Thriller / Suspense
Date Published: 7/28/2015
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
James Lilliefors's unlikely detective duo, Pastor Luke Bowers and homicide investigator Amy Hunter, return in a new murder mystery set in Maryland's picturesque Tidewater County
Tourists like Susan Champlain pass through the Chesapeake Bay region every year. But when Susan pays Pastor Luke Bowers a visit, he's disturbed by what she shares with him. Her husband has a short temper, she says, and recently threatened to make her "disappear" because of a photo Susan took on her phone.
Luke is concerned enough to tip off Tidewater County's chief homicide investigator, Amy Hunter. That night, Susan's body is found at the foot of the Widow's Point bluff. Hunter soon discovers Susan left behind clues that may connect her fate to a series of killings in the Northeast, a powerful criminal enterprise, and to a missing Rembrandt masterpiece,The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
Whoever is behind the killings has created a storm of deception and betrayal, a deliberate "tempest" designed to obscure the truth. Now Hunter and Bowers must join forces to trace the dangerous secret glimpsed in Susan's photo. But will they be the next targets on a killer's deadly agenda . . . ?
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Interview
What is the hardest
part of writing your books?
Somewhere
in the middle, or maybe three-quarters of the way through, is often the
toughest part. That’s when you have to decide what to cut, what to keep in and
where it’s all headed. When the book’s going well, the characters do much of
the decision-making. Other times, it can be a little like running a marathon
(something I used to do). The beginning, no sweat. The final miles, you
anticipate the ending. Three-quarters in, the finish line may seem farther away
than it really is; that’s when you need the faith to keep going.
What songs are most
played on your Ipod?
Beethoven’s
Seventh, the Beatles’ Girl, Lynne
Clarke’s Plant Seeds, Bruce
Springsteen’s Prove It All Night (live,
1978).
Do you have critique
partners or beta readers?
I do have a very valuable first
reader, yes, who tells me honestly all the places she thinks I’ve gone off
track.
What book are you
reading now?
Mr. Putin by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy. It’s
partly research for my new novel but also a great read.
How did you start your
writing career?
Making up
stories in my room as a boy and writing some of them down. Later I discovered
journalism and that became my career for many years. I still think of what I do
as a kind of journalism.
I have two series going – the Amy
Hunter/Luke Bowers novels, which are mysteries set on Maryland’s Eastern Shore;
and the Mallory Brothers books, which are geopolitical espionage novels.
The
protagonists in the first are Pastor Luke Bowers and homicide investigator Amy
Hunter; in the second, Charles Mallory, a private intelligence contractor and
former CIA agent, and his brother Jon, a Washington-based investigative
journalist.
The
first book in the Bowers/Hunter series was The
Psalmist. The new one, The Tempest,
takes readers into the world of stolen art, in particular the theft and fate of
Rembrandt’s painting The Storm on the Sea
of Galilee. A third book in the series, tentatively called The Harvest, should be out next year.
I’m
finishing the third book now in the Mallory Brothers series and hope it will be
out next year as well.
About the Author
James Lilliefors is the author of the geopolitical thriller novels The Leviathan Effect and Viral. A journalist and novelist who grew up near Washington, D.C., Lilliefors is also the author of three nonfiction books. The Psalmist and The Tempest are the first two books in the Luke Bowers and Amy Hunter series
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