Hear and Now

Wow! National Public Radio is absolutely on fire this week, when it comes to bagging crime novelists for interviews.

For Morning Edition, Linda Wertheimer talks with James Lee Burke about his new novel, Rain Gods, which stars “70-year-old widower and reformed drunk named Hackberry Holland ..., a character the author introduced in his 1971 book Lay Down My Sword and Shield.”

Meanwhile, Eleanor Beardsley interviews San Francisco writer Cara Black on the subject of her own latest Aimée Leduc outing, Murder in the Latin Quarter, which is, as usual, set in Paris.

And Vicki Barker sits down with British wordsmith Mark Billingham to chat about his just-released Detective Inspector Tom Thorne novel, Blood Line, and how his explorations of London inspire the scenes in his fiction. As an example, Billingham cites a recent excursion to the built-up banks of the Thames River: “I look to my left and there’s a huge, blown-up dead dog, stuck in the sludge. ... And I look to my right and there’s a beautiful heron. ... You know, I could have sat in my office for two to three hours and I’d never have made that stuff up.”

NPR helps make up for the dearth of books coverage elsewhere.