Please note that the transcript for this episode is AI-generated by an app and only lightly edited by a human, so there might be some errors.

[00:00:01.100] – Alan Petersen
Welcome to Meet the Thriller Author, the podcast where we go behind the scenes with your favorite thriller and mystery writers to find out what makes them tick. I’m your host, Alan Petersen. This episode, number 204, is going to be a little different. While I usually interview mystery and thriller authors, today, I’m excited to welcome a special guest, Vannessa Cronin, who is a senior editor at Amazon Books, focusing on mystery and thriller books for amazon. Com. When you see those books tagged as Editor’s to pick. Vannessa is one of the editors behind that. The editors over at amazon. Com recently published the Best Mystery and Thriller Series of 2024, so far. I chatted with Vannessa about those books and series, the authors, as well as trends in mystery and thriller genres for the rest of the year and into 2025. Vannessa has had an incredible journey from Ireland to the United States, and over the past two decades, she has worked as a book buyer, a sales rep, Amazon Bookstore Curator, and now a Senior Editor at Amazon Books. With her extensive experience and passion for reading, Vannessa joined me on the podcast to share her insights on the thriller genre and so much more.

[00:01:10.190] – Alan Petersen
Before we dive into our conversation, though, I wanted to let you know about my new book release. It’s a standalone psychological thriller, The Basement, which is currently ranking in several of Amazon’s hot new releases categories, including psychological thriller and domestic thriller. I’m really excited to see the early success of The Basement. I’m really excited about that. It’s on sale right now for just 99 cents, and it’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers. So don’t miss out this gripping read. You can grab your copy at thrillingreads.com/basement, or you can just go to Amazon and go look for the basement. You’ll find it there. So thank you for your support. I really appreciate that. So now let’s get on to today’s interview with the amazing Vannessa Cronin. Welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:55.870] – Vannessa Cronin
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:57.710] – Alan Petersen
So could you share a little bit about your background and your work as a senior editor over at Amazon?

[00:02:03.260] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah, I come from a big book family. My uncle has been an independent bookstore owner in Ireland for 50 years. But most recently, I ended up working in publishing in sales at MacMillon for 13 or 14 years. And from there, made my way to Amazon, first in the bookstores, and then as the mystery and thriller editor for the Amazon Book Review.

[00:02:28.860] – Alan Petersen
Oh, wow. That’s awesome. So you’ve always been working in the book business. That’s like a dream come true.

[00:02:33.040] – Vannessa Cronin
Oh, it’s always been about books. Yeah.

[00:02:35.820] – Alan Petersen
So just curious, what initially drew you to the mystery and thriller genres? Were you just assigned to that category or were you always a fan of that genre?

[00:02:44.250] – Vannessa Cronin
I’ve been a fan for a long time, I worked for a woman who was a huge mystery and thriller fan, and I confessed to her one day that I had never written or I’d never read a mystery and thriller. I was a lit major, and I had done my thesis on Jonathan Swift, so I was really into 18th century and 17th century literature and stuff like that. She gave me a boot camp list of books to read. I remember there was the first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor was on that list, along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayer’s and a few other things. Once I got halfway through that list, I was like, Oh, yeah. From now on, I may only read mysteries and readers. It was a great list. I wish I still had it. Because I kept reading those and I really skewed towards reading those, when the editorial group was looking for a new editor, they were like, Oh, you could do the mystery and thriller genre. That’s how I ended up in this birth which I consider myself very lucky to have.

[00:03:48.080] – Alan Petersen
It’s like a dream job for us mystery thriller fans.

[00:03:52.080] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah.

[00:03:53.650] – Alan Petersen
What aspects of your job of editing mystery and thriller books do you find most challenging and most rewarding for you?

