NPR Interviews Ridley Pearson

NPR talks to crime novelist Ridley Pearson this morning about his Sheriff Walt Fleming series of mysteries that are set in Sun Valley, Idaho. Pearson says he based his character on the real sheriff of Sun Valley, Walt Femling, who is occasionally mistaken for the fictional sheriff.

The setting is also an important element in Peason's novels, who says his job is "to bring out the danger of Sun Valley's beautiful landscape."

Pearson adds, "This is a series and when you envision a series, you're envisioning basically a several thousand page story and you need themes and threads that are going to carry through. So you could push each of these off a cliff every time and start the engine all over but I like it when the character is growing, the town is growing, the conflict is growing."

The fourth mystery in the series, In Harm's Way, was published last week. In our review of the third book in the series, we said, "Sometimes a mystery's plot, characters, inter-character relationships, setting, narrative, and dialogue all come together in perfect harmony to produce an exceptional novel; Killer Summer is one such novel." (Read our full review on Mysterious Reviews.)

You can listen to the interview on NPR's Morning Edition, where there's also an excerpt from In Harm's Way.