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The Crime Cafe

The Crime Cafe

By: Debbi Mack
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 Interviews and entertainment for crime fiction, suspense and thriller fans.© 2015 - 2021 Debbi Mack Art Literary History & Criticism Social Sciences
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  • Interview with Gregory Poirier – S. 11, Ep. 21

    Interview with Gregory Poirier – S. 11, Ep. 21
    Apr 26 2026
    My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is Gregory Poirier. Check out what Gregory has to say about screenwriting, as well as crime writing! You can download a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. Our guest today is an acclaimed screenwriter, director, and producer whose work spans film and television. His credits include National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Knox Goes Away, and Rosewood. A graduate of the USC School of Theater and the UCLA Master’s program in screenwriting, his debut novel, A Thousand Cuts will be coming out very soon. In fact, you can probably pre-order it today. It’s my pleasure to have with me, and I forgot to ask how you pronounce your name, so please just say it. Gregory (01:31): Gregory Poirier. Debbi (01:33): Gregory Poirier. Thank you so much. The one thing I forgot to do at the beginning of this. Gregory (01:40): I pronounce it a little more technically than that in France, but … Debbi (01:43): True. Yes, yes. France is … Yeah, they would do it totally right, and we do it totally wrong, but whatever. Sorry about that, France. So anyway, thanks for being here today. Gregory (01:58): Yeah, my pleasure. Debbi (01:58): After a career in film and television, what prompted you to write your first novel? Gregory (02:04): Well, it actually was sort of an organic thing that came up. I mean, there’s a lot of conversation now amongst me and my friends about how this business of ours is changing, and it’s becoming a lot more challenging because it’s shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. Debbi (02:23): Oh, yes. Gregory (02:24): And I’ve been very fortunate that it hasn’t shrunk me out yet, But you never know. And I actually had this idea for this story and I was trying to work it as a screenplay. And I just at some point just decided that the sort of specific voice that I was going for and the sort of tone that I was hoping for wasn’t really coming across that well in the screenplay version. And I finally decided that it’s an action thing. The way that I started this thing was I wanted to do a film that was the film that Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum or one of those guys would make if they were alive now, something with a real sort of noir weigh into it, but with a modern sensibility, modern action, all that kind of stuff. And so that’s what I was trying to achieve. And for whatever reason, it wasn’t coming across. I know I can write a noir because Knox Goes Away was a noir, and that’s probably the favorite movie of mine that I’ve ever done. (03:33): But this was something different and it just wasn’t working. And I was sitting with my gang of writer friends at the Farmer’s Market one week and one of them said, why don’t you write a novel? And I thought I might have the perfect thing to try that. And so I just basically started it as something to try and to see if this story worked better in that form, which it definitely did. And that’s how we got here. Debbi (04:02): Why do you think it works better as a novel? Gregory (04:05): I think that there’s a lot of reasons, but I think for one thing, I think it’s easier to exert your own voice in this form of writing as opposed to in a screenplay. I mean, I feel like Knox, to bring that movie up again, it’s probably the closest thing that I’ve ever done where it was sort of my voice that came across. But a lot of time you’re trying to not inject your own voice into it. For instance, Rosewood, which was a historical drama, needed to have a certain cadence, needed to have a certain feel and way of speaking and all of that kind of stuff. And it’s not me. You’re purely, at that point, a writer, which is great. I enjoy that very much. But this, I just wanted to inject some of my personality into it more. And that’s definitely easier in a book than it is in a screenplay. (05:03): And in a screenplay, you write it and then it goes through actors, it goes through directors, it goes through editors. I mean, there’s a lot of people between you and the audience, whereas in this thing, you’re talking directly to your reader, which I really enjoyed a lot. Debbi (05:19): And I take it that you worked with an editor who got what you were trying to say. Gregory (05:25): Absolutely. I worked with Keith Wallman at Diversion Books, and he was very, very into what I was trying to do. He understood it right away and was very supportive. Debbi (05:39): It’s fascinating how the fields differ in that respect, how little of yourself in a sense goes into screenwriting. At the same time, how much of it, because where do these characters come from except from you? So we start with that and then people start to chip away at it a little bit. Gregory (05:58): It’s also a really different type of writing. I mean, screenwriting is 100% external. (06:07): All you can put on the page is what the audience sees and what the audience hears. You don’t get a chance … You need to bring out ...
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  • Interview with Liz Lazarus – S. 11, Ep. 20