[00:04:00.680] – Vannessa Cronin
I mean, on a really practical level, as a reviewer, just the sheer amount that’s being published in the category, staying on top of everything, all the sub-genres and what have you, that’s the biggest thing. I always have at least 40 more books to read than I have time to read, but I gamely try and get through as many as possible. Then on the rewarding side, I just love what’s going on in mystery right now where I feel like it’s just changing and growing and adapting. I feel like there’s just so much going on in the category right now. It’s not stagnant in any way. I’m particularly thinking of things like, I love the fact that more BIPOC authors are writing in this space. Mystery has traditionally been a little bit short on authors of color, but that’s changing. I particularly love the trend of indigenous authors that have been publishing some amazing books in the last few years. I love that idea that there are social issues, like racism and ageism, that are being tackled in this space, which I think is a great way to do it in many respects. You get people where they’re being entertained, and you can have these conversations in a really interesting way. I think we’re going through another golden age of mysteries and thrillers right I know.

[00:05:31.110] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I think it’s always pretty cool. I think people sometimes don’t think about that, but like, readers and Sci-Fi and stuff like that. I mean, they have always tackled social issues in an entertaining way. But I think that’s always been a cool side effect of all this for people to get more exposed to other cultures. It’s always been fun to do that as a reader.

[00:05:51.480] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah, absolutely. Even other historical events or historical POVs that you may not have been aware of, like reading the latest Wanda Morris novel, where it’s all about land grabs and property development and corruption and going all the way back to the Civil War. It’s fascinating. I mean, it’s horrifying, but it’s fascinating to get that slice of history from a mystery. I love that.

[00:06:18.380] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. That’s like the Killers of the Flower Moon. That type of books like that?

[00:06:22.250] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah, that. There was one that I was just reading that also dealt with property grabs and stuff like that. The name, of course, is going to escape me now because I tried to talk about it and mention it, but I’ll come back to it. But yeah, I do think that there’s a lot going on in this space, and there’s a lot of, as you say, history lessons going on that are really fascinating, particularly for me as somebody who is not born and raised in America. It’s been a fascinating introduction to the culture at times, and I think that can only be a good thing.

[00:07:00.100] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I agree, especially on the other side of the pond for somebody who grew up in America. It’s always been fascinating to me to read books from British authors, for example, about Ireland and the Troubles and all that stuff. I’m like, What? It is a good It’s a great way of learning about other things that you don’t know, you didn’t grow up with through being detained.

[00:07:21.840] – Vannessa Cronin
So true. Yeah, definitely.

[00:07:23.920] – Alan Petersen
It’s like a win-win.

[00:07:24.840] – Vannessa Cronin
Have you read Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe?

[00:07:27.880] – Alan Petersen
No, I have to read that one.

[00:07:29.470] – Vannessa Cronin
Oh, my God, check that out. It’s basically categorized as true crime. It’s about a woman who was kidnapped, disappeared, and her body wasn’t found until decades later. But in between those decades, between her abduction and her discovery, the discovery of her body, he talks about how her family spent those years in Belfast in the middle of all of the sectarian violence that was going on, suspecting that their neighbors had a hand in their mother’s disappearance. It is just one of the most electrifying history lessons you will ever get. There are sections of it that are more exciting than any thriller I’ve ever read. He’s an amazing writer, and it’s such a fascinating slice. If you’re interested in the troubles at all, it’s a great way to get a great history lesson.

[00:08:28.880] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, definitely. Thank you. I’ve written that down. I’ll add it to my to be read pile. The Amazon editors published last month in June. We’re talking now here July 31st, but you published I’m going to read the title, so I don’t get it wrong. Best mystery and thriller series of 2024 so far as chosen by the Amazon editors. So I’d like to talk a little bit about that. There’s six books on there. Could you share a little bit about how this process works? Do you all sit in a room and hash it out and get it down to six? Is it like the hunger games? How does that process work?

[00:09:08.470] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah, we actually published two lists in mystery. One was just the best standalone books of 2024 so far, and then we also did the best series, Books of 2024 so far. We are reading every month for Best of the Month, this program that we do. It’s like Amazon staff pics. It’s the editors reading everything that’s coming out across all categories. And then we do a top 10 list, and we also do category lists. I do the mystery and thriller one. And then twice a year, mid-year, and at the end of the year, we sit back and take a look at all of our best of the month lists and try and come up with a list of the best of the year so far and the best of the year. And we do a top 20. And it’s really fun because we read across category. Even though we manage, we each are assigned a category, we have the freedom to read across categories. And so we try and come together and go, what are the 20 best books so far? And we will argue and pitch and champion and rubbish and say, no, that’s a category pick.

