Acclaimed thriller writers Heather Graham and Jon Land team up for a promising new NASA-inspired YA series.

The Rising marks a departure from the usual for bestselling authors Heather Graham and Jon Land, as a writing collaboration, as a YA novel, and as a work that blends science-fiction and thriller elements. It's a unique project inpsired by NASA's partnership with Tor Books on a series of science-themed books aimed at educating young readers about NASA’s mission, and stimulating their interest in science.

The story, involves two teens—high school quarterback and homecoming king Alex Chin, and his tutor and best friend, NASA intern Samantha Dixon—who find themselves on the run after Alex's parents are murdered and the two stumble across some frightening insights about Alex's past. It is a classic chase story replete with gripping, action-packed set pieces, compelling characters (both heroes and villains), and numerous twists. But, one wouldn’t expect less of its two authors, Graham, best known for her long-running Krewe of Hunters series, and Land, the author of 25 novels, including eight about tough-as-nails Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong.

“Collaborations like this can often be logistically difficult because even if it’s something the authors want to do, their publishers may not go along,” said Land, who has been friends with Graham ever since the two met through the International Thriller Writers organization. “In our case, the fact that we were featuring young adult heroes in a branded series for NASA provided a workaround that got everybody on board.”

Though neither Graham nor Land had ever written collaboratively, working together came easily to the two veteran scribes. “I don't know if it would work with everyone, but I think we're both lucky," said Graham. "We just got excited by the ideas we came up with," she added about the project became a launching pad for both writers to attempt something new.

“Neither of us had ever focused on young adults and we’d never written science fiction," said Land. "So I’d say we were delighted by how new and fresh it felt."

And The Rising, a relentless thriller with the relationship of Alex and Samantha at its core, manages to showcase both authors; strengths: Land's action scenes, and Graham's attention to character. "[Graham] is expert at building romantic relationships based on conflict, which fits the relationship between Alex and Samantha to a T," said Land, who added that the balance between his and Graham's sternghts were "the perfect combination.”

“We’re both storytellers who pride ourselves on writing page-turners driven by characters who, well, see love, at least romance, and the right relationships, as an anchor in their lives,” added Graham.

The relationship between the young protaganists isn't the only chemistry in the new series, though. The Rising is informed by real science, inspired by several trips Graham made to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “I don’t think I would have had the interest in writing a book like The Rising if I hadn’t been so inspired by meeting and listening to the scientists here," she says.

Land did “lots of more traditional research and also passed the book through a few experts, one of whom helped design a futuristic, organic computer chip for me and also helped out with some of the other more quantum-oriented science.... We strived to include just enough science to fulfill the great Robert Louis Stevenson’s mantra that 'It doesn’t matter to me if you believe what I’m writing is real; all that matters is that you do not disbelieve it,'” said Land.

The authors also decided to set The Rising out West, closer to NASA’s Ames Center for Astrobiology (located in Mountain View, California), where both authors hope to visit for researching future books in the series. And sequels are planned.

"The Rising is very confined in terms of setting and time. It all takes place in California’s Bay Area in, literally, 48 hours," said Land. The second book in the series, Blood Moon, promises to have a more quest-like structure with Alex and Samantha journeying all over the world over a far less truncated patch of time. "We feel jumping from The Rising into this different approach will keep the series fresh,” added Land.

If the enthusiastic promotional blurbs are any indication, Graham and Land's initial effort has been a resounding success. James Rollins’ said “John Land’s talent at edge of your seat adventure blends perfectly with Heather Graham’s esteemed ability to balance suspense and pathos,” and Tess Gerritsen described the novel as “A mid-blowing, thrill-a-minute ride, a high octane launch of a stunningly inventive series.” The pair finds such praise gratifying.

“More than gratifying, actually,” said Land. The feedback was affirming. "[It] was the first evidence that we’d pulled it off. Every book starts out with a vision, in this case an entirely different kind of vision for both of us. We could just as easily have fallen on our faces, but that early praise showed us we were still standing.”

HEATHER GRAHAM is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who has written over 100 novels and novellas including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, and Christmas family fare.

JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of 38 novels, including the bestselling series featuring female Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. He is also the coauthor of the nonfiction bestseller Betrayal. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

In her Detective Esa Khattak novels—set in Toronto—Khan shows the struggles of a devout Muslim living and working in a secular world.

A Ph.D. dissertation on the Bosnian War, concentrating on military intervention and war crimes, may not sound like fodder for a police procedural set in Toronto, but for attorney and human rights activist Ausma Zehanat Khan, a mystery was the perfect vehicle to help people understand the horrific 1995 massacre at Srebrenica.

