Author R. John Dingle was born and raised in New England. In fact, despite extensive travel, a move to Australia represents his only bragging right for actually residing outside the six-state area. John and his wife currently call a small island in Mid-Coast Maine "home," both living, writing, and boating from their restored 200-year old house (which they continually assure their three adult children is not haunted). The psychological thriller, Karma Never Sleeps, is John’s first novel and the first in the Gus Wheeler FBI Series.
In Karma Never Sleeps, a quintessential New England small country town is home to a group of women ("the posse") who spent their adolescence at the top of the food chain. But, now as adults, a secret from their past comes back to haunt them. When one of them is found murdered they’re all-too-comfortable chalking it up to a random act of violence. But when a second woman from their group is found dead, FBI agent and profiler Gus Wheeler and his partner are called in to determine if this is a serial killing. He’s intrigued by a clue hidden on the body: a memorial picture of a teen who died 25 years ago. Instead of helping with the investigation, the long-term friends stonewall the agents. But Gus can smell fear beneath their calm masks, fake smiles, and politely vague answers. Digging deeper, he discovers they are being terrorized by cyberstalking, spying, threats, and mysterious break-ins. When a third member is hospitalized after a brutal attack, Gus suspects someone in the posse is the hunter instead of the hunted.
John Dingle stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:
I was amazed at how much research was involved in writing a commercial thriller / mystery novel. Someone told me early on it’s the details that matter and, oh how she was right. Jumping in, I found I really enjoyed doing that behind-the-scenes work to get those details right. And I quickly found that I’d find that tiny, unseen nugget I could use as either a breadcrumb to lead the reader along or as the actual kernel of the plot I was looking for. Oddly, that entire process is part of what I find so satisfying in writing mysteries – finding that one detail that’ll trick the reader until the end.
For Karma Never Sleeps, I had research to do in so many areas it was both exciting and daunting. The story revolves around a group of women being targeted and psychologically tormented, someone anonymously providing the investigators with clues along the way, and the FBI investigating it all. So, for starters, I needed to research the FBI on several fronts – how their profilers operate in real life, how their investigative process works and even when they are / are not called into a town to investigate. I read articles, blogs and official documents released from the FBI to tie it all together. I then had to dive into crime scenes and how they’re processed and for that I read everything from ‘Crime Scenes for Dummies’ to forensic articles on blood splatter and where and how a fingerprint could be lifted.
Next, as the story progresses the FBI begins to get anonymous messages they cannot trace providing them clues. Fortunately, I was able to find an expert in cyber security that helped me with the details in so many areas – encryption methods, computer servers and bouncing connections among them, etc. And, finally, I wanted the suspect to be able to paralyze their victims while also allowing them to still feel pain. I’ve always been intrigued with the concept of creating medicines from nature – a younger me watching The Serpent and the Rainbow and being fascinated by the concept has always stuck in my mind. So I researched medicines created from nature, pain blockers, etc. and honed in on what I wanted. I then found an expert in that specific field and contacted them and they helped enormously. As an aside, I’ve always found that experts in most fields generally like talking about that field, their passion.
So, with all of that, I had to temper what I included in the story to provide the right balance of details, while also propelling the story along at a fast pace to keep it engaging. And, once that was accomplished, Karma Never Sleeps was born.
The second book in the Gus Wheeler FBI Thriller series (now in editing) presented different research challenges. Where the first story is based in a small country town, the second is based in a mid-sized, downtrodden former textile New England city so has a very urban vibe. In this story, the killer abducts his victims and appears to disappear without a trace from crowded music clubs. For this book I had to research the textile industry and its evolution in New England, Prohibition-era architecture and building practices and processes for mapping vast cave networks and communicating within them. I did most of this through reading historical accounts of that time period, watching videos of Prohibition-era speakeasies and the many methods used for hidden rooms where they’d store the alcohol. I also spoke with experts in the area of cave networking mapping technologies and learned the differences between high and low-frequency sound waves. All very technical, yet used properly lays the groundwork for some pretty cool nefarious activities (I hope!).
Also, while my agent was shopping Karma Never Sleeps to publishers, I wrote a stand-alone thriller based on a group of misfits that solve a string of murders through using online sleuthing and social media. For this story, I relied on the cyber security expert previously consulted to teach me about online hacking, how remote communication devices work and how crowd-source technology works in tracking devices and how it could be easily hacked and used for bad purposes. I then consulted experts in each of the more popular social media platforms – namely, Reddit, blogs, Instagram and X. All this, combined with getting on these platforms and learning by using, gave me all the research I needed.
I’m now just beginning the 3rd book in the Gus Wheeler FBI Thriller series and the story revolves around a fanatical religious church and its congregation in a remote area of upper Maine. Having just completed the initial research and backstories of the characters, I can already tell I’ve just scratched the surface of the research I’ll need to do on the Old Testament and many other aspects of Christianity.
So, as you can see, I’ve learned the devil really is in the details but also in not letting those details cloud or bog down an otherwise great story with engaging characters.
You can learn more about John Dingle and his books via his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. Karma Never Sleeps is now available via Tule Publishing and all major booksellers.