[00:10:14.690] – Vannessa Cronin
That It can be top 10 or top 20. And it’s great fun. It’s like a day at the races where you’re trying to pick the winners. And the whole idea is that our mandate as a team is, how do we pick the books that will connect Amazon customers with their next great read? For the mystery section, as I say, I do the standalones and I also do series. For me, so far this year, The Town of French, the second book in her Irish series, The Searchers, the Hunter, was hands down one of the best books I read so far this year. Then the book that Dawn Winslow ended the City series on came in at number two. And those books just wowed me. I mean, then they’re so different is the hilarious part about it. The Tana French novel, as you say, is set in a small Irish town where a former Chicago PD officer is coming looking for a quiet life. He’s divorced with a grown daughter, and he just wants a quiet life now. And it turns out that the little town he moves to has more secrets and more shenanigans going on than almost Chicago.

[00:11:36.090] – Vannessa Cronin
Tana French is just an amazing writer. It’s just so atmospheric. It’s not the mystery you’re going to come to if you’re looking for car chases and stuff like that, but if you’re looking for superb character studies and a master class in atmosphatics and suspense building, this is the book. Then the Don Winslow book is just that entire series series, I interviewed him last year, and it was amazing because he was saying he had set himself this task. He said he felt he was undereducated. He wanted to set himself the task of reading the classics, the Greek classics. As he’s reading them, he’s seeing comparisons and similarities with basically mob books. He’s like, What if I wrote a series set in America about gangsters, but I use the tropes from Greek tragedy? That’s what he did. If you have read any of those books, you will see mention there’s a character that corresponds to Dido, to the Jason and the Golden Fleece, to Agamemnon. There’s all kinds of characters that pop up from Greek mythology, but they start out as what he calls leg breakers from Provincetown in New England. It’s just the best series. I was really bummed when I realized that this was going to be the last, and I would never get to read these characters again.

[00:13:07.080] – Alan Petersen
How many books are in that series?

[00:13:09.220] – Vannessa Cronin
Three.

[00:13:10.230] – Alan Petersen
Three? Okay.

[00:13:10.970] – Vannessa Cronin
Starts with City on Fire, and then City of Dreams, and then City in Ruins.

[00:13:17.550] – Alan Petersen
Wow, that’s a whole different level of coming up with an idea for a book like that. That is so cool.

[00:13:21.410] – Vannessa Cronin
I know, right? It’s executed so well that even though a lot of people may not have read all of the Greek classics and what have you, it won’t impede your enjoyment one way or the other. You don’t need to know all of that, but once you do know it, it just adds that extra level of, Oh, wow, I see what he’s doing. This is amazing.

[00:13:42.860] – Alan Petersen
If I remember correctly, I’m not very good about the Greek history, but wasn’t like they say Aristotle or Plato or one of those who actually wrote the first thriller or something?

[00:13:52.590] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah, I’ve read that, too. With the Iliad and the Odyssey, two books that feature prominently in the City series. He doesn’t slavishly follow those plots, but he works the plots and the characters of both books into it, which makes it even more amazing and an even more delicate mix. But yeah, it’s fascinating. It’s so well done. And the film rights have been sold. So apparently, that actor who played Elvis, Austin Butler, he is tipped to play Danny Ryan, the head legbreaker in City on Fire. So that’ll be interesting.

[00:14:36.600] – Alan Petersen
And so then I was looking at some of the other books on your list. Some of the, of course, the Masters, Walter Mosley is on there. James Lee Burke, he Can you talk a little bit about those two books? Yeah.