    Interview with Liz Lazarus – S. 11, Ep. 20
    Apr 5 2026
    My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is Liz Lazarus. Listen in on her remarkable story. I’m ready to sign-up for karate class now. You can download a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today has an engineering degree and a very interesting background in general. Among other things, she lived in Paris for three years and speaks fluent French. She has a pilot’s license and has produced a music CD. She’s also the author of several legal thrillers, including her latest, Dawn Before Darkness, which is available on Kobo, as well as in print or will be, I guess, in May. Liz (01:28): Will be. May 26th. May 26th. Yeah. Debbi (01:31): May 26th. There, you heard it now. You heard it there. It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest, Liz Lazarus. I’m trying not to say Liz Lemon. Liz (01:42): It’s a tongue twister. Liz Lazarus. Yeah. Debbi (01:44): Liz Lazarus. It’s a lovely name. I love it. I love that name. That’s cool. What made you choose to write Thrillers? Liz (01:54): Well, I would tell you, as you said, I’m an engineer. I’m probably the most reluctant author you’ll meet. I did not intend to be an author, and that may be the story for lots of people. But my first book, Free of Malice, was based on a real story, something that happened to me in college. And the novel actually was just me writing about what happened to start with. And then it turned into a novel. And I was going to be one and done after Free of Malice, and people that were reading it said, “Can’t wait for the next one.” And so I thought, okay. And it took me a while to agree to write the second one. And then once that was done, that was Plea for Justice, then came Shades of Silence and now Dawn Before Darkness. So now I feel like it’s a bad addiction. Debbi (02:36): Wow. And each one of these is a standalone novel, not a series. Liz (02:40): They are standalone. I like to give my characters closure and move on to new people. Debbi (02:45): That’s cool. Yeah, I can appreciate that. Your first novel was inspired by a real event, correct? Liz (02:53): Correct. Debbi (02:53): What was it like to write in a fictional form about a thing that really happened? Liz (03:00): It was therapy. So what happened in brief, I was in college at Georgia Tech. I was living off campus in this area called Home Park, which is a bunch of old houses, college students, a fair amount of riff raff. It wasn’t the safest area. And it was my senior year. I was going to sleep that night. I was living with two other girls in a house. And at four in the morning, I wake up to the sound of my bedroom door crashing open. Debbi (03:26): Oh my God. Liz (03:26): And I remember distinctly thinking, “Is this real?” And my next thought was, “This is real. You’ve got to deal with it. ” And you don’t know what you’re made of. Thank goodness I had fight in me, so I started fighting back. And eventually, at one point I write about this in the book, he says, “If you shut up, I’ll leave.” And I thought, “I’m not shutting up. I’m screaming louder.” And eventually he gave up and I left. So I didn’t have any self-protection at the time. I had a can of mace. I ran to the door, watched him run away into the darkness. And so for me, the writing about it, writing about the PTSD that I had. I didn’t even know what that word was, but I started writing about how I felt, what happened, how I would check every nook and cranny in the house. (04:09): And I had said to my brother-in-law afterward, “If I’d had a gun, I would’ve shot him.” And he said, “Well, that may not have been self-defense. By the time you could have shot him, he was retreating off your property. You would’ve shot him in the back.” And that got me really curious about where’s that line between self-defense and vigilantism. And then my mother asked a question, which I won’t tell you because it gives away the ending, but she asked just the most out of the blue question. And I thought, wow, that would make a killer ending to a book. And that was it. And it took me years later. For anyone who’s thinking of writing a book, it took me years later. I did all those other things on my bucket list and the book just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I wrote it. Debbi (04:51): Yeah. It’s kind of an itch that you got to scratch. Liz (04:57): It wasn’t going away. And I had the plot in my mind, and it had been brewing in my mind for a while. And I’m super lucky. I had a lawyer who helped me with the legal part. I had a therapist who helped me with the EMDR therapy, which is in the book, therapy I never did. And so the whole thing was just a great project. Debbi (05:16): Interesting. At this time, are you working at a regular job or do you have a business? I understand you were head of operations for a healthcare startup at some point. Liz (05:31): I’ve done two startups. The last one, and now I’m currently on one, but we’...
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  • Interview with Graciela Kenig – S. 11, Ep. 19

