It's my great pleasure today to host a guest blog piece from Margaret Murphy, former CWA chair, founder of Murder Squad, top writer and all-round lovely person. She is pictured above in an American homicide department. To learn more about this and a trip via Tulsa (known to me previously solely as somewhere that Gene Pitney was only 24 hours away from...), just read on...Over to you, Margaret:
"I’ve known Martin Edwards for nearly twenty years. At
first, he was the man with the astonishing knowledge of crime fiction. I
imagined him living in a big old Victorian house crammed floor-to-ceiling with
arcane texts, first editions and encyclopaedias – a cross between Hogwart’s library
and oh, let’s say, The Bodleian. So I was delighted when this erudite fellow
agreed to be one of the founding members of Murder Squad,
a roving band of British crime writers. The Squad is still going strong fifteen
years on, and I am now proud to number Martin among my friends. I am currently relishing his non-fiction text The Golden Age of Murder which draws on
his enviable knowledge of the genre. He has revealed details of the Golden Age
mystery writers’ lives which not only surprise, but which I for one would never
have imagined. No wonder it’s yomping up the charts!
Here’s a modest revelation of my own: I am both Margaret
Murphy and A.D. Garrett (cue gasps of surprise), and I’m here today to talk about
the A.D. Garrett forensic thrillers. BELIEVE NO ONE, which has just been
released in the USA, is the second in the series, and it brings the cop/forensic
duo of Fennimore and Simms stateside in the hunt for a serial killer.
The story opens with an Oklahoma farmer dragging a
cottonwood tree (and a body – obv) out of one of his ponds. Now, what
Oklahomans call a ‘pond’, we Brits would call a sizeable lake, and this theme
of familiarity and difference – two nations divided by a common language – sets
the scene for the rest of the novel.
I travelled to America’s Midwest to research the novel
with my husband (Murf), and forensic advisor (Dave Barclay) in 2012. Nothing brings
home the vastness of the American landscape like being on the road, and we
visited Homicide Detectives, CSIs, District Attorneys, judges, State Bureau
agents and Medical Examiners from Tulsa, Oklahoma, clear to St Louis and the Missouri-Illinois
state line, clocking up well over 1,000 miles. The fictional killer in BELIEVE
NO ONE trawls Interstate-44 for victims, and it was a shock to discover that Oklahoma has its own real-life
interstate killer. The I-40 killer committed a dozen murders before he was
finally caught in 2009, and many other predators stalk the interstate highways.
Truckers are top of the list of suspects: it’s hard to trace a killer who can
abduct a victim in one state, murder her in the next, and dump her body in a
third. One detective said, ‘I’d put every one of them on CODIS, I had my way.’ Of
course, that went into the novel.
Fans of the genre know that a murder
mystery should never be just about the murder. It has to be about people: the victims;
those they leave behind – and those who seek justice for them. And again and
again, it was the people we met in law enforcement who shaped the novel. In BELIEVE NO ONE, mothers and children are abducted, and the
children remain missing. So it was a priority to meet consultants from ‘Team Adam’, a non-profit organisation dedicated
to finding missing children. The two consultants we met were proud that Team Adam had reunited
every child separated from their families by Hurricane Katrina, but one added sadly
that some of those children clung to their foster parents and did not want to
go home. That story haunted me, and is reflected in the questionable decision a
deputy sheriff makes about a child’s future as the novel draws to a close.
I blogged the entire research trip, day-by-day on the
A.D. Garrett website – a good place to start would be here – after
which you can follow the links forward in time. I would love to welcome you –
please do feel free to ask questions or leave comments!
You can buy BELIEVE NO ONE on AmazonUK in
all formats, and on AmazonUS in hardback,
with Kindle edition to follow soon!"
4 comments:
Great post! I found it especially interesting because my husband was born in Oklahoma City and lived a good portion of his childhood and teens in Tulsa.
Also, there's a book by Ginger Strand called KILLER ON THE ROAD: VIOLENCE AND THE AMERICAN INTERSTATE which posits that the thousands of miles (especially through rural and isolated places) of the Anerican highway system has lent itself to the rise of the serial killer because if the ease it presents in disposing of bodies. A bit grim, but interesting nonetheless.
Just finished the first book in this series - Everyone Hurts - and it's a great read. Looking forward to reading this one soon.
Deb, I used Ginger Strand's book to gather some of the background on serial killers on the US interstates - it's a great book - I highly recommend it! Margaret/A.D. Garrett
Hi Puzzle Doctor - so pleased you enjoyed Everyone Lies - thanks again for the review! I've just checked out the comments on classicmystery.wordpress.com and, dear readers, be reassured that Believe No One is shorter, and book 3 in the series is shorter still! ;)
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