In mid-May, the Turin International Book Festival was held in Turin, Italy. My Italian publisher (yes, I now have an Italian publisher!) La Corte Editore, exhibited at the festival. They had more than 100 different titles for sale at the event, and of those titles, a new book called Le Radici del Buio was the 12th best seller.
Le Radici del Buio translates as “The Roots of Darkness,” and that’s the title that the publisher chose for its edition of my forthcoming thriller, called Flesh of All Sorrows in English. The English-language version will be released on August 28 by Crystal Lake Publishing, and I hope you’ll read it. (I wrote a little about it here.)
Throughout my reading life, I’ve been in love with three genres (well, more than that at certain times–I’ve had love affairs with science fiction and sword-and-sorcery fiction, and have written both), but three that thread throughout the decades: the Western, horror, and the police-procedural thriller. The last one can sometimes stretch to include private-eye mysteries, which are thrilling in themselves and involve investigations that strip away the lies and cover-ups to engage with the deeper truths of human behavior.
Sometimes the three can be combined into a single book–a Western-set horror novel with an investigative aspect. I’ve done that in a few of my novels, including Missing White Girl and River Runs Red. Currently, the master at combining horror and private investigators is Irish author John Connolly, whose Charlie Parker series is set primarily in New England with excursions outside that area. I’ve been reading the series since the first book, Every Dead Thing, and it’s still going strong. James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series likewise drifts into supernatural areas, and is another one I’ve been reading since The Neon Rain started it. Both authors are friends, and some of my favorite people–but I’d read them even if I’d never met them. I can’t recommend them highly enough,
Some of my favorite thriller writers have praised my own thrillers, with and without supernatural elements. Of River Runs Red, Don Winslow said “Jeff Mariotte can flat-out write. This is a smart, fast, terrific read. This river runs.” And David Morrell’s comment was “Based on actual government programs, Jeffrey Mariotte’s River Runs Red is a fascinating blend of espionage and the occult with several jaw-dropping plot twists and one of the best action sequences I’ve read in a long time.” When Rambo’s papa praises an action sequence, you know you’ve done something right.
And of my non-supernatural police-procedural thriller Empty Rooms, the legendary Michael Connelly said “Empty Rooms is a searing, no-holds barred journey into darkness. Jeffrey J. Mariotte knows the key is character, character, character and has delivered a story about men who relentlessly work the case at the same time the case works them. I was pulled in from the start on this one and it never let up. I highly recommend it.” Bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker added his own praise: “Empty Rooms is as good and moving as a thriller can be. Keenly observed and deftly written, it’s something you’ll want on your shelf as long as you have one. Mariotte’s characters come off the page at you, and through them, the author spins a tale truly of our time. I couldn’t put this one down.”
Flesh of All Sorrows is another non-supernatural police-procedural thriller. It involves two families living in an area at the edge of the Phoenix, Arizona suburban sprawl, a community rapidly shifting from rural to suburban. One family is that of a legendary police chief, the other that of a serial killer known as The Bookbinder. He got that tag because he selects his victims based on their resemblance to characters in the novels (thrillers, of course) that he reads, and after murdering them, binds the books in their flesh. When these two families collide, neither they nor their quiet community will ever be the same.
In between Empty Rooms and this one, I wrote a trilogy called the Major Crimes Squad: Phoenix trilogy, published by Wolfpack. It’s out of print currently, because I got the rights back and intend to re-release it with some new material, but I haven’t put that package together yet. Should you have read it, though, you’ll recognize a couple of characters who also appear in this one, detective Deacon Glass and journalist Erica Wilson.
I’ll be posting some excerpts from the book between now and August, along with more details about the story, the process of writing it, etc. I hope you’ll stay tuned.
