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Learn moreA great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from? What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Lee Child's Jack Reacher a drifter? How did a brief encounter in Botswana inspire Alexander McCall Smith to create Precious Ramotswe? In The Lineup, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters—or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking. The following characters (and their creators) are featured in this collection:
Jack Taylor by Ken Bruen
Jack Reacher by Lee Child
Hieronymus Bosch by Michael Connelly
Charlie Parker by John Connolly
Elvis Cole and Joe Pike by Robert Crais
Lincoln Rhyme by Jeffery Deaver
Inspector Morse by Colin Dexter
Charlie Resnick by John Harvey
Bob Lee Swagger by Stephen Hunter
Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus by Faye Kellerman
Alex Delaware by Jonathan Kellerman
Dismas Hardy by John Lescroart
Tess Monaghan by Laura Lippman
Rambo by David Morrell
Mallory by Carol O'Connell
Spenser by Robert B. Parker
Lou Boldt by Ridley Pearson
Charlotte and Thomas Pitt by Anne Perry
Aloysius X. L. Pendergast by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
John Rebus by Ian Rankin
Precious Ramotswe by Alexander McCall Smith
Otto Penzler, proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, founded The Mysterious Press in 1975, now an imprint at Grove/Atlantic, and publishes classic crime fiction through MysteriousPress.com. Penzler has won two Edgar Awards, MWA's Ellery Queen Award, and the Raven Award. He has been given Lifetime Achievement awards by Noircon and the Strand Magazine.
John Allen Nelson's critically acclaimed roles on television's 24 and Vanished are among the highlights of his twenty-five-plus years as an actor, screenwriter, and film producer. As a narrator, he won an AudioFile Earphones Award for his reading of Zoo Story by Thomas French.
Justine Eyre has turned her passion for reading and remarkable facility with accents into her dream career. This classically trained, multilingual actress has narrated well over 400 audiobooks and has been honored to receive a coveted Audie Award and multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. Appearing in leading roles onstage in King Lear and The Crucible, she has also graced the screen in Two and Half Men and Mad Men amongst her many television credits.
British narrator John Lee has read audiobooks in almost every conceivable genre, from Charles Dickens to Patrick O'Brian, and from the very real life of Napoleon to the entirely imagined lives of sorcerers and swashbucklers. He has won numerous Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards, and he was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile in 2009. Lee is also an accomplished stage actor and wrote and coproduced the feature films Breathing Hard and Forfeit.