It's always a treat to bring on a debut author. To experience the journey with them for the first time is really quite cool. Debut author Leslie Lutz penned a great debut novel "Fractured Tide", so when we had the chance to talk to her, we jumped. Here is Leslie in her own words: I started writing FRACTURED TIDE while I was taking an advanced open water scuba class out in Clearsprings Lake near Dallas. Our group dove in this uberscary area of the lake called The Silo, which is not much more than a sixty-foot-deep muddy sinkhole where light can't reach. It was terrifying. After that, I got the chance to dive off the coast of Key Largo on this monster wreck called the Speigel Grove. This time I got clear water, coral-encrusted railings, and schools of snapper. That wreck is beautiful, but it's also a little creepy down there. The 90-foot depth keeps the place in perpetual twilight, and the empty hallways of the ship feel haunted. Those experiences got inside my head, and over the last three years, I wrote a book. For the record, there are no recorded sightings of sea monsters on the Speigel Grove (yet). My short fiction and poetry has been published in several journals, including Orca Literary Journal, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, Typishly, The Lyric, and Raintown Review. I won the 2018 Frisco First Chapter Contest for FRACTURED TIDE, which gave me enough confidence to pitch the novel to Amy Bishop, an agent with Dystel, Goderich, and Bourret. She said yes, and I've been celebrating ever since.
Suspense Radio host Tracey Devlyn sat down with New York Times bestselling author Katy Hays to chat about her new literary thriller-SALTWATER.
Sun-soaked paradise or a gilded cage of deception???A long-buried crime resurfaces, shaking a fractured family to its core. When the past refuses to stay buried, trust is shattered-and survival isn't guaranteed.
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Katy Hays is a Californian, writer, and cake aficionado. She lives in the shadow of the Sierra with her husband and their dog, Queso. In addition to writing, Katy works as an adjunct Art History Professor teaching rural students from Truckee to Tecopa. She holds an MA in Art History from Williams College and pursued her PhD in Art History at UC Berkeley. When not writing (or eating cake) Katy is a skier, cyclist, trail runner, eastern Sierra enthusiast, and-well, reader.
Suspense Radio host Tracey Devlyn sits down with debut author Francesco Paola to chat about his new release-LEFT ON RANCHO.
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A failing entrepreneur. A desert town full of secrets. When Andrew Eastman takes on a risky cannabis venture, his search for answers drags him into a deadly world of corruption, smuggling, and betrayal-where every choice comes with a price, and survival means deciding what he's truly willing to lose.
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Show Notes: https://suspensemagazine.com/blog2/2025/02/11/interview-with-francesco-paola/
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FRANCESCO PAOLA was born in Turin, Italy, and was raised in Italy, Thailand, and Australia before moving to the US, where he earned an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is an accomplished technology entrepreneur, and has written technical blogs, white papers, and articles for over twenty-five years as an executive in the tech-startup ecosystem. He and his wife Jackie have called New York City home since 1999.
Suspense Radio host Tracey Devlyn sits down with Eric P. Bishop to chat about his new military thriller-BABYLON WILL RISE.
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A stolen nuke. A rogue arms dealer. When two long-missing nuclear weapons resurface, the Omega Group is thrust into a global race against time-where every move could trigger catastrophe. With a new operative on board and the enemy rewriting the rules, failure isn't an option. The world's survival hangs in the balance.
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Show Notes: https://suspensemagazine.com/blog2/2025/02/08/interview-with-eric-bishop/
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ERIC P. BISHOP grew up in Connecticut, and relocated to the South after college. After becoming restless moves to the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest occurred before finally heading back East to raise a family. The wanderlust has never left Eric and he's always yearning for the next adventure.
After many years in corporate America, he decided to turn his passion for the written word and dreams of crafting a novel into reality. Eric's debut novel The Body Man came out in 2021, the sequel Breach of Trust in 2024, and the third book in The Body Man Series titled Supreme Justice will be out July 2025. Eric also has released two books in The Omega Group Series: Ransomed Daughter and Babylon Will Rise.
Eric lives in the foothills of Western North Carolina with his kids. You can normally find him exploring the great outdoors most weekends, traveling the world when possible, and grilling out on his back deck, all the while dreaming up the next great novel.
