What is John Katzenbach reading?

Featured at Writers Read: John Katzenbach, author of Red 1-2-3.

His entry begins:

Recently I have been ensconced in student papers. I teach what I consider a boutique undergraduate course at the University of Massachusetts called: Journalists in Film. My modest qualifications for this position are: I was once a journalist; my books have been filmed, including one about a journalist and a killer. The curious thing about student papers is that some of the "Utes" (to quote both Joe Pesci and the late, great Fred Gwynne from My Cousin Vinny) don’t realize how much skill and talent they actually possess. Anyway, the final assignment was to correlate All The President’s Men to Mark Slouka’s wonderful and profound essay "Arrow and Wound." For students accustomed to tweeting and Googling, the movie is a revelation, and the essay provocative.

All that said, the two novels I have recently found astonishingly insightful are Anita Shreve’s Stella Bain which is incredibly sophisticated, almost poetic, about injury, trauma and the infancy of psychoanalytic inquiry, and...[read on]

About Red 1-2-3, from the publisher:

Three women. They have nothing in common. They are different ages, come from different background, and lead drastically different lives. The only thing that binds them together is their red hair--and that each of them has been targeted for murder.

When each 'Red' receives a chilling letter in the mail from a killer known only as the Wolf, their lives are upended as they spend every waking moment in the fear that their lives could be snuffed out at any moment. The Wolf is stalking them, biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to complete his master plan. Yet the one thing this cunning and devious killer didn't plan for is the Reds discovering each other.

The three women, using clues left by the Wolf, manage to band together in the hopes of protecting one another from this deadly predator. With law enforcement turning their backs on the Reds, their only hope for survival is to turn the tables, for the prey to become the predators. In a riveting game of cat-and-mouse, the Reds must track down the Wolf himself--before he silences each of them forever.

Learn more about the book and author at John Katzenbach's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Red 1-2-3.

Writers Read: John Katzenbach.

--Marshal Zeringue