C.J. Box, the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen Joe Pickett novels, has millions of fans. In addition to the Joe Pickett series, he’s written five standalones, and a short story collection, Shots Fired. He’s won multiple awards for his fiction. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He lives in Wyoming.

Vicious Circle, the 17^th novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, returns to the storyline begun two novels ago in Endangered. Joe and his family must deal with a vindictive ex-con killer, Dallas Cates, who returns to town seeking revenge against Joe and his family. Though Joe and his family are at grave risk, Joe is hamstrung by the law and there’s isn’t anything he can do without proof Dallas Cates is out to satisfy his bloodlust.

Joe Pickett is unlike many contemporary thriller protagonists. He’s happily married; is a good father; doesn’t have a dark past; works hard; and is very honest. What do you feel makes him such a beloved fictional character?

I think it’s because he’s real and he’s also flawed. Therefore, the reader has empathy for him. The reader knows he can screw things up and something bad can happen to him and his family. I hope it draws the reader in more because it’s easy to see one’s self in his situation. A reader can easily identify with Joe.

Nate Romanowski appears in Vicious Circle. He’s a fascinating character. Will you tell us a little about him?

Nate was introduced in the third Joe Pickett novel, Winter Kill. He’s a master falconer with a Special Forces background. He has a complicated past and present. His relationship with Joe has gone from one end to the other. Nate has been around through most of the books. He has a code of his own and has gotten in big trouble at various times. Recently, all federal charges against him were dropped. He’s trying to go straight. He’s really at his best when he has an enemy against whom he can take action.

Vicious Circle has various thematic elements, one of them being revenge for perceived wrongs. Will you talk about this as a classic western theme?

I think revenge is one of the three or four classic western themes. The bad guy comes back to town and the good guy must stand up to him. I think it’s more nuanced than that in this book. Joe has some empathy toward Dallas Cates, the bad guy who’s coming back. Joe feels that as a law enforcement officer, he participated in over-charging the man and feels he did it in a way that wasn’t completely ethical. Joe is willing to drop the feud if Dallas will just stop in his quest.

How would you characterize the Joe Pickett novels? Are they thrillers, westerns, or both?

I think they’re both. I like to think of them as contemporary westerns. There are mystery elements, thriller elements, but mainly they’re adventurous tales. I don’t sit down and wonder if I’m going to write a mystery or a thriller. Almost all the books are westerns to some degree. I recall talking to George Pelecanos, whose books are mostly set in the mean streets of Baltimore. He considers his books to be westerns.

 

The prose in Vicious Circle is elegant, yet straightforward and easily readable. How would you describe your writing style?

I try not to show off. I want to simply communicate as effectively as I can to tell a story. I think that comes from my background as a journalist and from what I enjoy reading. I pare things back. If I write a purple prose paragraph describing scenery, I’ll go back and try to cut it down to its essence so the reader gets a good sense of what it looks and smells like, but doesn’t go on and on.

Speaking of what you enjoy reading, who are your literary influences?

My favorite author of all times is Thomas McGuane. I also enjoy reading books by Jim Harrison. I’m a big fan of Cormac McCarthy. They all write contemporary westerns in a straightforward style. And they all have a great sense of place.

Other than Joe himself, which character in Vicious Circle was most compelling to write?

Some of the secondary characters were a lot of fun to write. Randall Luthi, an ex-con recruited to help Dallas go after the Pickett family was complicated and interesting. I also found Wanda Stacy to be complicated, especially since she gets caught up in the action through no fault of her own. Another fun character to write was Dave Farkus.

Is there anything about your writing process that might surprise our readers?

I do a lot of research. It’s sometimes my favorite part of the writing process. I then construct an outline based on the research. Then, I try to pull the reader through the research in a page-turning way.

Do you have a strategy for overcoming writer’s block?

I can’t say I’ve ever had it. I’ve had periods where I’m so busy doing things that I can’t find large blocks of time in which to write. When I feel a little stymied, I don’t have a problem. I write an outline and know where the story is going. Even on days when I don’t necessarily feel like writing, I still put words down on the page and can go back and fill it in later.

What’s coming next from C.J. Box?

Every other year I write a standalone. This year, Paradise Valley will come out. It’s the conclusion of what’s being called the Highway Quartet, the others being The Highway, Back of Beyond, and Badlands. That’s coming out in July.

Congratulations on writing Vicious Circle, another in the Joe Pickett series which Publishers Weekly described as “the most suspenseful in this world-class series, setting a new standard for C.J. Box.” I found it suspenseful and could easily relate to all the characters in the novel.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

Greg Iles is known to readers everywhere. His first novel. Spandau Phoenix, was published in 1993 and became a bestseller. He has since had many chart-toppers. In his fourth novel, The Quiet Game, he created Penn Cage and placed him in Natchez, the oldest city on the M

ississippi River.

