A Tap on the Window
A Tap on the Window, I think is the darkest book I've done so far. I hope everything readers are looking for from me are here. Fast pacing, lots of twists. But I tried to go a little further this time about the personal impact of tragic events. The book begins with our hero, Cal Weaver, picking up a teenage girl hitchhiker against his better judgment. Something very strange happens on the trip to deliver her home. I'll say no more.
The movie adaptation of Trust Your Eyes is in development so what was your reaction when you found out?
Pretty excited, especially when I learned the book was the subject of a bidding war between Universal and Warner Bros. Warner got it, and instantly assigned a director, Todd Phillips, who directed, among other things, the Hangover movie franchise. A thriller will be a change for him, but when you think about it, the Hangover movies are all thrillers, just very funny ones. (And beautifully shot, too.) And in more recent news, Never Look Away is in development for a TV series with NBC. I just hope something actually makes it to the screen -- movie or TV.
Please tell us about the inspiration behind the story?
Friends of ours said that if you looked up their house on Google Street View, you could see their dog looking out the window. That got me thinking, what if, in the instant that a Google Street View car, with camera mounted on the roof, passed a location, it caught something far more sinister in a window. Something that the entire world could see, if it only knew where to look. A kind of digital needle in a haystack. That was the beginning. Then I had to figure out how someone might stumble upon the image, and that's when the Thomas character was born. It seemed believable to me that a person who was obsessed with maps, who spent every waking moment online traveling the world in a virtual fashion, might come upon this image.
Please tell us about the Zack Walker mysteries.
I wrote four novels about Zack Walker -- Bad Move, Bad Guys, Lone Wolf and Stone Rain. They're much more comic in tone than the thrillers I wrote now, and have yet to come out in the UK. They came out in Canada and the US from 2004-2007. Zack is an anxiety-ridden, anal-retentive yet well-intentioned husband and father who worries that his wife and kids aren't nearly as security conscious as he is. His efforts to correct their behaviour backfire rather spectacularly, particularly when he pretends to steal his wife's purse to teach her a lesson about leaving it unattended in a grocery store cart. The lesson might have been successful had to stolen the right purse. That was the premise for Bad Move. I'm very proud of those books. I think they're all great fun to read, although I think it's unlikely I will ever return to the character.
You are the winner of the Richard and Judy 2008 Summer read for No Time for Goodbye, so how did this make you feel?
It was kind of surreal, because it was all happening in the UK while I was in Canada. I didn't see the posters in the tube, or the bookstore windows full of books. I thought maybe it was all an elaborate practical joke, that maybe the book hadn't even been published. Seriously, though, it was a wonderful experience, and it was a terrific way to be introduced to the reading public in the UK.
When did you first know what you wanted to be a writer?
Probably around the time I was eight or nine. Third grade, I think. I started filling notebooks with single stories.
What is your writing process?
Once I have a great hook for a book, and by that I mean an opening that's sure to grab the reader, I start working out what events led to it. When I have a pretty good idea of the main characters, who did what and to whom, and have a sense of where the story will end up, I start writing. It's only when I start writing that I see the opportunities that exist in the story.
Who are your favourite reads?
There are so many writers whose work I enjoy and admire. But I don't think any single writer has had more influence on me that Ross Macdonald, who wrote the Lew Archer series of detective novels. I discovered those in my teens and was obsessed with them. He was the first crime writer I'd found who used the conventions of the mystery novel to write about bigger things.
What is next for you?
Next year's book, No Safe House, which is a sequel to No Time for Goodbye, is finished. Soon I have to start writing the book that will come out in 2015. If you have any ideas, please pass them along.