Suspense Radio host Tracey Devlyn sits down with USA Today bestselling author Alison Gaylin to chat about her newest psychological thriller-WE ARE WATCHING.
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A tragic accident. A twisted prophecy. As a grieving mother becomes the target of a violent conspiracy tied to a decades-old novel, she must uncover the truth behind her husband's death and confront a fanatical group determined to destroy her family-before fiction turns fatal.
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Show Notes: https://suspensemagazine.com/blog2/2025/01/28/interview-with-alison-gaylin/
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ALISON GAYLIN is the USA Today and international bestselling author of thirteen books, including the stand-alones The Collective and If I Die Tonight (winner of the Edgar Award) and the Brenna Spector series: And She Was (winner of the Shamus Award), Into the Dark, and Stay With Me. Nominated for the Edgar four times, she has also been a finalist for numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Strand Book Award and the ITW Thriller, Macavity and Anthony Awards. She lives with her husband in Woodstock, New York.
Suspense Radio host Tracey Devlyn sits down with New York Times bestselling author Jayne Anne Krentz to chat about her new romantic thriller-SHATTERING DAWN.
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A stalker in the shadows. A night lost to memory. When Amelia Rivers hires private investigator Gideon Sweetwater, their search for answers unleashes buried secrets, dangerous chemistry, and a deadly conspiracy tied to psychic experimentation. To survive, they must unravel the truth-before the past claims them both.
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Show Notes: https://suspensemagazine.com/blog2/2025/01/07/interview-with-jayne-anne-krentz/
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The author of over 50 New York Times bestsellers, JAYNE ANN KRENTZ writes romantic-suspense in three different worlds: Contemporary (as Jayne Ann Krentz), historical (as Amanda Quick) and futuristic (as Jayne Castle). There are over 35 million copies of her books in print.
Suspense Radio host Tracey Devlyn sits down with USA Today bestselling author Alex Segura to chat about his newest thriller-ALTER EGO.
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Lost legends. Buried secrets. When a visionary creator finally gets the chance to reimagine her favorite childhood hero, she uncovers a web of lies, power plays, and a truth darker than any comic book plot. Passion meets peril in this thrilling homage to creativity, legacy, and the stories that shape us.
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Show Notes: https://suspensemagazine.com/blog2/2024/12/03/interview-with-alex-segura/
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ALEX SEGURA is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of Secret Identity, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller and a New York Times Editor's Choice and an NPR Best Mystery of the Year. He's also the author of the Pete Fernandez series, as well as the Star Wars novel, Poe Dameron: Free Fall, and a Spider-Verse adventure called Araña/Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow. He lives in New York City with his family.
Here's the thing about the South-if you can't tell a story, they won't feed you. They'll simply deposit you behind the barn and let you wither away. That doesn't happen often because everyone down there can spin a yarn. Some better than others, but a story is a story. This is a rich tradition and congers up names like William Faulkner, James Dickey, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Conner, Tennessee Williams, Mark Twain, Harper Lee, Truman Capote (who spent much of his childhood in Alabama), James Lee Burke, and the list goes on and on.
Where did this tradition come from? Since much of the South was settled by Scotch- Irish immigrants, they transported their storytelling skills across the pond. Ever hear of a Scotsman who couldn't reel off a story over a few glasses of whiskey? Me, either. Plus, the South was rural, poor, and with fewer resources, so much of society revolved around the farm, and hearth and home. Books were a luxury, meaning that family entertainment came from stories told by the fireplace.
I grew up in Alabama. Huntsville to be exact. Not your typical southern town. Sure we had acres of farmland, churches on every corner, enough pickup trucks to cause a traffic jam, and a cacophony of country music, but we also had a space program. Snuggled up to the city is NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center where Werner von Braun and cohorts built the rockets that sent men into orbit and eventually to the surface of the moon. Made for an interesting soup of folks. Rednecks and scientist, all dining on barbecue and biscuits, and of course pecan pie.
So, what is it that makes Southern storytelling so compelling? It's the many facets of the area. You can't write about the South without considering country music, the blues, country stores, cornbread, sweet tea, and the weather.