“A mystery allowed me to present the story of the war and genocide in a way that would not overwhelm the reader—or me. A mystery gave me a little bit of distance to approach the story. And a mystery gave the reader a little bit of distance so they are not overwhelmed by the series of horrors,” said Khan, who studied the war in Bosnia for about 12 years, beginning in graduate school.

“To simply say these things happened isn’t enough. But to tell the story from the perspective of a detective—that is so relatable and personalizes the story. A mystery also leaves it up to the reader to decide what is justice. A mystery allows the reader to come to the story on their own. I knew I always wanted to tell the story of the war in Bosnia, and I tried to tell it in several different ways. I tried the traditional novel and found it difficult to get inside the head of my characters. I found it difficult to be as authentic and accurate as the story needed to be to the experience of war,” added Khan, whose first name is pronounced US-ma; her middle name Zay-HAHN-at.

The result was Khan’s gripping debut, The Unquiet Dead, part thriller, part police procedural centered on Canada’s Community Policing Section, the agency tasked with handling minority-sensitive crimes. The department is headed by Detective Esa Khattak, a devout Muslim, and his partner, Sergeant Rachel Getty. In The Unquiet Dead, the two investigate the seemingly accidental death of Toronto resident Christopher Drayton, who fell off a cliff. But the case becomes politically charged when a war crimes historian suspects that Drayton was an alias for Drazen Krstic, one of the Bosnian war criminals responsible for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which Khan writes is “Europe’s greatest atrocity since the Second World War.” Characters’ flashbacks and discussions, as well as passages from testimony at war crimes trials, become an important part of the plot.

Khan’s ability to write about war atrocities and highly charged issues yet avoid writing a treatise while wrapping her story in the intriguing elements of a mystery, resonated with readers and critics. The Unquiet Dead made several best-of-the-year lists and made Khan an author to watch.

Khan brings that same mixture of facts and politics to her second novel, The Language of Secrets, which already has garnered several positive reviews. Based on a real Muslim terrorist plot foiled by Canadian law enforcement in 2006, The Language of Secrets has Esa and Rachel investigating the murder of Esa’s estranged friend, who had secretly infiltrated a terrorist cell planning a devastating attack.

Even more than The Unquiet Dead, The Language of Secrets showcases Khan’s ability to take an issue and weave it into a mystery without resorting to didacticism. It also shows Esa’s struggle with being a devout Muslim whose religion is often a source of conflict while living and working in a secular world.

Persian and Urdu poetry play a special part in The Language of Secrets, an aspect inspired by the author’s parents’ love of poetry and storytelling. Khan’s India-born parents celebrated an oral tradition of storytelling. Her father, a psychiatrist, and mother organized “beautiful poetry evenings” called mushairahs that would include their four children. This instilled a love of writing from an early age.

“The importance of learning the Qur’an was impressed on us, so I grew up with a respect for the written word,” said Khan, who was born in England, raised in Toronto, and now lives in Denver with her husband, a professor of Middle East Studies and “a handy resource” at the University of Denver.

Khan holds a Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law with a specialization in military intervention and war crimes in the Balkans. She has practiced immigration law and taught human rights law at Northwestern University and York University, and was the founder and editor in chief of Muslim Girl, a magazine targeted to young, Muslim women.

“The Unquiet Dead had been inside me for so long,” she remembered. “Because I hadn’t turned my dissertation into a book, as events on the ground were changing too quickly, I always felt I had left [people’s] stories untold. I had a responsibility to the survivors. Here I had all this material and it would have seemed like a failure to the people who needed me to speak for them.”

Working on The Unquiet Dead became a sort of cathartic experience for Khan. “Once I had written The Unquiet Dead, I felt such a sense of relief. My responsibility was fulfilled. If I had not done something with the knowledge I had, I would still carry the burden of not having represented the human rights of this particular group of people.”

The timing was also right apropos of the global political climate. Muslims were increasingly being vilified in entertainment and for political expediency.

“I had qualms about writing about a Muslim, especially in the climate in the US. I see stories in the news all the time and in pop culture and thriller novels. The Muslims are the bad guy, the terrorist, they want to destroy our world,” said Khan, herself a practicing Muslim. “And to me, making the Muslim the bad guy is a very simplistic and banal kind of conversation. This group of people is being misrepresented or talked about or spoken for, but they rarely get to speak for themselves. You don’t hear their voices. This rise of Islamophobia, especially during election season, has become a selling tactic for votes. The war in Bosnia began with hate propaganda directed at the ‘Other.’”