He has written the Natchez Burning Trilogy featuring Penn Cage. The first two novels are Natchez Burning and The Bone Tree.

Mississippi Blood is the last volume in the trilogy. In it, we find mayor and former prosecutor, Penn Cage who is shattered by grief at the loss of his fiancée Caitlin Masters. In addition, his father, Dr. Tom Cage, is about to be tried for murder. Dr. Cage’s trial sets an ominous clock in motion, and unless Penn can lift the veil of the past and help exonerate his father, his family will be destroyed.

Mississippi Blood features a mesmerizing murder trial at the heart of the novel. How did you learn so much about courtroom procedures and tactics?

I’m not an attorney and don’t have any formal knowledge of courtroom procedures. I’ve attended a few murder trials but most of what I learned about trial tactics and routines can be attributed to my attorney-buddy who read the first draft and made many corrections. My guides for writing convincing trial scenes came from my having read Robert Traver’s Anatomy of a Murder and Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. Those books gave me plenty of information.

As you know, an actual trial is a drama acted out in real life.

For a novelist writing a trial scene, the trick is to eliminate all the tedious elements found in an actual trial, while retaining  the very essence of “conflict” which is at the crux of every trial.  That conflict of competing narratives between prosecution and defense is the dramatic force, whether in an actual courtroom trial or one within the pages of a book.

If your narrative is convincing, your trial tactics will work, whether to a jury or to the readers of your novel.

Penn Cage is a fascinating character. How has he evolved over the course of the trilogy?

It was never my intention for Penn to be a series’ character. I thought his story would be explored in a standalone novel, but as I returned to Mississippi more and more in my fiction, Penn evolved from being an observer to an actor in the drama of the novels. His evolution involved his becoming more and more morally challenged with each book, which forced him to compromise with his own values as he went forward. As with us all, the more we see of life and surmount challenges, we must make certain compromises.

When writing the Natchez Burning Trilogy, how did you handle giving enough backstory in each successive novel without repeating too much of the contents of the earlier books?

It’s a temptation to make the worst mistake possible by providing exposition for the reader who came late to the trilogy. I had to trust that a new reader could be dropped into this story in medias res, and I felt the power of the story would clutch the reader through to the end. I avoided giving too much backstory beyond just using a few compressing devices early in the book—a newspaper summary—which I felt would suffice. I had to trust the story would carry itself.

I understand in 2011, you sustained life-threatening injuries in an automobile accident, and found new motivation by re-entering the world of Penn Cage, the realm of Natchez, and the secrets of the town. Will you tell us a bit about that?

I was driving when a car going seventy miles an hour, hit my driver’s side door. I sustained a torn aorta, many broken bones, and lost half my right leg. I was in a medically-induced coma for a week. When I came out of that situation missing a leg, my entire attitude toward writing changed. I realized I’d been compromising with myself.

What I mean is this: I originally conceived of the Natchez Burning story as one book, which I was on the verge of completing when the accident occurred. But I had been shortchanging myself because I couldn’t properly address important issues such as race, family, and the South in a single novel.

When I came out of that coma, I realized I didn’t care how long the story had to be. I no longer cared who would get angry at me; and I told myself if I was going to be a Southern writer, I had to be unflinching in my commitment to the truth. It didn’t matter what the consequences might be.

The accident altered my life. I undertook a quest to write what I felt I needed to write. I decided to write a trilogy instead of writing this story in one book. I lost my publisher and changed agents. I had no idea how it would turn out. There are very few trilogies in mainstream trade publishing. Generally, it’s considered commercial suicide. The accident took me from being perceived as a thriller writer to being seen as a fiction writer dealing with very serious issues. And I’m gratified to have made that transition.

Speaking of Southern writers, your writing has been compared to that of Pat Conroy, Thomas Wolfe, and William Faulkner. How would you describe your style?

I would not compare myself with those writers. Like so many of us, I was inspired by them. I was fortunate enough to meet Pat Conroy a year before he died. I also got to meet William Styron and James Dickey.

I recall something Faulkner said: We look at our heroes and on the deepest level, we’re trying to be them. I would never presume to compare myself with those writers. But, I look at the place and time when they were writing and the subjects they chose, and I jumped into the water in my time. I feel I’ve got to do the best I can. What separates me from them is I’m a commercial novelist. I have to make a living. Even though I write what I want to, I still have to sell enough books so the publishing industry will pay me. That’s a difficult compromise to make. Throughout my career, I have had to make that compromise to a greater or lesser degree. With this trilogy, I’ve compromised to the least degree possible. The writers you mentioned were commercial novelists, but while writing, they threw commercial interests to the wind, much more than I can.

