A Day Late - Saturday Spotlight - Favorite Male Mystery Author

This week's spotlight is shining on :

FAVORITE MALE MYSTERY AUTHOR

THOMAS H. COOK

I normally do not read murder mysteries. There is no particular reason for this, I can only say that mysteries are not included in my favorite genres....with one exception. I discovered Thomas H. Cook about 15 years ago, purely by accident. I was browsing the shelves of my library, just picking out books at random. I like to to that sometimes. I have found some really good reads by closing my eyes, and grabbing a random book off of a shelf. That is how I found Breakheart Hill by Thomas Cook.

MORE ABOUT THOMAS

Thomas H. Cook was born in Ft. Payne, Alabama in 1947. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English and philosophy from Georgia State College in 1969, and advanced degrees in American history from Hunter College (1972) and Columbia University of New York (1976). He has had several careers including that of an advertising executive for U. S.Industrial Chemicals, a clerk/typist for the Association for Help of Retarded Adults, an English and history teacher at Dekalb Community College, Clarkston, Georgia, and a book review editor for The Atlantic Monthly. Since 1981, he has devoted himself to a full time writing career.

Cook's crime thrillers are compelling tales written with great lyrical beauty. He views his crime novels as a means of financing his literary works. In 1996, he won the Edgar Allan Poe award for The Chatham School Affair.

He makes his home with his wife Susan Terner (a radio writer) and their daughter Justine in New York and Cape Cod.

“I write a combination mystery-mainstream novel, and that is a big problem, I think, in that mainstream readers very often never give mysteries a chance. I fall through a lot of cracks, and so far, despite wonderful reviews over a period of 20 years, I am still one of the best-known unknown writers out there.” From an interview with January Magazine, September 2009


Visit Thomas on his Facebook page.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Blood Innocents (Playboy, 1980)
• The Orchids (Houghton Mifflin, 1982)
• Tabernacle (Houghton Mifflin, 1983)
• Elena (Houghton Mifflin, 1986)
• Sacrificial Ground (Putnam, 1988)
• Flesh and Blood (Putnam, 1989)
• Streets of Fire (Putnam, 1989)
• Night Secrets (Putnam, 1990)
• The City When It Rains (Putnam, 1991)
• Evidence of Blood (Putnam, 1991)
• Mortal Memory (Putnam, 1993)
• Blood Echoes (Onyx, 1993)
  
• Breakheart Hill (Bantam, 1995)
• The Chatham School Affair (Bantam, 1996)
• Instruments of Night (Bantam, 1998)
• Places in the Dark (Bantam, 2000)
• Interrogation (Bantam, 2002)
• Taken (Dell, 2002) (Novelization)
• Moon Over Manhattan (New Millennium Press, 2002), with Larry King
• Peril (Bantam, 2004)
• Into the Web (Bantam, 2004)
• Red Leaves (Otto Penzler Book, 2006)
  
• The Murmur of Stones (Quercus, 2006) (published in the US as The Cloud of Unknowing)
• Master of the Delta (Harcourt, 2008)
• The Fate of Katherine Carr (2009)

• The Last Talk with Lola Faye (2010)