Please, Tell Us More

Authors aren’t always tremendous speakers; there’s a reason, after all, why they chose to express themselves from the protective remove of the written word. Nonetheless, a variety of attention-grabbing interviews with novelists laboring in the diverse crime-fiction field have popped up around the Web in recent days.

For instance, Lee Goldberg responds to questions from Publishers Weekly in regard to his upcoming “Ian Ludlow thriller,” True Fiction. Meanwhile, Scott Simon, the host of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday chats with David Mamet (“the celebrated and controversial playwright and screenwriter”) on the subject of his brand-new-this-week mob-era novel, Chicago. For her podcast Speaking of Mysteries, Nancie Clare questions Ben Dolnick about his mystery/supernatural/love story, The Ghost Notebooks. Craig Sisterson conducts a quick exchange with British author Clare Carson about the latter’s third novel, titled The Dark Isle, in which a young woman explores her late father’s past as an undercover agent (an enterprise at which Carson’s own father was quite adept).

Crimespree Magazine’s Elise Cooper talks to Rhys Bowen in connection with The Tuscan Child, her “intense and haunting” historical mystery. Dana King has a conversation with E.A. Aymar and Sarah M. Chen, editors of a “novel-in-stories” called The Night of the Flood. Timed to the English-language release this week of The Neighborhood, his “politically charged detective novel,” The New York Times Magazine’s Marcela Valdes sits down with Mario Vargas Llosa to discuss the life and literary renown of that almost 82-year-old Latin American fictionist. And Mick Herron talks to the Spybrary Podcast about his latest book in the Slough House/Jackson Lamb series, London Rules.

As a bonus, turn your ears to this vintage speech by John D. MacDonald, found on YouTube and recommended to us by Jerry House.