[00:14:47.100] – Vannessa Cronin
James Lee Burke first, Cleat, because I loved this book. He does this really clever thing where if you’re familiar with the Dave Robichaud books, and there are tons of them, he does something different where he takes the sidekick character, Cleet, and makes him the center, the main protagonist of the book. And so not only do you get to learn more about Cleet and get to see the internal workings of his mind in this plot that’s all about trafficking and just the worst evil, but Dave Robichaud ends up riding shotgun with Cleet. So you get to see him and get to learn new aspects of him by viewing him through Cleet’s point of view. And again, it’s just a storytelling technique that just shows why James Lee Bruk is such a master. It’s just so well done, so fascinating. It’s almost got almost a tinge of an origin story because you learn things about Dave that he might never give up on his own. I just loved it. It starts out with Cleat dropping his car off at the car wash, and then you would think something so mundane, how could it go wrong? And then it absolutely does.

[00:15:59.560] – Vannessa Cronin
It’s such a great book. Then Walter Mosley, I love all of his series, whether it’s Easy Rawlins or whether it’s his new King series. This one is another one where Easy basically takes on a case, a woman with ties to his past, and it’s almost like the nostalgia and the nostalgia for the past that she represents blinds him to Some dangers. I love mostly that noir-ish take that he has on things, that bittersweet view of the past and of his present, the way he brings racism into it and the way he doesn’t, the way he just lets it sit there and readers couldn’t figure it out for themselves. Just another masterful novel in terms of storytelling and setting and plot. So enjoyable.

[00:17:02.740] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, those are two of my favorite authors right there, Walter Mosley and James Lee Burke. I was excited to read their books. Yeah.

[00:17:09.790] – Vannessa Cronin
Nobody does dialog like Walter Mosley. I just love his dialog. It’s no surprise why those movies have done so well with Denzel Washington and stuff. It’s just I could read. He’s one of those authors that I will happily read his books again, which is not very often.

[00:17:29.750] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, especially with so many books that it’s hard to read another one again.

[00:17:32.730] – Vannessa Cronin
I could totally see. Yeah, exactly. I barely have time to read things for the first time. But him, I will read a second time for sure.

[00:17:40.070] – Alan Petersen
Then I will say the other two books on your list, I’m not familiar with these authors, which is why I love these lists because I of our new authors. Can you tell us a little bit about The Nest of Vipers and The Comfort of Ghosts?

[00:17:51.080] – Vannessa Cronin
The Nest of Vipers is one of those authors I love, and I don’t know if this has to do with growing up in Ireland, right next to England, but I absolutely love books set in India. I love Southeast Asian writers, and this is a great mystery series set in India. It is one of those books where the location, the setting, the cultural mores, the cultural rules, the differences between what’s familiar to me and how they live, make it just a fascinating read. And then the mysteries are super interesting. And this one involves a visit from the Prince of Wales, which is actually an historically accurate detail. The Prince of Wales did come to visit India during the time frame in the book. But the author does this awesome job of doing a speculative take on it. What if somebody had tried to kill him? How would that conspiracy play out? It’s just I inhaled this in a sitting. It’s such a good read.

[00:19:03.760] – Alan Petersen
It’s not set in contemporary terms, right? No.

[00:19:07.570] – Vannessa Cronin
Historical, yeah. It’s a historical mystery, which makes it even more interesting because at the time, not only was India working towards making its bid for freedom, but Indian women are also going, Well, the country is working towards freedom. Where does this leave us? And so there’s a very interesting feminist angle to it about how Indian women are treated and how much agency they have and how much agency they want. And so it works on so many levels. There’s so much nuance and so much going on in this book.

[00:19:42.680] – Alan Petersen
That’s the cool I had that one on my list, too.

[00:19:45.200] – Vannessa Cronin
I do. It’s really good.

[00:19:48.080] – Alan Petersen
What about The Comfort of Ghost? Can you tell us about that one?

[00:19:51.320] – Vannessa Cronin
That’s another historical mystery, actually. I can’t realize I do love those. So Maisy Dobbs is the name of the series and the name of the lead character. The Comfort of Ghost is actually, like the Dawn Winslow, the last book in the series. She’s putting this series away. It is about the Maisy Dobbs, the first book in the series, We Meet Maisy Dobbs as a very young girl about to start service in a really wealthy household. She’s so intelligent that the family basically adopt her, educate her, and she goes from being a housemate to a nurse in the first World War. And then one of the friends of the family becomes her mentor. She becomes an amateur sleuth and takes over his investigation business after the First World War. And then when we meet her in the comfort of ghosts, she’s now a middle-aged woman or closing in on it. Second World War is just passed, and she is still the head of this investigation agency. It again deals with social issues. She’s not one of those showy Sherlock Holmes, Detective Prodigy. She’s just this really lovely, emotionally intelligent, helpful, kind woman who deals with a lot of the social issues that are happening in England because of the wars.