Weather: Weather is a character in Southern stories. The rain, the hair-raising electrical storms, and, of course, the heat and humidity conspire to alter everything in life. The cracking of lightning puts nerves on edge while the sauna-like air wilts your clothing, slows your walk, and stretches out your drawl like back strap molasses creeping over a mess of hotcakes. In his famous "Ten Rules of Writing," Elmore Leonard admonished authors to never start a story with the weather. He forgot to tell that to James Lee Burke. His Dave Robicheaux series moves around the swamplands of Louisiana, a place where weather is most definitely a character. Don't believe it. Read the first paragraph of his Edgar Award-winning Black Cherry Blues. Breathtaking. And his evocation of the weather draws you quickly and deeply into the story.
Characters: Southern characters are often larger than life. The local sheriff with a big gun and an even bigger belly, the cheerleader with the big smile and bouncy blond hair, the farmer with his coveralls, straw angled from his mouth, and a sun-baked red neck. There's Gone With the Wind's Scarlett O'Hara, who defies description, and Scout, who gives a child's-eye view of her father Atticus as he fights for right and justice in To Kill A Mockingbird. Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men introduced us to Willie Stark, who channels the one-of-a-kind Huey P. Long, a man whose shadow still lays over Louisiana. Not to mention the modern-day Don Quixote Ignatius Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces.
It seems almost everyone in the South has a nickname. Sometimes even a nickname for their nickname. My Little League baseball coach was known as Breadman-I never knew his real name-and he was mostly called Bread. We played against another coach called Buttermilk-didn't know his name either-but he was called simply Milk. See, a nickname for a nickname.
Language: Yeah, we say ain't a lot. It's a great word. Has a soft feel as it rolls off the tongue. And of course y'all, which is a point of confusion for those from up north. Is y'all singular or plural? The answer is yes, and yes. It's both. You meet someone on the street and you might say, "How y'all doing?" You could mean how that person is doing or how they and their "Mom and 'em" are doing. Which brings up that phrase. Mom and 'em means all those folks around you mom-the entire family, friends, neighborhood, coworkers. It's more or less all inclusive. And then there's "all y'all." Makes sense this would be pleural but not so fast. If you ask, "How all y'all doing?" you might mean how the family or some grouping is, but you might mean how is "all of you" doing? It might seem confusing, but really, it ain't.
Food: Food is as Southern as anything. If you've never traveled to New Orleans, then you have no idea what great food truly is. We love our barbecue, fried chicken, grits, turnip greens, squash, cornbread (no sugar please), sweet tea (lot's of sugar please), and banana pudding and pecan pie. You won't find tofu and gluten-free is a foreign concept.
Football: You must understand football to understand the South. Example: I went to the University of Alabama. Roll Tide. I hate Auburn. Enough said.
If you can't see the story potential in all this, then bless your heart-an expression that doesn't necessarily mean what it seems to impart. It might be proffered as a literal gesture of good will, or it might mean: You're mentally defective and I feel sorry for your shortcomings. It's all about the context, tone, inflection, and body language.
These deep roots and my understanding of the rhythm of Southern culture led me to set most of my fictional stories in the area. My Dub Walker forensic thriller series takes place in and around Huntsville were I utilize many of the high-tech and forensic science techniques developed at NASA in the stories. Dr. Wendell Volek, a character in my first Dub book Stress Fracture, is actually Dr. David Hathaway, the director of NASA's solar imaging program as well as the developer of the VISAR system for digital image enhancement. I spent some time with David and he explained VISAR to me in great detail. It became part of the book.
The stories in my Jake Longly comedic thriller series are scattered around the South. Jake lives in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where the initial story Deep Six takes place. Then, on to New Orleans for A-List and the Florida panhandle for Sunshine State, coming in May. The next in the series, Rigged, will be out next year and is set in the wonderfully artsy community of Fairhope, Alabama. Each of these ares has its own distinct flavor, but all are quintessentially Southern.
I have another new book coming in October, the first in my Bobby Cain/Harper McCoy series. It's titled Skin In The Game and is set in and around Nashville, including the shores of Tims Ford Lake, a beautiful body of water in central Tennessee.
