Drop Day: Standing at the deep end
Today has sneaked up, or dawdled, depending on the moment you ask me. I circled May 5 on the calendar months ago, as if choosing it gave me some control. […]
Read More…Tag: Deep End
Rural Noir: What Raymond Chandler didn’t tell you
We have a mythology about small towns in America, and it goes something like this: people know each other, watch out for each other, leave their doors unlocked at night. […]
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Rewriting Reality: Who owns a crime story?
Writers like to pretend stories are found objects—arrowheads in the dust, waiting for the right set of eyes. We talk about stumbling onto them, as if narrative were a vein […]
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The Second Coming of Father Bert Clancy
There are two kinds of priests in fiction. The first wears immaculate vestments, speaks in ecclesiastic riddles, and inevitably knows more about the murder than he lets on. The second […]
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The small, strange details in DEEP END you might not notice
There’s a small, mischievous part of me that believes every crime novel should come with a magnifying glass and a wink. As I put the finishing touches on DEEP END, […]
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Ghosts of Placitas: The Real Crime That Haunts DEEP END
For a true-crime writer, the world is seldom what it seems. Every place hums with a past life; every peaceful landscape casts a longer, darker shadow. When I moved to […]
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The Pull of a Dark Road: Why We Love Crime Stories
We read about crimes (and I write about them) not merely to know “whodunit,” but to peer into the hidden architecture of choice—the fragile lines between decency and destruction, the […]
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The Allure of Nowhere: Where the Roads Ends, Mystery Begins
There’s something seductive about the edge of the map. We talk about remote places the way earlier generations spoke of monasteries or islands—as if distance itself confers virtue. Move far […]
Read More…Fireside Chat with Anne Hillerman @ Placitas Library
In a fireside chat with friend and fellow mystery author ANNE HILLERMAN, Ron will talk about his new mystery novel DEEP END, which was inspired by a true-life 1970 double […]
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True Crime to Crime Fiction: A plot twist I didn’t see coming
Reporting tells us what happened; fiction asks why it matters. Up to 2020, I wrote bestselling true-crime books like THE DARKEST NIGHT and SHADOWMAN. Then COVID-19 shut down my field […]
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The Last Honest Place in Town
In every town I’ve ever known—from wind-scoured prairie crossroads to mountain hamlets tucked against a hard horizon—there is a table of old men always holding court over coffee. You know […]
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DEEP END launches!
The wait is over! DEEP END, sequel to Ron’s popular thriller DEAF ROW, will be released today! DEEP END is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook wherever you buy […]
Read More… DEEP END
‘DEEP END’ IS HERE! in print, ebook, and audio formats wherever you buy books! When a cannabis billionaire is murdered, retired Denver homicide detective Woodrow “Mountain” Bell is drawn […]
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Last room on Route 66: What we owe the dead
For the past couple months, I’ve been chasing a ghost. Fifty years ago, a 53-year-old man checked into a cheap roadside motel along Route 66 in the kind of Southwestern […]
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