[00:21:20.370] – Vannessa Cronin
And it’s just a fascinating story. Every book in this is better than the last in this series. So you get that slice of history mystery. You get that whole thing of how women fare over those decades in England, where when Maisy starts out, it’s not cool to be a detective. It’s not ladylike. There’s a lot of suspicion. By the time the Second World War is over, things have changed in certain ways, have remained the same in others. You get this awesome mystery, this totally cool character that you just want to be best friends with. Then, like I say, a really interesting history lesson as well. This is series that I’m really, really sad to know there isn’t going to be anymore.

[00:22:04.700] – Alan Petersen
Oh, that’s adding, too, like Winslow.

[00:22:08.060] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah, exactly. Cry.

[00:22:13.020] – Alan Petersen
You have such a pulse on the, I don’t know, of course, with your job and what you’re seeing. What are you seeing? I’m just curious, what themes you think are going to be popular for the rest of the year in 2025?

[00:22:29.110] – Vannessa Cronin
Well, one of One of the things we’re seeing definitely is genre mashups are really, really big. I cannot remember a year where I have had so many conversations with the lit fic editor or the Sci-Fi editor going, Is this book a thriller, or is it lit fic, or is it sci-fi? I’m thinking of books like All the Colors of the Dark, which was one of our top five best books of the year so far. That is a book, basically, on one hand, it’s about a 30-year hunt for a serial killer, and on the other hand, it’s about devotion and love and the different kinds of love and keeping the fires alive and supporting friends in their hours of need and the helpfulness of art in healing trauma. That book stands out. The other one, I would say, is The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, and she released a straight-up mystery The Long Bright River a few years ago, which was phenomenal. The God of the Woods is out now. And that is a book that is, on one hand, about two missing children in Two Children Go Missing in 1964, or in 1963, and another one in 1975, but it’s also about class and privilege, and blue collar versus blue blood.

[00:23:58.390] – Vannessa Cronin
These are books that you can hand them to any mystery and thriller reader, but you could equally see them, and they are being picked up by book clubs across the country because they have so many interesting themes. There’s so much emotional heft to them beyond the mystery and thriller plot lines. I think that’s going to continue. I think the other book, of course, that I should mention that fits that perfectly, in fact, it goes one step beyond, is The Ministry of Time, which is a spy thriller, a time travel book, a speculative sci-fi book. I mean, that one mix is about four or five different genres, a little bit of romance in there, too. I think that’s going to continue. I think that has been a trend that, as I say, really surfaced this year, and we’re going to see more of that going forward.

[00:24:49.030] – Alan Petersen
Just curious, are you going to have a list for August? And if you are, can you give us a little sneak peak?

[00:24:55.120] – Vannessa Cronin
Well, we don’t release the list until August first, But yeah, one of the books that I’ve been reading is a fantastic horror title and a really short little book called Tiny Threads. We were I was thinking earlier about how the mystery space is dealing with social issues like racism and stuff like that. This book, it’s less than 250 pages, but it’s about a Latina woman who goes to work for a famous fashion designer, and she has to do things like code switch. She has to figure out how to hide the parts of her, what you may call it, ethnicity that she doesn’t think are going to play well at work. And yet she’s also in this new situation, finding her fate, hearing these strange noises, having these strange, we don’t know if they’re supernatural experiences or if it’s her psyche that’s breaking down. It’s just this fantastic mix of horror and, as I say, living as a Latina woman in a workplace. It’s really fascinating so far. That’s one that I’m really excited about. The other book that I loved for August was House of Glass by Sarah Pecanin. She is the author who co-wrote The Couple in Between.

