A page turning Thriller!
By Judy Shields
Los Angeles, California (The Hollywood Times) 06/21/2024 – “No crime is solved in a vacuum,” says Bethel. “There are always other elements pushing and pulling investigators. In Mapping the Dark, local, and national politics play a role.”
It was a great pleasure to have had the opportunity to interview author John David Bethel about his latest thriller novel Mapping The Night. This book is truly one for all us Thriller readers, it’s a page turner and the fact that it is based on real character and events, makes it one to add to your reading library.
Enjoy our conversation:
Get your copy today and order a few for all the upcoming gifts you might have for book readers in your world. Here is a link to order those books on Amazon: Mapping The Night
It was an image so haunting that J. David Bethel couldn’t shake it. The Florida-based thriller author was reading the New York Times one day when he came across an article about a woman who was strangled.
Long fascinated with crime and the darker recesses of the criminal mind, Bethel was struck by what officers encountered when they got to the crime scene: the victim, a pretty young woman, lay dead next to her young son. The boy was rubbing ice cubes on the face of his dead mother – just like she would do when he came down with a fever.
“He thought this would make her better, but of course it was too late,” says Bethel. “I couldn’t get rid of the image. It was so powerful, so tragic, so heartbreaking, and it led to so many questions. That’s when I knew I had my next book.”
A fictionalized version of the scene launches Mapping the Night, the latest suspense-filled thriller by the award-winning author of intricately plotted novels inspired by real characters and events, many taken from Bethel’s own colorful life in politics and as the son of a globe-trotting Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department.
Now available from Brick Tower Press, Mapping the Night follows the hunt for a serial killer terrorizing New York’s Upper East Side in attacks carried out only under cover of dark, bringing the reader into a shadowy underworld where evil lurks everywhere, and nothing is as it appears.
Two investigators, FBI Special Agent Eileen Prado and New York Police Department commanding officer Nadine Robinson, soon find they are up against more than just a sadistic and crafty killer but an elaborate cover-up that may reach the highest levels of American government.
“There are people in politics who are responsible for this killer being on the street – and who do not want him caught,” says Bethel.
For Bethel, crime and conspiracy go hand in hand in books, such as Evil Town (Tell-Tale Publishing Group: 2015), Holding Back the Dark (Whiz Bang: 2020) and Mapping the Night (2024).
With a 35-year career in politics and government at the senior level in Congressional offices and within the Executive Branch, he has set novels in Washington and internationally. Mapping the Night is his first book taking place in New York, a city that is close to Bethel’s heart. His mother grew up in Brooklyn, and while Bethel spent much of his childhood living abroad, he remained a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan, once even meeting Dodger icon Jackie Robinson when the team was barnstorming Japan while Bethel’s father was stationed there.
“One of my dad’s jobs as a Press Attaché for the embassy was to escort visiting dignitaries and I got to have a long conversation with Jackie Robinson in the dugout,” says Bethel, “I could have died and gone to heaven right there. I wanted to talk to him about baseball and all he wanted to talk about was my life in Japan and the Japanese people and culture.”
As Bethel researched Mapping the Night, he didn’t let his nostalgic love for the Big Apple distract from taking an unblinking at the city’s darker and disturbing side, where politics – in Bethel’s telling — is literally a blood sport.
“I love New York and I love visiting my family there,” he says. “My mom is from there and my son lives there. I enjoy museums and the Lincoln Center and all the other attractions as well as the incredible diversity of the city. But then you see something like that article about the little boy and the mother. It’s that combination of things, those stark differences, that make for the best stories.”
Social Media
http://www.johndavidbethel.com/about
