Lori Roy's debut novel,
Bent Road, was awarded the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best First Novel by an
American Author and named a 2011 New York Times Notable Crime Book. Her second novel, Until She Comes Home was a
finalist for the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Novel and was named a New York
Times Editors' Choice.
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I’m often asked
to describe the novels I write. Some reviewers have called my work literary
suspense. Others have called it noir or Southern gothic. No matter how it’s labeled, my novels, and
much of all crime fiction, are about ordinary people who find themselves
fearful of something or someone, and as a result, must make decisions that
could save them or destroy them.
I was twenty-one
years old and sitting in the lobby of a corporate building in Miami Beach when I
first experience a real fear that could have destroyed me. I was due to
graduate soon from Kansas State University and had flown to Miami for a job
interview. As was standard for the corporate
world in the eighties, I wore a blue jacket and skirt, a white silk blouse and
chunky pearl earrings. My interviewer
was already an hour late, and the receptionist who sat behind a mahogany desk twice
apologised for the delay. I was afraid
to tell her I would have to leave soon or risk missing my flight home. Instead,
I sat quietly, hands resting in my lap and watched the clock.
If there had been
windows in the lobby, I would have heard the Atlantic Ocean. But there were none.
Dark wood paneling covered the walls,
and every few feet, a brass sconce threw a spot of light on the red carpeting
underfoot. Somewhere down a long hallway, a door opened and a man appeared in
the lobby. “He’ll see you now,” the woman said.
I picked up my briefcase, which was empty except for a pad of paper and two
blue pens, and followed the man. Like
the lobby, the hallway we walked down was lined with dark paneling and light
only by a few sconces. The man dipped
his head toward a set of heavy, double doors at the end of the narrow
passageway. “That’s his office,” the man said.
Once inside the
man’s office, which had only a single door, he was polite enough to mute the television,
but he left it on so he could watch the stock prices that rolled across the
screen. “We work six and a half days a week,” he said, scanning my resume. “We take off Sunday afternoons to do laundry.”
I nodded. I was from the Midwest and knew about hard work. Then he told me about those who had come
before me. They had graduate degrees,
and yet they didn’t last. He wasn’t sure
I would last either. He figured this by
the look of me. I would have figured the
same. “Besides,” he said, and again dipped his head off in the direction
of those double doors. “He’ll worry about your ticking clock.” I
was only twenty-one but I knew what he meant.
“This probably isn’t for you,”
he said. I caught a cab and made my
flight home in plenty of time.
Once back in
Kansas, I graduated and eventually accepted a different job. I was relieved to
have not been offered the position on Miami Beach. Though I was young and had only
been on a handful of interviews, I had sensed trouble was lurking inside those
dark rooms and behind those double doors at the end of the hallway. Maybe it was
the absence of light in a place that should have been flooded with sunshine that
frightened me. Or maybe it was the blood red carpets, or the brass sconces, or
maybe it was the woman who poked at her typewriter with long, white
fingernails. Something had triggered my instinct to flee that day, and that
something had been right. Some years
later, a book would be published. A wildly successful book called DEN OF THIEVES. Along with countless others, I read the tales
of insider trading and scandals that defined a decade of greed. There among the
pages, I found the name of the man who had been behind the double doors at the
end of the hall. Regardless of how my
work is labeled, this is the fear—the subtle, lingering, all-too-relatable
fear—I hope to conjure.
More information
about Lori Roy and her books can be found on her website.
You can also find her on Facebook
and follow her on Twitter @LORIROYauthor
Let Me Die in His Footsteps
Everyone knows Hollerans don't go near Baines. Aunt Juna
was the start of all the hatred between the families, and even though she's
been gone a good many years, the hatred has stayed put. On a dark Kentucky night in 1952, exactly halfway between
her fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, Annie Holleran crosses over into
forbidden territory. Everyone knows Hollerans don’t go near Baines, it’s been
that way since Joseph Carl Baine was hanged in 1936. But local superstition
says that tonight Annie can see her future in the Baines’ well. Armed with a
silver-handled flashlight, Annie runs through her family’s lavender fields
toward the well and at the stroke of midnight, she gazes into the water. What
she sees instead, there in the moonlight, is a dead woman. Not finding what she had hoped for, she turns from the
well and when the body is discovered come morning, Annie will have much to
explain and a past to account for. Suddenly the events of 1936, events that
have twisted and shaped the lives of Annie and all her kin, are brought back
into the present. That year, Annie’s aunt, Juna Crowley, with her black eyes
and her long blond hair, came of age. Before Juna, Joseph Carl had been the
best of all the Baine brothers. But then he looked into her eyes and they made
him do things that cost innocent people their lives. Juna will come home now,
to finish what she started. And if Annie is to save herself, her family and
this small Kentucky town, she must face the terrible reality of what happened
all those years ago. Let Me Die in His Footsteps is inspired by the true story of the last lawful public hanging in the United States.
Let Me Die in HIs Footsteps by Lori Roy is published on 27th August by Text Publishing (£10.99)
