Meeting new readers is great. Someone realizes I write mysteries and goes, “Oh! I love to read! Let me try one of yours!” And then the next thing they ask is almost always one of these two questions: “What’s your biggest seller?” Or “What’s your favorite?”
So I decided to come up with a list for each.
And while determining best-sellers was fairly easy (it’s just numbers), the second question was much harder. Every writer probably loves his or her books equally. They’re like your children! But if my life depended on it and I had to choose, below is what they would be.
First, the best-sellers, in ascending order. I’ve taken into account both initial sales and overall sales.
5. DARK WEB — An early book that had a rocky start but grew by word of mouth and a good publisher pushing ads.
A teenage boy is found dead on a snowy road. Detective John Swift must untangle a web of real and virtual crimes in order to get to solve the murder.
One of the North Country Novels.
4. HER HUSBAND’S LIES — A recent psychological thriller. Callie’s husband is in a coma after his truck plunged into an icy lake. Police have ruled it an accident, but Callie always wondered.
3. HABIT — My debut crime thriller, it sold well but also at one point was the number one free book in the United States on Amazon.
Brendan Healy had it all. At the start of a bright career in neuroscience, a loving wife, their child. Now Brendan is alone, a cop, pursued by his demons as he embarks on his first big case.
2. HER PERFECT SECRET — Another recent psych thriller and my best seller of the past five years, winner of Best Suspense at the Next Generation Indie Awards.
Therapist Emily Lindman thinks her daughter’s fiance might be a former patient… one with a highly troubled and bloody past…
1. GONE — A police procedural mixed with psychological thriller that sold 75,000 copies in its first month in 2016. This was the book that allowed me to quit my “day job.”
A family is missing. They have two small children. When Detective Rondeau views one of their home videos, he sees someone in the shadows, watching the family. But can Rondeau trust his own mind given his harrowing past?
And now, my favorites. Subject to change, sure, but right now, this is it:
5. DEAD OR ALIVE — I love the third book in the Tom Lange series because I really felt like I was hitting my stride. Tom was clearer to me than ever, and I was deep into the southern Florida swampland. There’s a scene where Tom confronts a witness and elicits information in a way I’ve never seen in another book before or since.
And airboat rides through the Everglades chasing bad guys — who doesn’t love that??
4. NOWHERE TO HIDE — Sometimes the best premises are the simplest. A cop (FBI agent Shannon Ames) gets stuck in a small town during a blizzard at the same time two maniacs go on a killing spree. The result is pure action and the love I’d come to feel for my main character, Shannon. Shannon kicks absolute ass in this one and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
3. HER PERFECT SECRET — The only book on both lists! I started writing psychological thrillers later in my career, but in many ways this feels like a cop thriller — the main character has a burning need to find out whether her daughter is dating a former patient of hers and undertakes a secret investigation. There’s an energy to this story I had in the writing of it, almost like I got the whole thing all at once. A rare occurrence, indeed.
2. HIDE AND SEEK — is another Shannon Ames thriller, the second book in the series. Maybe I was still getting to know my heroine a little bit, but she was getting to know the job, too. I love the plot here, and I loved coming up with it with the help of the publishers, Brian and Garret. Everything about this one feels right to me — the pacing, the motives, the banter between Shannon and her partner Charlie (who has a secret crush on her). And there’s one moment in particular that has never left me: I can still see Shannon standing there, grass burning from a recent explosion, police lights sweeping over the scene while she talks somberly with a local sheriff about the life of a cop, the things they see that can never be unseen, the things they carry with them.
1. ROUGH COUNTRY — So this is it. My favorite book is the only one that features detective Reed Raleigh. Maybe, honestly, that’s part of why it’s my favorite. Speaking of carrying it with you, Reed is a war vet with PTSD. He likes his curly hair a bit long, wears a beard, and sometimes puts in ear buds while he works. I love this case, too — simple, but it gets dark and unwieldy as Reed peels away the layers, visits crime scene after crime scene. And I love the ending of this one. It goes a little against type (something my publishers typically warn me not to do) and feels real, fresh, and not like every other story of the genre. That’s what this is to me. Purely mine. Purely Reed’s. Purely yours to discover and enjoy.
