Peter James has created a crafty series of crime novels set in the English city of Brighton. Detective Roy Grace is his protagonist in what I like to call his "Dead Series" because every book has the word "dead" in the title. Grace is a determined sleuth. These books are carefully plotted. James spends a lot of time consulting with advisors, veteran police officers, to make sure that he has gotten all his details right.
In this interview James talks about how he got the idea for "Want You Dead." Quite often his inspirations for story-lines are derived from real crimes. His first book in the series, "Dead Simple," has finally been issued in the US. So we got a chance to talk about that book, too. Roy Grace's wife Sandy vanished without a trace in that first book. As the series has gone forward James has kept the mystery of Sandy's mysterious disappearance as a peripheral story line. Roy Grace has tried to move on. He's met someone else. They are getting married. They are having children. Meanwhile Sandy is still out there, lurking. These books are wickedly clever. Check out the Book Nook archive for my other interviews with Peter James.