Like a Charm...Billingham and Slaughter

Continuing Saturday afternoon, the dynamic duo of Karin Slaughter and Mark Billingham graced our presence at Mysteries To Die For.



The hour long book discussion focused on Like A Charm, the new serial anthology that Karin edited this year. It is a different type of serial anthology in that all the stories were written at the same time. This meant that each author had to tell the next author where to pick up the charm. For Mark Billingham this was only his second short story published. He was worried whether or not his would stand up to the rest. (Not to worry Mark, it is great!). There were a few interesting stories as to Lee Child's inclusion - he replaced Val McDermid at the last minute and was rewarded with a case of American Beer.(Karin how exactly did it get to Lee?) Child wrote his story in what is believed to be a 24 hour period. Anyway, Karin starts out this book and ends it with her stories. Next time she plans to start an anthology in the usual fashion...the authors send the story to next person to continue.

Karin's new book Indelible will be out in the UK In September.



While talking about Like A Charm, Mark was able to get a few words in too. He asked if we would like to hear him read a portion of his book, and of course we said yes. He first wanted to know if we would be upset by any profanity. HELL NO! Apparently he gets nasty emails for the use of the "F" word. Incredible.

This is the 3rd DI Thorne book and the series keeps getting better and better. Mark wanted to explore the question of what or how a detective should feel when sex offenders are being killed off. He told us a story about a similar real life killing in the UK. Apparently someone killed a pediatrician thinking or misreading the word as pedophile

His new book The Burning Girl will be out in the UK in July.