departure and the discovery that his
estranged son, Kyle, seems to have been
suspiciously close to Celia, Kyle’s GED
teacher. As Dana continues to spiral out of
control, her accelerating mania clouding
her perceptions, Crawford manages for the
most part to sidestep cliché and preserve
her leading lady’s spunk, humor, and dignity. Although she’s less successful
resolving the mystery, both Dana and Jack
deserve an encore. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent
Agency. (Mar.)
The Patriot Threat
Steve Berry. Minotaur, $27 (400p) ISBN 978-1-
250-05623-8
Bestseller Berry comes up with a highly
unusual premise for his 10th Cotton
Malone thriller (after 2014’s The Lincoln
Myth): a historical flaw in the U.S. income
tax code has the potential to destroy the
country’s economy. In Berry’s timely what-if scenario, North Korean leader Kim Yong
Jin has been dropped from the line of
dynastic succession because of a disgraceful
abortive trip to Tokyo Disneyland. Kim,
now known as a playboy, sees an opportunity to regain his former glory when he
stumbles on a 1936 mystery involving
then secretary of the treasury Andrew
Mellon and president Franklin Roosevelt.
Kim’s accidental but fortuitous reading of
a book about the American tax code, The
Patriot Threat, written by tax resister Anan
Wayne Howell, puts him on the path of
the mystery, which he, along with his
warrior daughter, Hana, are determined
to solve, no matter how many people they
have to kill to do so. Fans of political conspiracy fiction will find plenty to like.
Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House. (Mar.)
The Stolen Ones
Owen Laukkanen. Putnam, $26.95 (368p)
ISBN 978-0-399-16553-5
Early in Laukkanen’s savage, cathartic
fourth series crime novel (after 2014’s Kill
Fee), Cass County (Minn.) sheriff’s deputy
Dale Friesen notices a truck towing a container in a diner parking lot. His suspicions aroused, Friesen orders the truck’s
driver to unlock the container door, and
two dirty young women try to flee, but
only one escapes. Friesen is shot dead, and
later Irina Milosovici, a Romanian sex-trafficking victim, is found next to his
body holding his gun. Kirk Stevens, of
What makes serial killers so
intriguing?
I think when we reach a certain age
and realize that there aren’t really
monsters under our beds, we naturally
look for something more
immediate to be afraid
of. There’s something
more readily identifiable about a person who
kills just because he
wants or is compelled
to and has none of the
boundaries or sensibilities that stop the rest of
us from doing exactly
whatever we want,
whenever we want. Nobody likes a murderer or a rapist, but
everyone loves a serial killer—even
though they’re at least one of those
things and quite often both. It’s a curious phenomenon.
Does that phenomenon represent
something unhealthy?
It’s natural to want to explore the
darker side of human nature. I think it
helps us to understand ourselves more,
to make sense of our own fears and
impulses and perhaps ultimately feel
good about being regular, moral,
straight-thinking folk who don’t go
around murdering people, even though
we might daydream about it occasionally. But I don’t think it’s healthy if
we view real-life serial killers as escapist entertainment and forget that
each one leaves a string of dead victims
and grieving families in their wake.
What has your work life been like,
and how has it influenced your
writing?
I always wanted to be a writer and not
a lot else, so my work life has been a
string of regular job–type jobs while I
was waiting. For a lot of the time I
was writing Normal, I was working as
a security guard in
an empty building,
which effectively
gave me 12 hours a
night to write. The
darkness and soli-
tude was nicely con-
ducive to getting
inside the charac-
ter’s head, so it was
kind of the perfect
job. But I’ve done
everything from
driving a van to stocking a mortuary,
so it’s all in there.
You are deliberately vague about
what led your killer to kill—why not
be explicit, as Thomas Harris was in
Red Dragon?
What I didn’t want to do was make
excuses for the killer. As he says himself, he’s a product of nature, not nurture, which is true of serial killers in
general; they’re born with something
missing. Many of them cite a difficult or abusive upbringing, but they
often shared it with siblings who
didn’t grow up to be murderers. And
since Normal isn’t the story of a human becoming a killer, but rather
that of a killer becoming more human, I felt that the trigger, if any,
was irrelevant. I’d much rather readers make up their own mind as to
how and whether they empathize
with him.
—Lenny Picker
[Q&A]
PW Talks with Graeme Cameron
A Killer, Becoming More Human
British author Cameron provides a new wrinkle for the serial killer
thriller in his debut, Normal (Reviews, Jan. 12; pub month, Mar.).
©G
R
AE
ME
C
AM
E
RON
