Swann's Lake of Despair by Charles Salzberg

He left all the lights on in the house so people would think the family was still home. He called the school and told them his kids would be visiting relatives for a month.

It was so meticulously planned out that the perpetrator managed to give himself almost a month’s head start on the authorities by making sure no one in the upscale community where the murders took place would miss his victims. This did not seem to be a crime of passion, nor did it appear to be a crime committed in a moment of madness. Sad to say, these kinds of stories aren’t all that rare, but there was something about this one that was special, something that fascinated me, something that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Hopefully, by the end of the novel I’ve answered at least some of those questions while at the same time entertaining my reader.ĭevil in the Hole, was published a few years ago, but the seed for that novel was planted more than thirty years ago when I came across a front page story in the New York Times about a man who killed his entire family, wife, three kids, mother, and the family dog, then disappeared. The novel has to examine something either I didn’t know, something I’m confused about, or something I want to know more about, usually human behavior. The novels I’m interested in writing have to be about something and in the act of writing that novel I hope to able to learn something about myself, about the world I live in, and about the people who live in it with me.

What if? Hopefully, that question, if compelling enough, propels me into a story that examines an important idea or theme.

Instead, it begins with a simple question. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, and he teaches writing at the Writer’s Voice and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a founding member.įor me, a novel rarely begins with plot or a character, or even a particular crime. He has been a visiting professor of magazine at the S.I. He has written over 25 nonfiction books, including From Set Shot to Slam Dunk, an oral history of the NBA, and Soupy Sez: My Life and Zany Times, with Soupy Sales. His novels have been recognized by Suspense Magazine, the Silver Falchion Awards, the Beverly Hills Book Award and the Indie Excellence Award. 2016), Devil in the Hole (re-release Nov. CHARLES SALZBERG is the author of the Shamus Award-nominated Swann’s Last Song, Swann Dives In, Swann’s Lake of Despair (re-release Nov.

Swann's Lake of Despair by Charles Salzberg