Welcome back to Stephen King!
With the release of Glimpse, The Tender Killer, the number one question asked of me lately is: “Why a trilogy, Steve?” It’s a very good question.
Some time ago I had an idea to tell the story of four people comprising of two married couples where each marriage is not without its problems. For me the joy of writing is to create characters; ordinary, every day, flawed people, like you or I, and put them in extraordinary situations. So, I thought, what if the male protagonist is a Major Crime Cop, and he has a recent history of having an affair, for which his wife is trying to forgive and forget. Let’s pair him with a stunningly beautiful, intriguing, criminal psychologist who is married to a controlling man who doesn’t want her working with the cops. Then have them hunt a terrible, psychotic serial killer. I wanted them to come from different walks of life, and be the kind of people who are at their best when they are working with an attractive person of the opposite sex and pose the question, will they or won’t they?
In my life I’ve had the pleasure of working with some exceptional women. The relationships have been fun, flirtatious and I am still very good friends with some of them today. I found that working with someone you wanted to take to bed, but never actually acting on it, was good for not only the working relationship, but my home life as well. I would be happy to go to work, and less stressed when I got home, if that makes sense. In my life, it’s a fact I’ve have better friends of the opposite sex, than my own.
So, that was the relationship I wanted for Detective Sergeant Richard ‘Rick’ McCoy, and Criminal Psychologist Patricia, call me Pat (everyone does), Holmes. Then throw into the mix a cold hearted, attention seeking murderer, who has a past association with Rick, who taunts him to catch him if he can, and I thought I could make it work. But, I didn’t want the book to be a trope; the kind of story with an obvious direction where the reader would think ‘yeah, I knew that would happen,’ but, how to do that?
If I had more words, I thought, I could really delve inside the characters, and describe the inner workings of the three different relationships, and the serial killer. I could look at the trials and tribulations of the married partners of the two protagonists; what’s it like for them having their husband, of wife working with someone they really like. And then I thought what if their story was spread over three separate investigations, into three different murderers.
Psychology, particularly criminal psychology, has always fascinated me. My daughter has a degree in it, and a good friend works in the field. What if I combined the story of my four people’s dysfunctional relationships with glimpses into the troubled psyche’s of my three killers………hmmmmm. I like to keep a book around 100,000 words. That feels about right for me to tell what I want to tell, therefore a trilogy would give me 300,000 words. Now with that amount, I could go to town.
Lots of people have asked me the question; “why a trilogy, Steve?” Well, the funny thing is that several people who have read book 3 have demanded a fourth instalment, so maybe; just maybe, this will be the first ever trilogy made up of four books.
Book 3, Glimpse, the Tender Killer is my tenth published work, and it is released on September 11th2019. Here is the link to Amazon: https://amzn.to/2yDMrOF.
Here is the official blurb:
Criminal psychologist Patricia Holmes is now a detective paired with Detective Sergeant Rick McCoy. Together they hunt The Biblical Killer, so named for the quotes left on walls written in the victim's blood. To lure the murderer out they join the Tender Nights internet dating site, openly making themselves targets. Rick and Pat have fought their desire for each other for months. Can they now survive their lust and an insane murderer intent on vengeance?
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Excerpt:
Once they resembled scientists in a germ-free lab, the put on white latex surgical gloves, and Rick led the way through the front door, where another officer stood guard.
Inside the entrance hallway he stopped suddenly and Pat walked into his back and rebound off him. In front of them on the wall, was a message which looked as if it had been written in blood, complete with runs and droplets so that rivulets from above ran into words written below.
But You, O God, will bring them down to the pit of destruction;
Men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days
“What do you make of that, Pat?” He asked in a hushed voice.
“Hmmm, worrying on several fronts. Some sort of God complex? Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord; that kind of thing. It’s not going to be pretty; I’d know that from the message, even if we hadn’t been told what to expect. It’s not just this is boasting; it’s a warning to others, and that, is scary.”
He turned to look, her face was flushed around the mask she wore, her eyes shone, and it was almost as if she were turned on. “What do you mean by that?”
“Men, plural, more than one. Also, them, again plural. This is like telling everyone who is a liar or cheat they will face his wrath; he will kill them half way through their lifetime. On the other hand, he is saying that God, not him, is the one killing. That infers schizophrenia, and a very angry one at that. I wonder what deceit our victim is guilty of? Clearly, our Mr. Byron Banks has upset someone by being violent, or by lying to them.”
Rick shook his head in amazement, once again, she had surprised him with being able to make sense of something that could have taken him days of investigation to uncover. “Should be easy to catch him, or her then, if they know the victim well enough to know he’s a liar.”