[00:26:27.140] – Vannessa Cronin
House of Glass is her latest one. She’s writing this on her own. It reminded me of the silent patient in that there is a murder, we think, and a psychologist who’s there to advocate for a child who’s living in the home where the murder occurred. It’s just one of those super nail-bitingly tense, you don’t know what’s going on at any point. Is there a child in danger? Is the child actually the cause of the danger? I loved this one. I absolutely tore through it. I love books that have psychologists and stuff in them for some reason, and this one just fit the bill. Then we were talking earlier about how there’s a lack of BIPOC authors historically in mystery. One of my other favorite August books was the Queen City Detective Agency, and that was the book that I was alluding to earlier. It is also about property development and corruption and land grabs and red-lining. But it’s the start of a new detective series, and it features an awesome Detective, a woman of color, Clem. It’s that great mix of history, mystery, and 1980s nostalgia, which I’ll admit to growing up in the ’80s, so that was a boon for me.

[00:28:00.140] – Vannessa Cronin
It’s really, really funny is the other thing. Then the other book that I loved, and we’re talking themes and trends here, After Oz, is this… I won’t say it’s a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, because The Wizard of Oz, it picks up after the Wizard of Oz ended. It’s like a speculative retread where it asks, What if Dorothy Gale were accused of murdering a spinster at the end of the Wizard of Oz? What if it wasn’t a witch that she had killed in some parallel universe? What if it was a spinster in this day and age or in her day and age? It’s so original and fresh, and it’s such a help to know the characters and so much fun figuring out which characters correspond to the characters in the Wizard of Oz. Just such an original idea that, again, I loved it. It fits into a trend where there have been a lot of classics that have been reimagined. I’m thinking of the murder of Mr. Willaby, which asks the question, what if Darcy and Eliza Bennett had, what you might call it, a son who was a sleuth and solved murders. That’s another trend that I really like, this fresh original take on classics.

[00:29:25.810] – Alan Petersen
Oh, yeah, that is awesome. That’s really cool. It’s just so smart to think of that and to write a book based on that. It’s just so awesome.

[00:29:33.190] – Vannessa Cronin
Yeah, it’s so great because with the Jane Austen book, she assembles basically all of the characters from all of the books. There’s at least Emma and Nightly and Maryanne, and her husband, the colonel, they’re all staying at this house, having a party, and the Darcy’s and their teenage son, and Willaby gets murdered, and boom, the son, Jonathan Darcy is solving the murder. It’s just so clever because you already feel like you already know the characters from reading Jane Austen. This just puts them in new settings, and it’s just so fun to see them interacting with one another, people from different books interacting with one another. It’s so clever, and it’s a new series. I think there’s three of them in series at this point. I highly recommend. If you’re an Austin fan of any Stripe, you’re going to love this series. And mystery fans, I think even if they don’t love Jane Austin, will love this historical mystery. It’s really, really clever.

[00:30:41.590] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that sounds great. Well, yeah, that’s awesome. You’ve really added to my to read pile.

[00:30:48.180] – Vannessa Cronin
Sorry, not sorry. They’re all good. I promise.

[00:30:52.660] – Alan Petersen
Awesome. So thank you so much, Vanessa. Actually, I’d love to have you back at the end of the year.

[00:30:57.870] – Vannessa Cronin
I was just going to say, yeah, we’re We’re going to be doing the Bode list in November, the best of the year. So I would absolutely love. It’s always fun to see which books remain on the list from the first half of the year through the second, which books move up, move down, the new books that get added from the second half of the year. So yeah, I would love to come back and talk about that.

[00:31:18.400] – Alan Petersen
And for the listeners who want to check out that list on Amazon, where can they find it?

[00:31:25.390] – Vannessa Cronin
If you want to find those and all the rest of our lists, you just need to go to amazon.com/bestbookssofar.

[00:31:33.290] – Alan Petersen
That wraps up our conversation with Vanessa Cronin. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Remember to subscribe and rate Meet the Thriller Author on your favorite podcast platform. Your support helps us reach more thriller and mystery fans just like you. Don’t forget to check out my latest psychological thriller, The Basement, available now on Amazon. It’s currently on sale for just 99 cents and free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Grab your copy at thrillingreads. Com forward/basement. Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep on reading.