Two of my three published short stories are also set in the South. "Even Steven" appeared in Thriller 3: Love Is Murder and is set in Huntsville. "Bottom Line" can be found in For The Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired By the Sherlock Holmes Canon and is set in a fictional Southern locale.
So, my Southern roots are deep and broad and they inspire my stories at every turn. I now live in Orange County, CA, but my heart and soul belongs, and always will, in the South. But, that's another story.
We are so honored to bring you ex-criminal prosecutor and current bestselling author Marcia Clark. She joins us to talk about her latest book, TRIAL BY AMBUSH, her first True Crime novel.
Marcia Clark is the best selling author of nine legal thrillers and one memoir, starting with four bestselling legal thrillers featuring prosecutor Rachel Knight: The Competition, Killer Ambition, Guilt by Degrees, and Guilt by Association. TNT optioned the books for a one-hour drama series and shot the pilot, which starred Julia Stiles as Rachel Knight.
Her most recent series features criminal defense attorney Samantha Brinkman and includes Blood Defense, Moral Defense, Snap Judgment, and Final Judgment. Marcia's latest thriller, released in September 2022, The Fall Girl, was a standalone featuring two leads with alternating chapters. Marcia narrated the audiobook along with TV writing partner, Catherine LePard.
SHOW NOTES:
FORENSIC
SCIENCE TIMELINE
Prehistory: Early cave
artists and pot makers "sign" their works with a paint or impressed finger or
thumbprint.
1000 b.c.: Chinese use
fingerprints to "sign" legal documents.
3rd century BC.:
Erasistratus (c. 304-250 b.c.) and Herophilus (c. 335-280 b.c.) perform the
first autopsies in Alexandria.
2nd century AD.: Galen
(131-200 a.d.), physician to Roman gladiators, dissects both animal and humans
to search for the causes of disease.
c. 1000: Roman attorney
Quintilian shows that a bloody handprint was intended to frame a blind man for
his mother's murder.
1194: King Richard
Plantagenet (1157-1199) officially creates the position of coroner.
1200s: First forensic
autopsies are done at the University of Bologna.
1247: Sung Tz'u publishes
Hsi Yuan Lu (The Washing Away of Wrongs), the first forensic text.
c. 1348-1350: Pope Clement
VI(1291-1352) orders autopsies on victims of the Black Death to hopefully find
a cause for the plague.
Late 1400s: Medical
schools are established in Padua and Bologna.
1500s: Ambroise Paré
(1510-1590) writes extensively on the anatomy of war and homicidal wounds.
1642: University of
Leipzig offers the first courses in forensic medicine.
1683: Antony van
Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) employs a microscope to first see living bacteria,
which he calls animalcules.
Late 1600s: Giovanni
Morgagni (1682-1771) first correlates autopsy findings to various diseases.
1685: Marcello Malpighi
first recognizes fingerprint patterns and uses the terms loops and whorls.
1775: Paul Revere
recognizes dentures he had made for his friend Dr. Joseph Warren and thus
identifies the doctor's body in a mass grave at Bunker Hill.
1775: Carl Wilhelm Scheele
(1742-1786) develops the first test for arsenic.
1784: In what is perhaps
the first ballistic comparison, John Toms is convicted of murder based on the
match of paper wadding removed from the victim's wound with paper found in
Tom's pocket.
1787: Johann Metzger
develops a method for isolating arsenic.
c. 1800: Franz Joseph Gall
(1758-1828) develops the field of phrenology.
1806: Valentine Rose
recovers arsenic from a human body.
1813: Mathieu Joseph
Bonaventure Orfila (1787-1853) publishes Traité des poisons (Treatise on
Poison), the first toxicology textbook.
1821: Sevillas isolates
arsenic from human stomach contents and urine, giving birth to the field of
forensic toxicology.
1823: Johannes Purkinje
(1787-1869) devises the first crude fingerprint classification system.
1835: Henry Goddard
(1866-1957) matches two bullets to show they came from the same bullet mould.
1836: Alfred Swaine Taylor
(1806-1880) develops first test for arsenic in human tissue.
