233 – Tariq Ashkanani & Bloodstained Hands Across the Ocean

This week we go from Edinburgh, Scotland to Nashville, Tennessee, in the company of crime author Tariq Ashkanani.

Tariq’s The Midnight King is a tricky, quasi-metafictional murder mystery about cursed manuscripts, familial secrets and the most heinous murders. It’s also a love letter to the kind of occult-tinged American crime epics that both he and I grew up loving.

We talk about the challenge of writing about serial killing without exploitation, about the unstable boundary between crime and horror fiction, about the allure of Hannibal Lecter and the pressure of a good twist.

But mostly we just pay homage to the messy, bloodsoaked myth of America that inspired us so much over the years.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• Welcome to Cooper (2021), by Tariq Ashkanani
• Red Dragon (1981), by Thomas Harris
• Galveston (2010), by Nic Pizzolatto
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019), by Hallie Rubenhold
• The Devil All the Time (2011), by Donald Ray Pollock
• Uzumaki (2000), by Junji Ito

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