THE CRYING KILLER

It was purely by accident that I started writing true-crime-inspired thrillers. The year was 2016, and the man who'd terrorized boys in my hometown in the 80s—culminating in the murder of Jacob Wetterling—had finally been caught.

I needed an outlet for the terrible memories (both at home and in the community) that that arrest resurfaced. Unspeakable Things, my first bestseller, was born.

I did something similar with The Quarry Girls, which gave me vent for the childhood fears that took root when I learned of the abduction and subsequent murder of the Reker sisters in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1974, a few neighborhoods over from where my family was living at the time.

The Crying Killer, out August 18, is my first return to the sub-genre since The Quarry Girls. The novel was inspired by the Weepy-Voiced Killer, a serial killer who terrorized the Twin Cities in the early '80s. Like all my books that start from the point of real murders, the story focuses not on the perpetrator but rather on the effect of crime on the survivors left behind and the community ripped apart.

It doesn't take a genius to see why I keep returning to this theme in my writing. I was a scared kid who wanted folks to do more to protect each other, especially the children. I wanted the shame to be carried by the perpetrator, not the victims. And I wanted justice.

In my fiction, at least, I can finally find all three.

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