            And off we went.

 

J.T. Siemens grew up in Vernon, BC, and moved to Vancouver to pursue a career as a personal trainer. A longstanding love of books and movies led him to study screenwriting and creative writing, and his short stories have been published in Mystery Weekly, Down in the Dirt, CC&D, and Vancouver Magazine. A murder outside his workplace inspired the novel To Those Who Killed Me, which was nominated for the Arthur Ellis Unhanged Award, and published by NeWest Press in April 2022. The novel introduces Sloane Donovan and is the first in a series about a bipolar ex-cop turned PI. J.T. lives in Vancouver’s West End with his wife and two cats. 

Buy Call of the Void at Bookshop dot org, on Amazon, or through Canada's NeWest Press.

The Heist, Featuring Detective Isaac Bell, Arrives Just In Time for Summer Adventure

By

Scott D. Parker

Clive Cussler knew his readers.

The prolific author wrote over sixty books in his lifetime (he died in 2020 at age 88) spread across five main series: Dirk Pitt, Sam and Remi Fargo, the Oregon files, and Kurt Austin. But it is the Isaac Bell series that captured my attention from the jump.

The Isaac Bell series features the titular character, the lead detective of the Van Dorn detective agency. As ruggedly handsome as you can imagine, dogged in his determination to find the culprit, and devoted to justice, Bell is the kind of man you want on your side. 

All of the stories are set in the early 20th Century and that is what attracted me to them. Unlike, say, the Dirk Pitt novels—that often have a slightly alternative history quality to them—the Bell novels fit squarely into real history. I tend to think of them along the lines of “well, that certainly could have happened.”

The Cold Open in The Heist is Pretty Hot

Cussler’s novels are always good, reliable action/adventure mystery/thrillers guaranteed to be the summer blockbuster movie you see in your mind and The Heist is no different. 

The latest novel debuted last week and, just like any Bell novel, it opens with a bang. Literally. Bell finds himself on the presidential yacht of Woodrow Wilson. It’s 1914 and he’s invited the members of the federal reserve as they launch the organization. All seems to be going well until a rogue airplane launches an attack: incendiary bombs are dropped on the boat. Bell, naturally, saves the day, but that launches his new investigation.

Until he’s reassigned to another case. He’s called out to a mansion in Rhode Island where he is to serve as a “second opinion” for a rich guy who is accused of killing his wife. In a fascinating three-chapter sequence, author Jack Du Brul (now the primary author for the Bell series after Justin Scott wrote the nine of the first ten entries) delivers what is, in essence, a short story in the middle of the novel. The solution is ingenious and could easily stand on its own as a story.

The Actual Heist is Massive

But this is a novel and with its title, we need something big. And we got it. In our age of instant communications and cell phones and satellites, it can sometimes be difficult to remember how slow we used to talk with each other and just how much we didn’t know if it wasn’t published in the newspapers. The Isaac Bell novels are a nice reminder of this, and this lack of communications plays a big part in the heist.

It actually boggles the mind, which is a nifty trick to pull off in a book set more than a century before today. When you have a series character like Isaac Bell, it’s rare the hero loses. The joy comes in the locations, the devices the hero uses, and specifically the steps and daring do Bell takes to get his man.

The Narrator is Fantastic

I’ve written before how much I enjoy Scott Brick as an audiobook narrator. I cannot recall the first book I heard with Brick as a narrator, but he became an instant favorite. He has the ability to characterize the existing prose with different emphasis and nuances that make for a better listening experience. When I discovered the Bell series and learned Brick was the narrator, I actually latched onto Brick as Bell. I, of course, have “cast” Isaac Bell in my mind, but it’s Brick’s voice I hear. 

In fact, on Thursday night, strong storms blew through Houston and knocked the power out at my house. My wife and I turned to books to pass the time and I pulled up my ebook copy from the Libby app and started to read.

And “heard” Brick’s narration.

The Isaac Bell series is a wonderful historical thriller series I highly recommend, and Jack Du Brul’s The Heist carries on the tradition. If you need a good, old-fashioned cat-and-mouse story, this book fits the bill.