STALKED and The Night Stalker
We're right around the corner from the Seattle Underground tour, which is an appropriate place to be signing copies of STALKED. Well, it's appropriate for us. Fans of the old television series The Night Stalker (the original, with Darren McGavin) will remember that the pilot movie featured a 125-year-old serial killer who haunted the buried streets of Seattle. It's neither here nor there, but the killer was played by Richard Anderson, who was taking a break from mentoring the Bionic Woman (the original, with Lindsay Wagner). Anyway, Marcia and I used to peer out from under the covers at The Night Stalker back in the 1970s....so here we are, looking at sewer grates at our feet and wondering who might be lurking there.
It's a reminder that setting is so important in mysteries. A lot of readers ask me why I use Duluth as the locale for my Jonathan Stride series, and I tell them that extremes enrich the drama. Duluth has a wonderful atmosphere of extremes -- the great lake jutting into the city like a knife, the northern woods encroaching with their isolation and vastness, the crazy-steep San Francisco-style streets, and the arctic blizzards. So the city becomes as much a character in the books as the people. That's what you get in a place like Seattle, too -- that distinctive sense of atmosphere, of old stone and water-stained ceilings, waiting for Richard Anderson to sneak up on you.
So if you've already seen The Night Stalker, prepare to get STALKED. But keep the lights on and grab a heavy sweater.
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