BEST AUTHOR BEST : ALAFAIR BURKE [2]

 

.-  Which books got you hooked on crime fiction?

As a very young reader, I adored Encyclopedia Brown and '' From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.''

After I begged my personal literary curator [ aka my librarian mother ] for more stories that felt like puzzle-solving, she got me started on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, which eventually led to Agatha Christie and Mary Higgins Clark.

My real obsession began in the late '80s in college, when I would escape to browse the $1 paperbacks at Powell's in Portland, Oregon.

I discovered a slew of smart, gritty female sleuths who began to feel like friends - Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, Karen Kijewski's Kat Colorado, Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone.

I never dreamed I'd have a row of my own books on those same shelves.

.-  The Friends at the center of your novel call themselves. '' The Canceled Crew.'' Why was it important that social-media blowback figure in the story?

I'm fascinated by the way we collectively decide that strangers on the internet are either completely perfect or the worst humans ever, based on a few seconds of social media.

At a time when the most rewarding books are ones in which the good guys aren't all good, and bad guys aren't entirely bad, it's bizarre that we don't have more nuance when it comes to characterizing real people whose real lives are affected by the weird sort of fan-fiction that gets crowdsourced online.

.-  Have you taken any writing tips from your father, James Lee Burke?

Just keep writing. He was out of print for more than a decade when I was a kid, and I had no idea, because I saw him at the typewriter every single day. To me, that made him a writer.

.-  Offered any?

I would never.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.