And to tell her stories, she needed a special kind of protagonist. Insightful and often charming, Esa also may be one of the first devout Muslims to be considered a hero—rather than a villain—in a mystery series. The first time readers meet Esa in The Unquiet Dead, he is kneeling on a prayer rug woven by his Pakistani ancestors when he receives a call about an investigation. After he takes the call, he finishes his Maghrib prayers before heading to the scene of the crime. In creating Esa, she drew on her background, making him a part of the same Pashtun tribe as her parents and herself. “But he is more reserved, keeps to himself, very different than I am,” she said.

“Esa has a great talent for tackling investigations head on. He is a believer. He is comfortable in his faith—he knows how to make it work. He is very much a part of the society in which he grew up in. And I thought the greatest challenge I could present to him personally and professionally in The Language of Secrets was to add a terrorist group to his investigation. And how a terrorist cell should not be [assumed] to represent the entire religion. I thought that presented a lot of good knotty material for Esa to work with.”

Balancing Esa is his partner Rachel Getty, who “could not be more Canadian,” said Khan. “She has a hockey-playing identity and is very tough on the outside. She has a lot of empathy for people, but also is rather awkward and has flaws, as do all of us. The readers seem to like Rachel.”

Despite Khan’s years of legal work on behalf of genocide survivors, her activism, and the time spent on her dissertation, she still needed to research the war when it came time for her to write her novel. That meant digging out the six large boxes of survivor testimony, United Nations statements, and government reports she had in her garage, and rereading a 7,000-page court document on the Netherlands’ role in one of the massacres that she had used for her dissertation.

“Once you’ve read survivor testimony, it never leaves you. Snippets come to you every now and then,” she said. “But I had to refamiliarize myself with the research. I needed to bring myself up to date on current survivor testimony, what crimes had come up and which people had been convicted. I was immersed in this a long time, deciding which story I wanted to tell. I was looking for stories that were both personal and emblematic of the larger Bosnian experience.”

This fresh look at research took Khan about a year and a half as she learned new details about the war and genocide that had been discovered. Yet, Khan was careful not to make The Unquiet Dead sound like another academic journal and to keep that research subtly, yet forcefully, woven through her novel.

“I was very aware of the pitfalls that all that research could bring. I didn’t want my novel to sound as if it were propaganda,” she said. Khan had entered The Unquiet Dead in the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition. Khan didn’t win, but Elizabeth Lacks, the Minotaur editor who read her manuscript, felt strongly about the novel. Khan gives credit to Lacks for helping to shape her debut. “I had a very talented editor who was quick to tell me if my story was too much or the research was overwhelming. You have to let the reader come to it on their own, not overburden them with the research.”

A series that tackles war criminals, terrorist cells, and political prisoners—the subject of Khan’s forthcoming third novel—would seem to leave little room for levity. Nothing could be further from reality. During an hour-long telephone interview, Khan came across as both a serious scholar and passionate about human rights but also as an energetic young woman with a good sense of humor. She said she is a big science fiction and fantasy “geek” and is a fan of the CBS series The Big Bang Theory and comics who “have a quintessential Canadian, dry humor.”

She has finished a draft of her third novel and will soon start her fourth in the series. She is also working on a four-book fantasy series scheduled to launch in 2017 with The Bloodprint: Book One of the Khorasan Archives. Khan said the series will be set in a politically nuanced world inspired by the current political climate of the Middle East, and will be helmed by a heroine named Arian who embarks on a dangerous quest to reclaim a sacred text.

Writing mysteries fulfills a lifelong dream for Khan, who also sees another goal she is achieving.

“I have been reading mysteries all my life but have not often seen characters of color or writers of color. To have the chance to add my voice and perspective has been very heartening and could be an opening for other writers down the road. I feel so lucky to have my voice out there.” 

Crossword List

A Case of Identity, Issue 142

L.A. Requiem, Issue 141

World, Chase Me Down, Andrew Hilleman’s fine debut novel, is a fictional retelling of the exploits of kidnapper Pat Crowe. In the early hours of a cold December Omaha, Nebraska, morning in 1900, Crowe and an accomplice, Billy Cavanaugh, kidnap the teenage son of the wealthy owner of a meatpacking plant, Edward Cudahy. The plan is simple. Snatch the boy, Eddie, Jr., send a ransom letter demanding $25,000 in gold coins, secure the ransom money, release the boy. And it works perfectly until Pat is recognized by his former employer, Mr. Cudahy, while the ransom is delivered.

