Jenny Milchman is a New Jersey writer who studied psychology. After signing with an agent her first suspense novel is due to be released. Cover Of Snow is set in a fictional Adirondack town in the dead of winter. In it Nora Hamilton wakes to find her police detective husband missing from their bed. Jenny is a highly perceptive and profound thinker whose writing is dark and filled with a sense of horror. She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about dissociation and reality.

To what extent do you think there is gender role play in crime fiction and how do you view the traditional role of men protecting women?

In one sense crime fiction has a long history of being written by and featuring strong women—or at least clever, envelope-pushing ones. Think Miss Marple, and her female creator. Think Dorothy Sayers.

At the same time, there is noir fiction, in which a bombshell blonde all but sprawls across the [male] detective’s desk and begs for help.

So crime novels exist on both sides of the gender border.

My own work involves thrusting ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances. They could be men or women, but so far there has always been at least one female point-of-view character who is called upon to do things she didn’t believe herself capable of. In my forthcoming novel, COVER OF SNOW, it’s the man who is probably weakest or most desperate, while his wife has to defend not just herself but in the end a whole town.

Another novel I have written involves a mother and her young child. This is a fairly common theme in fiction: to what lengths will a mother go to protect her young? And when that situation calls for strength and bravery, perhaps even triumphing over a male character, is that a traditional gender role or not?

Crime fiction takes an unjust world and rights it. One of those injustices has historically been sexism. Maybe that’s why so many female characters in crime fiction call the shots, make decisions, and show great strength.

Who are your literary influences?

Well, if you’d asked for my most important literary influence, or my #1 literary influence, the answer would be easy.

Stephen King, I would say.

I began reading Stephen King as a young child—young enough for my parents to have to debate over whether I should be permitted to read him. (This is noteworthy because they were a pretty liberal duo—my dad took me and my brother to see ‘Animal House’ when we were 11 and 8). In the end they allowed me to because my desire was so strong, and because despite becoming deliciously scared, I never seemed to have nightmares.

Scary fiction satisfies something in me that’s perhaps too deep to name, and so other literary influences include Doris Miles Disney, Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty, and David Seltzer. I was also influenced by Shirley Jackson, particularly ‘The Lottery,’ which I read over and over again, ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ in which the human is the hunted on a remote island, and again, many of Stephen King’s shorts.

I remember thinking that King was a master of character back when he was still being dismissed as a hack, and having to call on more lofty literary loves to try and prove that my taste in books might be worthwhile. Fyodor Dostoevsky taught me about the role of guilt; Henry James about a haunting; and George Eliot about sibling love. These authors also all wrote books whose style somehow turned up in mine back in the days when I was more of a mimic and less of a writer.

Hey, it’s one way to learn.

There are contemporary authors from whom I always learn a great deal, even though I think I’ve graduated from mimicry, and indeed don’t read fiction at all when I am writing a first draft, lest my own voice get corrupted.

Harlan Coben creates villains frightening enough to aspire to. Andrew Klavan and Lee Child are experts at putting characters into situations the reader (this reader at least) can’t imagine how they will get out of. There are female authors—Nancy Pickard, Lisa Unger, Laura Lippman, Cammie McGovern, Tana French, Jacqueline Mitchard and too many others to list here—who inject emotion into their books that makes you realize how rich suspense can really be. Louise Penny and Timothy Hallinan’s sense of place is majestic—although their places are about as far apart as you can get.

Who are my literary influences? Once I get past Stephen King, they become too numerous to name, and growing every day.

To what extent do you think writers are informed by a fear of death?

I might say that all people are informed by a fear of death. That to greater and lesser degrees, death informs our religions, our clocks, our calendars, and ironically, our lives.

My stories (and forthcoming novel) all have death as the underlying reality. If you scrape away the description, the dialog, and details, each character is coping with fear. And what are they afraid of? Gross bodily harm to themselves or their loved ones, which basically boils down to—death.

In COVER OF SNOW, out in early 2013, death is there without any scraping away. The protagonist, a young wife who’s moved to a bleak and lovely Adirondack town in mid-winter, finds herself unexpectedly widowed. The rest of the novel is her race to explain this death—and avoid her own.

And in a short story, also set in the Adirondacks, death comes to a honeymooning couple in the form of a body they stumble upon.

