When Michaela Hamilton approached me about writing a
serial killer series for Kensington Books, I used John Lutz’s brilliant Frank
Quinn series as inspiration for what would become my Morris Brick series. What
particularly drew me to the Frank Quinn books was the clever plotting, how Lutz
used chapters to flash back to the killer’s earlier life to explore the
killer’s evolution, the way the team of investigators working with Frank were
an extended family complete with sniping, jibes, and true caring, and how Lutz
made the victims flesh and blood instead of cardboard cutouts so we’d care
about them and dread what would be happening.
I named my detective Morris after a favorite uncle,
and I gave him the name Brick, because like my uncle, my detective would have a
short, compact body, in short, “built like a brick.” The Frank Quinn series
takes place in NYC whereas my Morris Brick series takes place in Los Angeles,
and not just so Morris and Frank Quinn wouldn’t compete to catch the same perpetrators!
Hollywood and the drive for fame (or infamy) are an integral part of this
series. At heart, I’m a crime fiction writer, and these books, particularly The
People We Kill, The Lives We Take, and The Pain We Bring are
filled with criminal activity and its consequences.
Now that I have the rights back for this series, I’m
publishing the books under my own name instead of the Jacob Stone pseudonym,
with the titles I had originally wanted, and with cover art that I feel better
captures the dark nature of these books. While I’m not promising now that there
will be more Morris Brick full-length novels in the future, several Morris
Brick short stories have been published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine,
and I do expect to write more of these.
All five books will be released June 10th as Kindle books and are available now for preorder.
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