Crowe spends the next five years running from wanted posters, lawmen, and detectives. He scrambles around the globe finding trouble in every corner. He fondly recalls looting an entire New Mexico town while the marshal was locked in a cell, and a visit to South Africa during the hardest fighting of the Boer War. The narration style is easy with a humorous slant and a comfortable structure; chapters alternate between the kidnapping and Crowe’s backstory, a backstory that explains more than a little about Pat Crowe’s descent into crime.

World, Chase Me Down is an exciting adventure tale told with style and humor. It’s a campfire tall tale with an antihero protagonist as interesting as he is despicable. Crowe is a dime-novel villain with a reputation far larger than its reality could ever be, towering above the stage where he performs. He, the real Pat Crowe, died in 1938 and the date of this fictional telling is 1939, adding a layer of tongue-in-cheek to this welcome tale.

I hope Betty Webb has a lot of loyal readers, because Desert Vengeance, the ninth Lena Jones book—sure to play a pivotal role in the series—is gonna need it. It leans very, very heavily and unapologetically on the Ghosts of Books Past.

When we first catch up with Lena, the rough-and-tumble cowgirl private eye is cooling her heels in an Arizona parking lot, waiting for former foster parent and convicted child rapist Brian “Papa” Wycoff to step out of the prison van, after serving almost 30 years. Seems Wycoff raped nine-year-old Lena and several other children in his charge back in the day, and it was partially Lena’s testimony that helped send him away. Lena’s holding a ten-inch knife she calls “The Vindicator.” She’s thinking of killing him.

Fortunately, Lena’s better angels (almost) prevail, and she settles for merely stalking and harassing him. But within days, Wycoff is found murdered, and Lena is the prime suspect—until trailer camp owner Debbie Margules is charged with the killing, and turns to Lena for help.

The problem with Desert Vengeance isn’t just the morally queasy WTF? or the dubious about-face of Lena working so diligently to clear Debbie—Lena’s the first to question her own motives. No, the real problem is that Lena’s dogged investigation, full of heart-wrenching confrontations with Wycoff’s other, now-adult victims (and potential suspects), is overshadowed, narratively and emotionally, by her continuing efforts to deal with the slowly coalescing fragments of her own disturbing past, which include being shot in the face at the age of four.

Further narrative distractions tossed into the mix are the return of Dusty, an untrustworthy old flame, and what seems like an important development in the slowly dawning relationship between Lena and Jimmy Sisiwanquest, her hunky Pima partner and computer guy. Plus, as an added bonus for animal lovers, Lena buys a horse and acquires several kittens.

As a longtime fan, I’m torn. The author has set in motion several major changes in Lena’s life, but offers very little real closure. Will Lena ever find her real parents? Why was she shot? Will Jimmy and her hook up? And will she come to her senses and get rid of all those cats?

Not the best entry point, then, but for those of us who’ve traveled this far, a must-read. And a definite selling point for the next one.

Hi Everyone,

Betrayal is a part of life. We are all betrayed at some stage in our lives, in small ways and in big ways. I think that is the basis of every crime novel... —Belinda Bauer

One of the first betrayals in novelist Belinda Bauer’s life involved growing up under apartheid in South Africa, where the government systematically repressed one seg- ment of the population and lied about it to the other. Belinda Bauer vaulted onto the UK’s crime scene with her first novel, Blacklands, which won the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger for Best Novel in 2010. Since then, she has moved from strength to strength with her subsequent novels, including the remarkable Rubber- necker, one of my favorites. Oline Cogdill talks to Bauer in this issue.

What books really got to you last year? What characters lingered in your mind? What writers changed your outlook or widened your perceptions? We asked our critics these questions and the result is our annual “Fave Raves” feature. Do let us know if you think we hit the mark—we’d love to hear your fave raves, as well! Just write or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Anyone sending us a fave rave is automatically entered in a drawing to win a free book.

Lawrence Block displays admirable self-insight (as well as a nice turn of phrase) when speaking of his writing career: "I’ve known for some time that Ego and Avarice are the two coursers who haul my chariot through the streets of Literature."

No one can deny his success. Still, what if both of these desires could be satisfied without actually doing any work? He examines that intriguing possibility in this issue.

Hard work is nothing new to E.O. Chirovici. After publishing 15 books in his native Romanian, Chirovici wrote the original man- uscript for his thriller The Book of Mirrors in English. This was no easy task: “You carefully pack up all your storytelling skills and move them into your new ‘home,’ the new language you’ve chosen. You have to put together a whole new toolbox, which is no easy task...” It may not have been easy, but the result created a publishing feeding frenzy. Craig Sisterson talks to Chirovici in this issue.

Jon L. Breen is Mystery Scene’s resident expert on courtroom dramas. (In fact, he won an Edgar Award for the first edition of his reference work Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction.) “Trials and Tribulations” is his overview of recent legal thrillers.