In my e-published short story “The Very Old Man,” Denise is new mother to nine month old Bethany. You might think that this particular stage of life is antithetical to death—as ripe and bursting as a peach. But it’s fear of the ease with which life can be lost that really drives the story.

Some of my favorite books deal with death as their theme. My favorite Alice Hoffman novel is AT RISK, in which a preteen girl is dying of AIDS in the early days of the disease. At a late point in the book, she has her braces taken off. She looks in the mirror, then walks out into the waiting room, “still smiling because now she knows.
“She would’ve been beautiful.”

The poignancy and heartbreak of those lines trace their power to…death.

PET SEMETARY by Stephen King is about the rank desperation with which the characters try to fight death. The father’s whose son came back from the war—but shouldn’t have. The main character, Louis, who knows what will happen if he tries to cheat death—but does so anyway. Because anything is better than—nothing.

Do I think that fear of death drives writers? I think it drives us all.

Do you think female killers are motivated by different things than male killers and what do the differences show about gender?

Men and women both kill for the same reason: They want something. But what they want differs greatly.

Those three sentences came to me late one night in response to this brain teaser of a question. Then I had to go back and figure out if they were true or not.

Do people kill because they want something? First I decided to take “kill” and replace it with “do the bad the bad things they do in books” because some of my favorite characters never actually kill.

Take Annie Wilkes in Stephen King’s MISERY (I keep coming back to King). She doesn’t kill Paul—but she does do a Very Bad Thing, bad enough to drive an entire book. And she certainly wants something—in this case to possess the author she so rabidly loves.

The male character in the book I’m reading now, EMPIRE OF LIES by Andrew Klavan, does kill and he does want something: to make his fanatical sentiment known. Or take Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’ SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. He wants something from each of his kills. He wants to eat.

To put it less coyly, and to give Harris’ novel its due, Lecter wants to consume the very heart of his victims, to feed on their thoughts and furies.

On the surface, Annie Wilkes and Hannibal Lecter appear to want somewhat similar things, but when you dig a little, this impression changes. And the change says something to me about gender.

Wilkes wants to be close to the writer she reveres, and when that want is threatened, she will kill or do great harm to recapture it. But Lecter wishes to destroy what he wants. The want is only satisfied by destruction.

This question left me with a question that I’ll be trying to answer in each book I read now. Do female characters kill because they can’t get something they want from their victims? And do male characters kill because they’ve gotten it?

Do you think that for a man or woman to slip over into killing they need to dissociate from their perceived selves into someone else and what does that someone else throw away in terms of gender conditioning and all it is intended to socialize?

To answer this question, I have to think about some pretty dark aspects of myself, things that would perhaps be more comfortable not to explore.

I have never killed anyone, and I hope I never do (though I also hope I would be able to, should circumstances and justice ever require).

But I have been angry and done hurtful things to the people who matter most. Killers usually kill those they know and love.

Did I dissociate during these times? Was I not the person I like to think of myself as being?

The answer to both these uncomfortable questions is yes. I went into a place where I was less connected to the person I was angry with, couldn’t see the flash of hurt across his face.

And unless the killer likes to think of him or herself as a killer, as someone entitled to the most violent of acts, then she or he probably feels pretty distant during the moment of murder as well.

I’m not sure if this is a greater leap—if more distance is required—in the case of a female versus a male killer. Historically violence has been the purview of men; think war, hunting, or rape. But does that reflect some testosterone-fueled reality, or simply how we like to think of the sexes?

Because women do kill, and often in spectacularly brutal ways. We can go no further than the recent trial of Casey Anthony to know this.

Perhaps we are all a little dissociated from reality.

Is reality simply a collectively shared subjectivity?

Maybe it’s dreadfully un-postmodernist of me, but I believe in reality. I believe there is a truth to things, one that we can arrive at if we are sufficiently free of bias and agenda and the kinds of unconscious issues that are usually a lifetime’s work to resolve.

I’m not saying things are black and white, of course. Most of the time things are wonderfully, terribly gray. Wonderfully because this kind of nuance allows for multiple, valid paths. And terribly because, well, this kind of nuance allows for multiple, valid paths.

How do we arrive at what is right?

This question is an important one for crime fiction, maybe the most important one. It means that stakes can be drawn so that the reader knows what she or he should be rooting for—what is the “good” outcome.

It means that the writer can layer in all sorts of subtlety as she or he depicts a situation with rights and wrongs, knowing that these concepts contain ambiguity.