We both know this as writers: when writing a novel, we’re looking for resonance. I feel resonance is achieved by providing the reader with emotional insight that’s only gained through suffering. In a good commercial novel, we find two or three such insights in the book. What separates a good commercial novelist from a Faulkner or Tolstoy is this: those great novels have profound insights on almost every page or chapter. They distill the human condition in ways most commercial novels never can.

I understand Sony Pictures is developing a cable television series based on the Natchez Burning Trilogy. Tell us about that.

It’s in development right now, but these things take a very long time. So, I’m just waiting to see what happens.

What do you love about the writing life?

I’ll tell you something I learned as a musician and it applies to being a writer, as well: no matter how much you love something, when you begin doing it for a living, it changes things. In a way, the thing you love doing the most is inevitably compromised.

What do I love about the writing life? I love the freedom of it. If you’re fortunate enough to make a living from writing, you probably have more freedom than in almost any other career. When you get over that initial hump of attaining success, you have a great deal of freedom. You’re on your own. That’s what I love.

You’re having a dinner party and can invite any five guests, living or dead, from any walk of life. Who would they be?

That’s a great question. I really have to think about it. [Reflection for a while] I’d love to invite Carl Jung along with Robert Oppenheimer to hear them discuss science and psychology. It would be fascinating to have Friedrich Nietzsche there, along with the great Greek playwright, Euripides. They could add a great deal of insight about what it means to be human. And I think Marie Curie would add to the mix. Can you imagine the conversation these five people would have?

Congratulations on penning Mississippi Blood. It’s an atmospheric, beautifully crafted conclusion to a trilogy exploring racism, abuse of power, and the meaning of justice. It blends imagination, suspense, history and lyrical writing in a novel that I could not put down until I’d read the very last page.

Patricia Cornwell is known to millions of readers as the award-winning and bestselling author of the Kay Scarpetta series. In 2001, she was pulled into a real-life investigation of her own—the long-unsolved “Jack the Ripper” murders that appalled and fascinated London in the late 1800s. Applying old-fashioned as well as modern forensic techniques to a century old crime, Patricia Cornwell’s research led to the publication of Portrait of a Killer, in which she identified the renowned British painter Walter Sickert as the Ripper.

The book created considerable controversy and thereafter, Patricia devoted countless hours and resources pursuing new evidence against Sickert. In Ripper, The Secret Life of Walter Sickert, she revisits, revises and expands upon her findings of the most notorious unsolved crime wave in history.

Give us a brief overview of Jack the Ripper’s crimes and the impact he had on London in the 1880s.

Jack the Ripper’s crimes began then, but there was nothing in the London newspapers about a “Jack the Ripper.” The first reports noted some fiendish killer was terrorizing the impoverished East End, an area of slums known as Whitechapel. A prostitute was killed at the end of August of 1888; she’d been stabbed more than twenty times. Nobody paid much attention to it.  Then, another woman was murdered soon afterwards; her throat was cut in the streets of the East End, in the early hours of the morning.

The murders became infamous when “Jack the Ripper” began writing letters to the media and to the police. He named himself “Jack the Ripper” and signed the letters using that name or others such as “Saucy Jack” or “Jackie Boy.” The letters were hateful, violent and mocking. By the end of September of 1888, there were five, if not six, murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. In the London slums where the prostitutes and immigrants lived in a sea of misery, they talked about “The Knife” and warned each other to be aware there was someone out there who killed.

Then the worst murder occurred which was the killing of Mary Kelly in early November of 1888. She was not murdered in the streets, but in her hovel. All her organs were removed but her brain, and she was flayed to the bone. Her right leg was flayed down to the femur.

We don’t know how many murders Jack the Ripper actually committed. There’s a great deal of evidence that there were at least seven, and probably many more as I point out in the book. These kinds of killers change how they commit murder. The stakes escalate for such a killer. From a psychological standpoint, it takes more to satisfy the compulsion to kill. I believe that’s when Jack the Ripper began to dismember his victims.

What made you so interested in solving these crimes?

It’s what happens to me with anything that gets my attention.

In the Spring of 2001, a Scotland Yard investigator gave me a tour of the Metro Police headquarters, and took me to the East End where these murders had occurred. I was simply being given a tour. I then asked a fateful question: ‘Who were the suspects?’ He rattled off the names, many of which were familiar to Ripperologists. He said they were suspects with no basis in fact or evidence. It was just speculation. I asked about any evidence and he told me the only evidence left in the case were the actual letters the Ripper wrote to the media and police. They were in the national archives. I considered the fact that documents can provide a plethora of forensic evidence.

