Author interview: David Lindsey

My devoted readers are thinking, 'Wait, not the David Lindsey?'

To which I reply, 'Oh yes, yes indeed.'

David was kind enough to grant me an interview over a year ago. It is here. The full story is that I emailed him asking if I could send some questions, and he wrote back and said, "How about we do coffee instead?" We ended up doing both, and a nicer man you couldn't wish to meet. Seriously, he spent several hours talking to me about writing and the intricacies of the publishing world, and I was most grateful. A real gentleman.

And this is why I'm so excited to host him here again, you see, he's not published a book for a while. Seven years to be precise, which is a great loss to the thriller world.

Until now.

Oh yes, he's back. A slight change of name, but we won't hold that against him. Here's a new, and quick, interview with him. If you want to see more, David also has a new website.

Welcome back to the blog, you are our first repeat author! You have a new book out, please tell us about it.
Thank you for asking me back again. I appreciate it.

In Pacific Heights, a San Francisco psychoanalyst named Vera List discovers that two of her clients, both women, are having an affair with the same man. The women don’t know each other, and Vera doesn’t know the man’s identity. She realizes that the man must be breaking into her confidential files because he’s using information that could only be found there to manipulate his way into the women’s lives. Terrified by this discovery, Vera hires Marten Fane, a former intelligence officer with the San Francisco Police Department, to discover the man’s identity and stop him. And she wants all of this resolved discreetly, without anyone ever knowing what has happened.

Fane's search takes him into the secret lives of two troubled women who are unaware that they have become the central players in a deadly scheme that has frightening consequences far beyond their own involvement. As Fane unravels the latticework of lies entangling the women, he struggles with a faceless puppeteer who is himself manipulated by an even darker, and more powerful, agency of deception.

Though Pacific Heights introduces Marten Fane who will appear in subsequent novels, it isn’t part of a traditional new series in which Fane is the protagonist in a string of separate stories. The story that is introduced in Pacific Heights will play out over multiple novels. In this regard Pacific Heights is more akin to the first episode in a serial novel, rather than the first novel of a series. This is the beginning of a story that is larger than Pacific Heights. The themes, characters, and story threads that are introduced here will continue, and Marten Fane will continue to struggle with the complexities of what he discovers—and uncovers—in Pacific Heights.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that this is an ambitious concept. I realize that the “Marten Fane” story is unorthodox in terms of what mystery/thriller/suspense/spy readers are used to seeing. Strictly speaking, this concept is a hybrid. It’s none of those genre categories exclusively, and yet it’s all of them at one time or another as the story unfolds. The readers, as always, will ultimately decide whether or not this works. As a writer, I’m very excited to be telling a story like this, and I hope I’m able to draw my readers into this larger vision.

So you are using a nom de plume - why is that?
The pseudonym is the child of several fathers. I had proposed the idea to my agent at that time nearly ten years ago. I wanted to write a couple of novels that didn’t really fit into the mold of the kind of the novels I had become known for writing. Once you develop a fan base by writing certain kinds of novels, many readers have very specific expectations of your forthcoming books. They want more of the same. “Something like the last one, but different.” At that time, I ended up not using a pseudonym, or writing the different kind of novel I wanted to write. Now seven years have passed since my last novel. I have a new agent. I have a new publisher. And I have a new idea for a different kind of approach to storytelling. It seemed to me to be a good time to try the pseudonym again and, hopefully, signal the readers to be prepared for something different.

You have an event where people can meet you in Austin, right? Are you doing more of a book tour?
Yes, I’ll be speaking and signing books at Book People on July 11, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. Before that I’ll be on a panel at ThrillerFest VI in New York, and after that I’ll be in Houston, then San Francisco, then at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale. After that, I don’t know yet.

What's next for Paul Harper?
As I mentioned above, there will be other Marten Fane novels. I’m already into the next one (and late for the next deadline).

And will we be seeing something by David Lindsey any time in the future?
Paul Harper is in the driver’s seat for a while I think. Options, of course, are always open.

Just a wee taste, I know. But I encourage you to try his new book, and his old ones, too. Hard to pick a favorite but I really loved RULES OF SILENCE and MERCY.

Thanks David, and come back soon!