Perhaps the richest facet for fiction of a world that contains a nuanced reality is this. Every character, no matter what they do, is doing it because they think it’s the right thing to do. The thing that in reality is necessary for them to do.

Even killers have their motivations, and these are grounded in the killer’s reality. Is this reality the same as yours or mine?

It becomes so as soon as the innocent person arrives in the killer’s sights.

Then the childhood that made the bad guy feel deprived enough to want to murder anyone who’s better off becomes the privileged person’s reality for a while.

And you can bet the victim understands that that world of deprivation is very, very real.

Do you think that totalitarianism is the death of existentialism?

Totalitarianism.

The dictionary defines it as a form of government where the ruler or dictator is not limited by a constitution or laws. And let’s define existentialism as a sense of self, or meaning. My short answer is no. There have been fascist regimes since time began and somehow human individuality refuses to bury its head. I think Elie Wiesel would agree.

But for my purposes, as a fiction writer, I can’t help but extend these concepts to the written word. In my novels I am the totalitarian leader. I create people and the worlds they inhabit, blowing them up like balloons. I and I alone breathe life into them. If I didn’t keep writing, their individual stories would end. If I didn’t push to publish, they would remain static cross-hatchings on the page, no reader coming in to read and complete the job of life-giving.

So do these characters share an existential urge toward meaning with the humans that populate the planet?

In some sense, the sense of agency, no. They are quite literally helpless without me.
But we all know that’s not really true, and I don’t just mean for those authors who tend to get metaphysical, and feel that their characters take over, writing the story for them.

I mean that when you read a book, these people exist. And isn’t that the root of existentialism? Characters—the best characters—feel real to you as you read. You don’t just anticipate what they will do next in the story, you begin to imagine what they might do in a situation that will never take place in the novel.

They stay with you after the last page is turned.

Their lives—their existences—have meaning even though it’s only the author, a leader unshackled by any laws, who gives them dominion.

How does this magic happen? How do characters become as real as the Jewish man in Nazi Germany who refuses to eat his last scrap of rotting meat, and instead shares it with someone he believes to be more hungry than he?

I don’t have the answer to that (unless Richard wrings it out of me for the next question 🙂 But I do know that it supports the answer I gave when I turned to this question.

No.

The most totalitarian regime—that of author and book—cannot stamp out the existential meaning inherent in each individual.

No matter whether that individual is real…or imagined.

Tell us about your novel.

My novel took eleven years to sell.

In a sense that may be all I need to say to answer the question. There’s a lot of meat in eleven years.

In eleven years there’s hope, heartache, frustration, and despair. In eleven years there’s a brass ring at the end of the tunnel (to mix metaphors).

In eleven years there’s a dream come true.

The story behind my story has been written about elsewhere, though, so I’ll indulge myself now by responding to the true meaning of Richard’s question.

I’ll tell you about my novel.

It’s called COVER OF SNOW. My publisher is referring to it as a literary thriller. By that I think they mean the pace is fast, the suspense high, but there’s also an emphasis on the writing and character development. At least, that’s how it sounds when I get whiffs of what’s going on behind-the-scenes as my dream editor at my dream house begins to position the book.

COVER OF SNOW takes place in a fictional Adirondack town in the dead of winter. It’s about a women named Nora Hamilton who wakes to find her police detective husband missing from their bed.

That’s what starts off the story, at least. But hopefully it’s about more than that. Shortcuts taken, greed indulged. What happens to people who tend not to face things. Or, to be more concrete, small town corruption in the hands of the powerful few who run it.

Nora won’t stop until she finds out what happened to her husband. But she’s up against some pretty potent forces—and the most potent of all is her own desire not to see.

This book is the first in a series where the recurring ‘character’ is the creepy little town of Wedeskyull. In future books you may see minor characters from COVER OF SNOW writ large or main characters making cameo appearances.

I can’t wait to write the next one. I can’t wait for you to read it.

What makes you passionate?

My family. Friends.

Books. And bookstores. Reading.

Writing.

Food.

Being outdoors.

Beautiful views and comfortable beds and long, hot soaks in a tub.

Swimming and boating and biking and hiking.

Seeing new things. Meeting new people.

Movies.

It’s not a very long list. I don’t need much. And yet, I think it’s just about everything.

A question to ask myself.

This might be the hardest one of all. After all, Richard asks great questions. Unique questions I never could’ve thought up on my own.

