Tuesday, February 26, 2013

What is CJ Lyons reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: CJ Lyons, author of Black Sheep.

Her entry begins:
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, by Kevin Dutton

In my 17 years of practicing pediatrics and pediatric ER medicine, I dealt with a lot of sociopaths (aka Psychopaths). Gangbangers, fellow physicians, parents on power trips, law enforcement officers, charge nurses…really no occupation or segment of society was immune.

This ubiquitous nature of a personality disorder that was supposed to have a prevalence of only 1-4% of the population outside of the ER, always bothered me. Especially the fact that these people at first glance seemed so damn normal.

As a thriller author I also write a lot of sociopath characters—most of whom are not the villains. Instead they reflect the spectrum of our society, just like the sociopaths I met in the ER. Including a fair number who are covert operatives, law enforcement officers, physicians, nurses, lawyers, and politicians.

So of course when I saw the title of Kevin Dutton's latest book and read an excerpt, I realized this was a must read for any thriller/suspense author.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths was...[read on]
About Black Sheep, from the publisher:
It’s the one mystery Supervisory Special Agent Caitlyn Tierney has never solved: her father’s unexplained suicide after arresting his best friend for murder. It drove Caitlyn to become one of the FBI’s best agents—and often the most unorthodox. Her latest case is no exception when the man she holds responsible for her father's death asks for help in finding his missing daughter. Caitlyn’s search brings her back to her North Carolina hometown, now vibrant with new money, old lies, and an unknown enemy who will do anything to keep Caitlyn from the learning the truth—and who will kill to keep it buried…
Learn more about the author and her work at CJ Lyons' website.

The Page 69 Test: Black Sheep.

Writers Read: CJ Lyons.

--Marshal Zeringue