Hey friends, please check out below the Foreword Reviews Magazine review of PAYBACK and the accompanying interview of yours truly. I am humbled and excited to be honored by THE bell weather for the library industry, if not much of the entire literary community overall.
In these bleak midwinter months, many of us cannot help but heed the siren call of white sands and sunny skies, escaping the drudgery of shoveling and salting—and shoveling and salting some more—for a brief respite in warmer climes. Often times, we use our vacations to reconnect with an old hobby or embrace our adventurous “vacation selves” and attempt something wholly unfamiliar. Like solving a murder, perhaps? Or even two or three!
When guests at a thriller writers conference begin disappearing from the idyllic Spanish island resort, the characters in Ronald S. Barak’s engrossing mystery, Payback, do precisely that—attempt to figure out whodunit.
Newly retired, Judge Cyrus Brooks is looking to use this infusion of free time to take his passion for writing to the next level. His wife proposes a trip to the prestigious conference, with their friends, Homicide Detective Frank Lotello and his wife, tagging along for a little fun in the sun. Not even the most picturesque of settings can keep sinister secrets hidden forever, however, and it’s up to Brooks and Lotello to cut through a web of lies and likely suspects to hunt down a killer before they find themselves the prey.
Eager to learn more about the careful crafting of this thriller, we reached out to Ron for an interview. We hope you find his answers as arresting as we did.