How can I possibly match one of his? And, what’s left to be asked?

I thought I would tell you why I stuck with my dream of getting published for eleven or thirty-seven years (depending on how you count. The first count would be since I signed with my first agent. The second would be almost my whole life).

So the question is, What enabled you to stick it out for so long? AKA, Are you completely mad?

Well, yes. Probably. Isn’t anyone who pursues a dream long past the point at which people are saying, Um, you could do other things, a little crazy? (For that matter, isn’t anyone who sits down to write a novel kind of mad? For deciding to create a whole other world on the page, and make people care about it?)

Actually no one ever said the could-do-other-things thing to me. A few of my parents’ friends noted that my husband was a real trooper for supporting me when I wasn’t earning a dime all those years (had, in fact, quit working long before at the profession that did bring in dimes).

And way back when, sophomore year of college, my parents did point out that while I worked to pursue writing, I might want to choose a backup profession out of the handful things I liked, though none of them approached what I felt about making up stories.
But for the most part I was supported in my dream. My mom told me she thought it would take a long time, but would wind up coming true because “I had this in me and always had”. Those are powerful words coming from your mom, who has a real feeling for what ‘always’ means when it comes to her children.

My husband gave me a present for the birthday right before I got my offer of publication. It was a photograph of a road through the wilderness, with a quote by Will Smith on it. The quote is entitled, No Plan B.

Was it all the support I got that enabled me to go on?

In part, yes. For sure. I can’t honestly say what I would’ve done without it.

Or maybe I can. Maybe I just can’t say how I would’ve done it without that support.

But I think that I would have. I would’ve had to.

The stories, when you’re a writer, bubble up like lava. You can no more suppress them than you can put a lid on a volcano.

And Stephen King calls an unpublished—certainly an unread—novel a circle that hasn’t been closed. It’s not what the Thing was meant to be. There are no unclosed circles. An unclosed circle is more than an oxymoron—it can’t physically exist.

And so we writers press to be read just as the universe isn’t able to tolerate a breaking of one of its laws.

Why did I stick with it all this time? I don’t recall being given a choice.

Thank you, to people and universes, for not giving me a choice.

Thank you Jenny for a really great interview which is full of depth. I look forward to reading Cover Of Snow.

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer from New Jersey. Her short story ‘The Very Old Man’ has been an Amazon bestseller, and another short piece will appear in the anthology ADIRONDACK MYSTERIES II in fall 2012. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the Made It Moments forum on her blog. She teaches writing and publishing for New York Writers Workshop, as well as online, and has designed curricula to teach writing to children. Her debut novel, COVER OF SNOW, will be published by Ballantine in early 2013.

Ines Eberl is an Austrian law historian and practising lawyer as well as a crime author. Her novel Salzburg Death Dance is her debut mystery novel. It explores the shadowy and dangerous underworld of the art trade. At its centre is art expert Hans Bosch, who begins a dangerous investigation. It has met with a great reception, not surprising, if you consider the range of talent Ines Eberl brings to it.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about the legal system and criminal dissociation.

Do you think there are any key dates that stand out in terms of advances within the legal system regarding its treatment of women and what do those dates say about political trends?

To answer your question it is necessary to have a look at Austrian history. Emerging from a mostly peasant society the situation of women after 1st World War was difficult and it became despairing during the Third Reich under the Nazi regime. The legal situation caused social, political and economical discrimination against women. Motherhood was highly regarded and abortion was under pain of death – Hitler needed soldiers.

While German women rebuilt their country after the 2nd World War and started careers, Austrian women returned to the kitchen fire when their husbands came home from war. It was not until 1975 when abortion was legalized under certain circumstances and women got the right to a professional life and even a passport without the allowance of their husbands. In 1992 the Austrian government made a law against discrimination and in 1997 women were permitted to wear their maiden name after marriage. A step to keep their identity.

Today Austria is as far away from equal status of men and women as ever. In terms of economical equality the Gender Gap Report of 2010 of the World Economic Forum ranks Austria on position 92 from 134 countries. Usually Austrian women earn 25% less than men – for the same work and position. That puts Austria behind Lesotho and Uganda and several developing countries. And political trends in Austria are not promising. Right now we are going through a discussion about adapting the Austrian hymn to modern times and change the words …home of great sons to …home of great daughters and sons. The conservative party yet announced anticipation and an opinion survey showed no interest among the population.

