thriller

Jun 2023 21

Don’t Forget the Girl

2023 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Rebecca McKanna

In my novel, Don’t Forget the Girl, one of the central themes is vulnerability - when and how we let people really see us. One of the characters, Chelsea, allows people to misinterpret her sexuality. Her most formative romantic relationship was with a woman when she was a teenager. However, they kept it a secret, and once the other woman died, Chelsea never felt right telling that story. With that omission of her romantic history, people read her as straight rather than bi, and she never corrects that misconception, even though sometimes it feels lonely.

May 2023 20

We Love to Entertain By Sarah Strohmeyer: Review/Giveaway/Interview

2023 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze, Sandra Murphy

by Sandra Murphy

To the Manor Build is a home rehab cable show. Like the others, their cameras follow homeowners as they renovate their house. One couple is designing a ranch retreat for bullied LBGTQ teens to give them a safe place to live. Another couple decided to make their retreat for medical people who were traumatized by the pandemic. Holly and Robert are a young, rich, beautiful couple in love, and their house will be an energy-efficient home, off the grid but with all the amenities. High end amenities no working-class family could ever afford.

Feb 2023 15

Memories

2023 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by David Beckler

Some authors love research, but I have an ambivalent attitude. On the one hand, I resent the time taken away from my writing. You can spend days researching a subject and it translates to, if you’re lucky, one or two paragraphs. On the other, I love finding out things and often find myself diving deeper into a topic, which eats up writing time, even though I know I won’t use the knowledge acquired for this book.

Feb 2023 1

Writing Thrillers

2023 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Claire Douglas

Some of my favourite thrillers are the police procedural variety, but I’ve always shied away from writing one myself as I imagine it would entail a lot of research on what it’s like to work within the police force. So instead, I tend to have a journalist as the ‘detective’ in my thrillers because I used to be one. After all, as the saying goes, ‘write what you know.’

Jan 2023 11

Murderous Thoughts: From Nonfiction to Fiction

2023 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by C.B. Peterson

Have you ever wished another person dead? Maybe you’ve envisioned an especially aggravating boss slipping and falling on her way into the office so that she was permanently excised from your life? Or gleefully imagined murdering your upstairs neighbor, the one who makes your life a living hell with their loud music at 2 a.m. and inconsiderate parking?

Jan 2023 4

Writing an Expatriate Thriller: Bombay Monsoon

2023 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by James W. Ziskin

Bombay Monsoon is set in 1975 India against the backdrop of the Emergency, the twenty-one-month period of rule-by-decree and suspension of civil liberties in the world’s largest democracy. In writing Bombay Monsoon, I leaned on my varied experience of expatriate life, in France, Italy, and—of course—India.

Dec 2022 14

Arm Chair Research

2022 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Gregor Pratt

When finishing my first novel Ebola Island, I decided to write myself to New Zealand by having my two protagonists plan to marry and live there. I could then travel to and explore New Zealand and expense part of my trip as legitimate research for my second novel. Well, that was my plan.

Sep 2022 14

Riddles, Riddles, Toil and Trouble…

2022 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Angela Greenman

In the newly released thriller, The Child Riddler, a spider riddle holds the code to unleashing the most lethal weapon on earth. The code is known by only one person: a gifted nine-year-old girl. Top operative Zoe abducts the young girl to get the code, but soon is in a race to save the child she’s grown to care about—while simultaneously battling the demons of her drug addiction.

Aug 2022 27

Movieland By Lee Goldberg: Review/Giveaway

2022 Articles, Lorie Lewis Ham, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Lorie Lewis Ham

Movieland is book 4 in Lee Goldberg’s Eve Ronin series. I have been a fan of Lee’s writing for many years, but this series is my favorite of his and these books always end up on my “Best Books of the Year” list. Eve is the youngest homicide detective in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a position many think that she hasn’t earned since she got the job after a video of her went viral. Because of this, she isn’t very popular among her coworkers (which is putting it mildly in some cases), except for her soon-to-retire partner Duncan Pavone.

Aug 2022 24

Who Are Bobby Cain and Harper McCoy?

2022 Articles, Mysteryrat's Maze

by D.P. Lyle

One-year-old Harper McCoy was purchased from her Cherokee alcoholic mother for a few hundred dollars and a bottle of whiskey by a gypsy-like group. Around the same time, Bobby Cain, abandoned in a Houston train station at two-months of age, was snatched up by the same itinerate band. They fell under the tutelage of a couple they called Uncle Al and Aunt Dixie and from these two and the other members of the clan learned to hunt, fish, and live off the land. And more.