Ian Rankin is one of the world’s top crime novelists—but did you know he was originally fated for a career in accounting? Well the bean counters’ loss is our gain, as Andy Martin explores in his interview with the author.

April Smith is committed to realism in her fiction. How committed? Well, for her latest novel, Home Sweet Home, set in South Dakota, she rode with cowboys, branded a cow, and attended cattle auctions and barbecues at ranches. “I have to physically experience what the characters have, immerse myself in their world, and then draw on it,” says Smith. Learn more about Smith in Oline Cogdill’s profile.

Enjoy!

Kate Stine
Editor-in-chief

"Books were never embarrassed by my questions, never condescending or superior as they informed me of the workings of the world."

Photo credit Francine Daveta Photography

I’ll admit, my attraction to books was purely physical at first. As a toddler, I couldn’t keep my hands off them. I loved riffling through their pages, inhaling the scent of aging paper. My father had to wrap his bookshelves with chicken wire to keep me from absconding with his paperbacks. Eventually, I realized I wanted more from books than just something to chew on.

I taught myself to read at the age of four, and in doing so, began the kind of relationship we all dream of, one that has consistently conquered loneliness and boredom, one that challenges me to grow and learn, one that incorporates plenty of fantasy and role play.

I discovered early on that books would tell me things the adults in my life wouldn’t, that I could depend on them for unflinching honesty. At six, I found a copy of Where Did I Come From, an illustrated book about sex and birth, at a local library. It clarified many things in my life, including the lyrics of certain pop songs my mother didn’t want me singing along to. Later that year, I read a Judy Blume novel that dispensed with the Santa myth, and it became clear: reading was my path to adulthood, the only instruction guide I’d ever get.

In a time before internet, books held all the answers. They were never embarrassed by my questions, never condescending or superior as they informed me of the workings of the world. When Nancy Drew, my constant companion in third grade, proved too tame, books indulged my changing needs. They allowed me to explore the darker side of human nature. By ten, I was tearing through Lois Duncan, Agatha Christie, and Stephen King. My parents, strong in their anti-censorship stance, never objected to my reading material, although my mother did feel some pangs of guilt after I read The Silence of the Lambs and couldn’t sleep for two weeks.

I’m still enthralled by dark explorations of the human psyche, but my reading nowadays is not constrained by genre. I can read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Tana French, C.S. Lewis or Philip Pullman, Ray Bradbury or Suzanne Collins. I can immerse myself in parenting manuals, biographies, books about animal intelligence or behavioral economics. Sometimes, I am too busy to read, but books are patient. They wait for me to come back, and I do. I always return to them. We’ve been together more than three decades now, and the physical attraction—what first drew me to books—hasn’t died. I still love the sight of black ink against paper. I still can’t wait to turn the page.

Hester Young holds a master’s degree in English with a creative writing concentration from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and her work has been published in literary magazines such as The Hawai‘i Review. Before turning to writing full-time, she worked as a teacher in Arizona and New Hampshire. Young lives with her husband and two children in New Jersey.

This “Writers on Reading” essay was originally published in “At the Scene” enews February 2017 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.

This is the seventh book in Frances Brody’s historical Kate Shackleton series.

A Death in the Dales finds Kate taking a break from detecting to holiday in the village of Langcliffe, England, with her niece Harriet, who is recuperating from a long illness. Kate has been invited by her suitor, Dr. Simonson, to stay at his recently departed Aunt Freda’s house, but she is barely installed there before a neighbor of Aunt Freda’s comes by and tells Kate about a murder Freda saw from her bedroom window. Seems Freda went to her grave tormented by the belief that the wrong man was executed for the crime, and Freda had always meant to ask Kate to look into it.

When Dr. Simonson finds out about the investigation, he’s horrified and annoyed with Freda’s neighbor, but Kate is indomitable and gets to work on the coldest of cold cases. She’s also drawn into some corollary mysteries Nancy Drew style—the hunt for some missing letters and a missing brother—and these serve to take readers around the Dales and familiarize them with the different characters who live there.

I really enjoyed Brody’s cast of memorable characters—all of them, not just Kate and Harriet. Set in 1926, Kate is scarred by the war, as were so many of her generation. Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Todd have covered this period, but Brody is a softer companion to these writers. She’s cozy without being twee and covers some serious issues. The storytelling style is soft, but the actual threads of the story are taut. Kate uncovers some very dark happenings in the most unexpected of places. And unlike Winspear or Todd, Brody lives in the UK. Her familiarity with the landscape, culture, and dialect is very natural and adds to the story she’s telling in this delightful read.