    Interview with Graciela Kenig – S. 11, Ep. 19
    Mar 15 2026
    My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is Graciela Kenig, a crime writer who can tell you a tale in two languages. But she’s giving away her debut novel, The Plans They Made, in English. I forgot to ask about translations! Check out the transcript of our interview here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today has been a feature journalist, online forum contributor, and careers columnist. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, and other national publications. Her debut novel, The Plans They Made, won the 2022 Page Turner Award for best genre writing. So it is my pleasure to introduce you to my guest, Graciela Kenig. Am I saying that correctly, Kenig? Graciela (01:31): Yes, you are. Yes. And thank you for having me. It’s amazing. You’re saying both things correctly and that’s cool. Debbi (01:40): Ah, well, you see, I’m married to an Italiano man. His last name, if you pronounced it correctly, would sound very different from the way people actually pronounce it, when they can pronounce it. It’s funny. I have no problem with vowels, folks. I did take Spanish, so that helped in junior high and high school and all that stuff. So how are you doing anyway? Graciela (02:07): I’m doing fine. Thank you. I’m just looking forward to spring in Chicago. Debbi (02:12): We’ve had a rough one. Graciela (02:12): Yeah. Debbi (02:14): All right. You’ve had a very interesting career from writing features to having your own column. How did you go about developing this particular career path? Graciela (02:26): Some of it was very organic. I wanted to be a writer from the get- go when I was little, and of course the language, because I was born in Argentina and I wrote in Spanish. And so I moved to the United States with my family and I had studied English, but you don’t use it every day until you have to. And so yeah, it kind of started like that, that I wanted to be a writer. And for the longest time, even though I had been encouraged about how I could write well, I kept thinking that Spanish was the language I should write in because that’s what I was very comfortable with. So I entered the newspaper writing career because the Chicago Sun-Times had started a section in Spanish. So I started writing articles for them, no journalist training. It’s just like, okay, let’s see what happens here. (03:23): And so I learned quickly and soon enough they asked me if I would come in part-time to help the editor because he was not a native-born Spanish speaker, if I could just do a final sweep of his columns. He’d already done his editing, so I had to go back and make sure that everything was okay. And so that column, I think it lasted for sometimes a couple years. And then you’re inside this newspaper. And so somebody says, “Do you write in English too?” I do. And I was always drawn to being somebody who could give you advice. So some of the things that I liked for a while, eventually I freelanced for the Chicago Tribune and there I got in because I was writing for a know-how section. So I could write about how do you put together a ceiling fan? And so those kinds of things like that. (04:20): And I wrote for a bunch of local papers and eventually I kind of started doing other things, getting interested in helping people with their career. And then The Tribune started a Spanish language newspaper, and that one lasted 10 years. And I wrote the careers column. So it was this interesting thing that kind of opened doors for me as to how I can help people in a very more specific way. And I felt that I wanted to help the Latino community because oftentimes we tended to be real roaded into one kind of job or another kind of job. And at least I said, “If you’re bilingual, you can do that and the other thing.” And the more I did that, the more I realized it wasn’t just being able to speak another language, it was also about the cultural issues. So it was very organic and went like that, but I always, always wanted to write fiction. Debbi (05:18): Oh, that is so cool. I love what you’re saying. That is just fantastic. What inspired you to write your novel? What inspired the idea for it? Graciela (05:32): I knew somebody who had put off, reconnect them with their best friend back in the time when you didn’t have easily, you couldn’t send faxes. I mean, that kind of stuff, you just sent—snail mail was the only way to communicate or calling, and that was expensive. And so it was put off. And when they were about to get together, this other friend had died. And so that was the seed of this. But, in big part, I used that for, I was taking a writing class and that was a prompt. And it was something like I wrote one scene and then the next assignment was write it from the other person’s point of view, which is so me because I think I like writing and I think a lot of us in the arts tend to … You have an artist sensitivity when you can see things from different ...
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