2012 International Thriller Award Nominee

Jake Reese is a writing teacher at an American university. He lives in a small brick Tudor close to campus with his art buyer wife, Diane. His life is quiet--even ordinary. And he likes it that way. But it wasn?t always quiet. In Jake's distant past was a life on the streets, inflicting damage and suffering on more people than he can count. And now someone from his past, it seems, has come looking for him.

A raw, gripping thriller about the price paid for past sins, John Rector's third novel is a live wire that crackles with the intensity of a man who has nothing left to lose. When two men attack Jake in a parking lot and cut off his ring finger, he tries to dismiss it as an unlucky case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when events take a more sinister turn and Diane goes missing, Jake knows he can no longer hide from the truth. As he embarks on a mission to find his wife, he realizes his dark past is refusing to stay buried, and that his future is about to unfold in ways he could never have imagined.

With taut and brooding prose, Rector paints a formidable portrait of a reformed man's slow descent into a life he thought he had walked away from forever. As the intensity becomes almost unbearable, the pace quickens and the suspense applies an unrelenting, vicelike grip, as Already Gone hurtles toward its ultimate explosive climax.



A Q&A with John Rector

Question: Already Gone opens with an dramatic attack that eventually drives a wedge between Jake and his wife. Then you pull back and carefully build an emotional situation between these newlyweds. Was opening with that kind of contrast always your plan?

John Rector: The contrast wasn't as much a plan as a necessity. Already Gone takes off at full speed, so I had to introduce the reader to the characters right away. The trick was building the characters as the story developed, so the reader wouldn't get bored and close the book. Writing action and plot twists isn't the hard part--the hard part is creating characters the reader will care about. To do that, I had to show who they were before the main conflict tore through their lives and changed everything.

Q: Are you ever surprised by how your writing unfolds?

JR: Yes, I'm often surprised by how things unfold as I'm writing. I usually have an idea where things are heading, but in each book, there has come a point where the different elements all come together in an unexpected way and form a bigger picture. That revelation is one of my favorite things about writing.

Q: You are a prize-winning short-story writer as well as a best-selling novelist. How is writing a story different than writing a novel?

JR: Anyone who has tried both can tell you that writing short fiction is a different skill set. When you're working on a short story, every single line you write has to either develop character or advance the plot. If a line doesn't add something essential, it should be cut. With novels, you have a little more room to play. It becomes more about the scene than the individual lines, but the goal is the same.

Q: Do you still write short fiction?

JR: For the past several years, my focus has been on novels, so I haven't written short fiction in quite a while. I've received emails from a number of readers asking about my old stories, so I recently decided to put a few together and released a small collection. It's called The Walls Around Us, and it's a snapshot of what I was working on when I started writing fiction. Short stories were my way of learning how to create a scene, build tension, and develop characters. I had a great time writing them, but my true love is the novel.

Q: I've heard that you don't consider yourself a mystery/thriller writer, but Already Gone is a thrilling, mysterious read. How would you describe your writing, and what kinds of readers do you think will love this book?

JR: I consider myself a suspense writer. Some of what I write falls into the mystery/thriller genre, but I've also written horror stories, noir stories, and even science fiction. The only constant element in everything I've written is suspense. Anyone who likes fast-paced, dark novels with a lot of danger and plot twists should like my books.

Q: What are you reading now?

JR: The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis and The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell.

Q: What do you like to read over and over again?

JR: There are a few books I always seem to revisit: The Notebook by Agota Kristof, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver, Night Shift by Stephen King, Big Bad Love by Larry Brown, Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski, and A Farewell to Arms by Earnest Hemingway are the first ones that come to my mind. I go back to these books because the writing in them is so clear and vivid and beautiful, which to me is the best kind of writing--also the hardest. Whenever I'm struggling, it's nice to be able to grab one of these books, flip it open, and see how it should be done.

Books are like houses. Some houses, you can tell right away they're about to collapse at any moment and you need to scramble out quick. Other houses may seem OK at first, but then you realize that maybe the ceiling's too low, or there's not enough natural light in the living room, or the floors creak too much. Finally, there are some houses that are expertly crafted, both in terms of structural integrity and design. But the problem is, you've been inside dozens of houses just like it. Zzzzz.

And then you have houses like the ones John Rector builds...you can't help but marvel at how much weight is supported by his lean, spare sentences. The whole thing should collapse--but doesn't.

Read the rest of this review at www.kindlepost.com.

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