1836: James Marsh
(1794-1846) develops a sensitive test for arsenic (Marsh test).
1853: Ludwig Teichmann
(1823-1895) develops the hematin test to test blood for the presence of the
characteristic rhomboid crystals.
1858: In Bengal, India,
Sir William Herschel (1833-1917) requires natives sign contracts with a hand
imprint and shows that fingerprints did not change over a fifty-year period.
1862: Izaak van Deen
(1804-1869) develops the guaiac test for blood.
1863: Christian Friedrich
Schönbein (1799-1868) develops the hydrogen peroxide test for blood.
1868: Friedrich Miescher
(1844-1895) discovers DNA.
1875: Wilhelm Konrad
Röntgen (1845-1923) discovers X-rays.
1876: Cesare Lombroso
(1835-1909) publishes The Criminal Man, which states that criminals can be
identified and classified by their physical characteristics.
1877: Medical examiner
system is established in Massachusetts.
1880: Henry Faulds
(1843-1930) shows that powder dusting will expose latent fingerprints.
1882: Alphonse Bertillon
(1853-1914) develops his anthropometric identification system.
1883: Mark Twain
(1835-1910) employs fingerprint identification in his books Life on the
Mississippi and The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1893- 1894).
1887: In Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes develops a
chemical to determine whether a stain was blood or not-something that had not
yet been done in a real-life investigation.
1889: Alexandre Lacassagne
(1843-1924) shows that marks on bullets could be matched to those within a
rifled gun barrel.
1892: Sir Francis Galton
(1822-1911) publishes his classic textbook Finger Prints.
1892: In Argentina, Juan
Vucetich (1858-1925) devises a usable fingerprint classification system.
1892: In Argentina,
Francisca Rojas becomes the first person charged with a crime on fingerprint
evidence.
1898: Paul Jeserich
(1854-1927) uses a microscope for ballistic comparison.
1899: Sir Edward Richard
Henry (1850-1931) devises a fingerprint classification system that is the basis
for those used in Britain and America today.
1901: Karl Landsteiner
(1868-1943) delineates the ABO blood typing system.
1901: Paul Uhlenhuth
(1870-1957) devises a method to distinguish between human and animal blood.
1901: Sir Edward Richard
Henry becomes head of Scotland Yard and adopts a fingerprint identification
system in place of anthropometry.
1902: Harry Jackson
becomes the first person in England to be convicted by fingerprint evidence.
1910: Edmund Locard
(1877-1966) opens the first forensic laboratory in Lyon, France.
1910: Thomas Jennings
becomes the first U.S. citizen convicted of a crime by use of fingerprints.
1915: Leone Lattes
(1887-1954) develops a method for ABO typing dried bloodstains.
1920: The Sacco and
Vanzetti case brings ballistics to the public's attention. The case highlights
the value of the newly developed comparison microscope.
1923: Los Angeles Police
Chief August Vollmer (1876-1955) establishes the first forensic laboratory.
1929: The ballistic
analyses used to solve the famous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago lead
to the establishment of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (SCDL), the
first independent crime lab, at Northwestern University.
1932: FBI's forensic
laboratory is established.
1953: James Watson (1928-
), Francis Crick (1916-2004), and Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) identify DNA's
double-helical structure.
1954: Indiana State Police
Captain R.F. Borkenstein develops the breathalyzer.
1971: William Bass
establishes the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
1974: Detection of gunshot
residue by SEM/EDS is developed.
1977: FBI institutes the
Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS).
1984: Sir Alec Jeffreys
(1950- ) develops the DNA "fingerprint" technique.
1987: In England, Colin
Pitchfork becomes the first criminal identified by the use of DNA.
1987: First United States
use of DNA for a conviction in the Florida case of Tommy Lee Andrews.
1990: The Combined DNA
Index System (CODIS) is established.
1992: The polymerase chain
reaction (PCR) technique is introduced.
1994: The DNA analysis of
short tandem repeats (STRs) is introduced.
1996: Mitochondrial DNA is
first admitted into a U.S. court in Tennessee v. Ware.
1998: The National DNA
Index System (NDIS) becomes operational.