As long as only mother and wife are role models for Austrian women no change of the legal system will help them out of their underprivileged position. German-born and stemming from a family of historians and lawyers I never had a problem on my career path.

Do you think female killers are motivated by different things than male killers?

State of the science is that differences between male and female killers are significant. Women mostly kill tactically, perfidiously and in their social environment. Men attack directly and often in the heat of the moment when an argument escalates. Men kill to dominate their victims while women kill to free themselves from domination. For women it is a question of self-protection, self-esteem and self-preservation.

In terms of female serial killers the problem is based on the personality of the offender and not on the circumstances. Killing is regarded as a problem solving strategy. Once this strategy is successful the female serial killer will kill again – it becomes a thing of habituation. Female killers seem to be fascinating because they don´t answer the cliché of the protecting woman. They break a taboo. But we don´t have to forget that we are always talking about homicide.

Who are your literary influences?

I prefer authors who share their cultural background and write in the tradition of their countries. Many Irish authors – who are great narrators – influenced me. I like Gerard Donovan (Julius Winsome), Tana French (In The Woods), Frank McCourt (Angelas´s Ashes) and all the poems by Seamus Heaney. You need action in a mystery or a thriller but it is style that will fascinate your readers for a long time and make your books unforgettable. In Salzburg´s Death Dance, my first novel, you can see that beautiful old town suffer from the heat of August and in my new book, Hunter´s Blood, you will be high in the Austrian mountains in fall, stalking in the cold air and waiting for the deer (or the murderer) to appear under the dark trees.

My literary influences are well-crafted suspense novels written by Ruth Rendell/Barabara Vine, Mary Higgins Clark and of course Stephen King. Like these authors (whom I admire) I don´t ask at the beginning of a new book: Who did it? Can my detective bring the killer to justice? But: Will my hero survive? Will he prevail? I like to start my stories in a small, safe world, then plunge my reader in a nightmare, drive him from one extreme to the other and in the end reward him with emotional satisfaction. And it seems that readers like to follow me.

Last winter – a long Austrian winter full of snow and ice – I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, a novel in the good old gothic tradition. And although it was written at the beginning of the last century it intrigued me so much that I was not able to put it down. Skill and style don´t depend on literary genres. They persist for generations and well written literature should be the main influence for all of us who write.

Do you think that crime stems from dissociation?

In my opinion, as the famous sociologist Bourdieu said, crime and deviance stem from social dissociation. I totally agree with this view as likewise there is a difference in the social classes. Bourdieu´s view is that the lower said classes lack cultural capital, such as right values and norms, lack later on the educational capital, such as degrees and higher education, what they finally can turn into economical capital such as wealth and health. Therefore, these social classes have the problem that they get negative labels which lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Later onwards – as a result of dissociation – they turn to crime because of status frustration, lack of material goods and therefore finally poverty.

What do you make of the rise of the E Book?

When EBooks appeared first in Europe – often publishing without the agreement of the owners of the intellectual rights – there only existed a niche market. In 2007 trade publishers at the Frankfurt book fair announced that 30 % of non-fiction books were available on EBooks. Until today EBook issues were mainly economics, law, medicine, politics or psychology. I was informed that my novel Salzburg´s Death Dance is available on Kindle by Amazon but normally it´s not easy for fiction to find its way to the reader. The first reason is that a great deal of literature is still in English and the second is that EBooks suffer from a defect – conditional of manufacturing. They lack such important things as the smell of paper, the look of different printed characters and the feeling of a new bought copy in your hands. Maybe the EBook is an additional offer to readers but in my opinion it will never replace a real book. Just imagine: one future day your grandson will climb up to the attic. He will find an EBook and an old copy of Apostle Rising. The EBook will be broken-down. But from the printed copy your grandson will only have to blow away the dust. And start reading …

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

As many writers nowadays and in the past I´m a hunter. I love the daybreak in the Austrian mountains sitting in the frost and watching out for a special chamois or the right stag to come in the range of my gun. And yes, during these hours when time seems to stand still I can feel the piece of ice in my heart. Although I love animals I´m no vegetarian. A writer has to watch out for people and even when he never uses them as characters in his novels, he tries to catch their secrets and put them on paper like a scientist who spears butterflies to pin them in a frame. I think, first of all a writer should have a caring heart. Without that he´ll never be able to write a single sentence that will touch his readers. But a little piece of ice in it will help him to keep the distance he needs for his work.