There can be DNA evidence or even statement analysis, which can be a valuable tool in an investigation—the perpetrator’s choice of words, his language, the spellings and misspellings—can be revealing.

I decided to look at the letters.

The investigator told me an artist had been named as a possible suspect in the Ripper case: one Walter Sickert, a prominent English artist during the Victorian era.

I began looking at art books and the hair on the back of my neck stood up: Sickert’s paintings were very disturbing. They conveyed an undercurrent of morbidity and violence, particularly against women. But that wasn’t enough to make me think Sickert had committed the crimes.

I looked at the archived letters and was shocked. Readers will see in both the e-book and print edition of Ripper these paintings and letters. You can see how the watermarks match, and how  the paintbrush strokes where he painted a letter instead of writing it conform to each other. The art work itself presents a compelling and multi-layered and very clear case against Walter Sickert.

As the book notes, Walter Sickert was a well-known painter and student of James Abbott Whistler. Tell us a bit more.

The most amazing thing about the Ripper case is that nobody ever imagined that Jack the Ripper was part of the Victorian art world—the theatrical stage and the art studio. Sickert started out as an actor. Interestingly, his stage name was ‘Mr. Nemo’ which means Mr. Nobody. One of the telegrams Jack the Ripper sent was signed ‘Mr. Nobody,’ then it was crossed out and replaced with ‘Jack the Ripper.’

Jack the Ripper wrote letters he signed ‘Nemo.’ He wrote many letters to the editor of a newspaper. This perpetrator had graphomania; he was a compulsive writer. Sickert was also a compulsive writer. He would apologize to friends for writing so often. He had a psychological compulsion to murder. It was an addiction that took the place of sex and other normal things people seek for gratification.

Speaking of psychology, in Ripper you compare Walter Sickert’s compulsion to murder, likening him to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Will you talk about that?

This all sprang forth from the London stage.

Sickert went from being a failed actor to becoming an apprentice of James McNeill Whistler, the painter of ‘Whistler’s Mother.’ Whistler was flamboyant and famous for running around the streets of London with Oscar Wilde. He was like a modern-day rock star. Sickert felt diminished around this famous man, which added to his feelings of belittlement and rage. This tapped into his sexual inadequacies concerning a deformity of his genitalia, as detailed in the book. Sickert had three surgeries for a fistula on his southern hemisphere by the time he was five years old. He underwent these surgeries without anesthesia which left him physically and emotionally scarred for life.

In the summer of 1888, A famous American actor, Richard Mansfield, wanted to bring Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the London stage. Mansfield mounted the production in August of 1888. Sickert knew all about this because he was an actor in that same theater, and in fact, the stage manager was none other than Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. They all knew each other.

The theme of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde concerns a duality of someone who, on the surface is respectable, but who transforms into a monster. It’s a metaphor for the psychiatric pathology of a compulsive killer. It’s a picture of the two faces of this type of person. I once asked an expert who had dealt with sexual psychopaths—people like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer—when do we know when someone who is charming and attractive is truly evil, and a killer? He said, ‘You know it about one minute before they kill you.’

This book shows people what this kind of killer really is like. It speaks to the need to get away from mythologizing him.

Jack the Ripper was not a charming top-hatted man in the London fog. He was a monster in the fog, with whom you might have coffee in the morning and think he’s witty, nice-looking, but a bit cold, not empathic, and who never feels guilt or regret about anything.

Tell us about the modern forensic techniques you brought to this investigation.

My investigation was an alchemy of the lowest and highest forms of technology imaginable. I used both in this case. I put letters on an old-fashioned light box or under a microscope. I even used a magnifying lens to examine the paper on which the Ripper wrote. I brought in experts to examine the paper which involved taking precise measurements of the hand-made paper and studying its watermarks. It became like fingerprints in the case.

As for the latest technology, we used spectroscopy and DNA analysis—non-destructive techniques to learn more about these hundreds of letters. Because they’re considered national treasures, we couldn’t take these letters to a laboratory and run forensic tests because they cannot leave the archives or risk being damaged. I brought over a Harvard scientist to look at colored pencils, lithography instruments, etching materials, and paint brushes. In one of the letters, Ripper penciled the letters first and when looking at it under a lens, you can see he dipped a paint brush in red ink and painted the letter. That wasn’t done by some deranged miscreant living in the London slums.

Congratulations on writing Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert. It’s a highly readable expose of perhaps the world’s most famously chilling case of serial murder; the vain efforts of the police to solve the crimes; and the compelling revelations your exhaustive research has unearthed.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.