How does your background in law influence your view of crime fiction?

I´m both a practising lawyer and a law historian. A lawyer learns to think analytically and logically during his studies. And he always wants to see justice to be done. That´s what he is fighting for every day and that´s what reading and writing crime fiction is for, too. But my personal view of mysteries has been mostly influenced by the years when I worked as a law historian at Salzburg University. Law history in Europe – starting with Roman Civil Right – is a history of slavery and reign of terror, of torture and ordeals. One of the darkest chapters in Middle Age Europe is the persecution of men, women and even children accused to practice witchcraft. Millions of people were burnt alive at the stake. All this was legal and there is a long tradition in legalizing governmental injustice through the centuries all over the world.

Working on these items I became sensitive in concern of crime fiction where one author outbids the other with senseless cruelties in his writing. It seems to be a never-ending competition to attract the attention of the reader just causing an emotional blunting. Look at the news channel on TV and you know what crime means.

As a lawyer I appreciate well plotted stories and fascinating characters showing the handcraft of an author. Cruelty in many different ways is part of a lawyer´s profession. He doesn´t have to spend his leisure time with it. On the other side History of Law provided me with an idea for my next book (to be released in April 2012). It is a cold case about three young poachers – psychological, intriguing and weird. I try to fascinate my readers with dark poetry and a glance on the dark side of human minds. So far it seems they like to follow me.

Is there a particular event that has changed your life and influenced your writing?

My life has been changed through the years – by the countries I saw, by the people I met and the books I read. And I hope I will grow and change and stay young at heart until my dying day.

My writing has been influenced by my personal background. I spent my childhood in Northern Germany. I listened to the old stories settled in the misty moors full of elfins, dwarfs and the ghosts of the unfortunate wanderers that have vanished in the morass in the night. I think therefore all my books have a little touch of a ghost story – similar to the books of many Irish and Scandinavian authors who write in the tradition of their countries and to whom I feel related.

Are you currently working on a new novel?

Yes I am. My first novel Salzburg Death Dance was a success and I got a call from a well known German director who is interested in making a film. So the last two weeks we were busy to arrange meetings with German and Austrian film companies. The setting of every book always has to be an attractive landscape – not only for the reader but also to give a film a chance. I sold the sequel titled Hunter´s Blood to my publisher – who asked me for a series – in July and it is to be released in April 2012. Now there are two books in the works. The first book will be part of the series and it´s about a scientist in the 19th century who collects shrunken heads which puts a curse on his descendants today and so on …. The next book is my preferred. It is a bigger project titled The Weapons Of Freedom and it is about arms trade. It will be a political thriller and a lot of work. Writing is becoming a profession to me! And I´m still looking for an English or American publishing house to release an English-language edition for my novel Salzburg Death Dance. A German literature agent contacted me who sells intellectual property rights all over the world and I hope we can arrange something. So – wish me luck!

How would you like to be remembered as a writer?

I´m just at the beginning of my career as a writer. Therefore the question how I would like to be remembered as a writer has to be connected to the question about the development of my work. My first novel is a suspense story and my second one and third one will be as well. But I hold a deep interest in sociology and politics and so my fourth novel – already in progress – will be in the range of politics. It is about arms deals – a contemporary and very sensitive issue. In my future books I´ll try to picture the current situation of our world in a suspense-packed way. I don´t believe that a writer can change the world but in a situation where men´s coexistence in several countries becomes impossible the force of all statutes and even the positive law disappears. I want to make my readers aware of that. And that is how I would like to be remembered as a writer. I hope that on the one hand my books will be always exciting and on the other hand show my readers in the future that there were writers today who thought about the actual state of society. It seems to me to be the task of those of us who are lucky enough to reach other people with their words.

Thank you Ines for an informed and penetrating interview which I hope will bring new readers to your work.

Bio: My author´s name is Ines Eberl and I was born in Berlin, Germany. I´m a law historian and practising lawyer. I taught History Law at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and now I´m practising law in Salzburg with my Austrian-born husband. We have two children.

Salzburg Death Dance, released in April, 2011 is my first novel and I just sold my second one (Hunter´s Blood – to be released in April, 2012). My third mystery novel and a thriller are already in work.

Links: currently ‘Salzburger Totentanz’ (‘Salzburg Death Dance’) can be found most readily at Amazon.co.uk and Powell’s Books.