John Rector is the author of three very different books revolving around crime. The latest, Already Gone, is a tricky, shifty ride that alternately fills the shoes of a paranoia story, murder mystery, conspiracy thriller, crime saga and revenge tale. From the book’s opening sequence where Jake Reese, the protagonist, is assaulted outside a bar in the Midwest college town where he teaches, to the final harrowing pages of Jake’s nightmare, the ground trod by Jake and the reader is an ever-changing terrain where not only the rules of engagement, but the laws governing the natural order of Jake’s situation evolve, double-back and change their spots like the music in a game of musical chairs (I know that's a lot of metaphors to mix - bear with me).

I took an opportunity to ask John Rector a few questions. Here's how that went.

There's a rabbit-hole-like sense to Already Gone for the reader whose idea of where the book is headed and what the rules are are constantly shifting.

A rabbit-hole... I like that description.  

I knew when I started writing Already Gone that I wanted to go in a slightly different direction from the other books. I knew I wanted to write a novel with a lot of action and plot twists and make the reader unsure of where the story was going, but I also wanted the events to be clear enough to keep them engaged and turning the pages.

I'm trying to come up with a unifying theme or 'Rector stamp' to put on your books, so far, three fairly disparate variations of thriller, but they do seem of a piece when you consider the state of the central relationships; is it fair to say what you're writing are particularly bloody marriage dramas?

Yeah, I think that’s fair. There is such a wide range of emotion at play in any romantic relationship that it’s easy to breed tension and conflict, internal and external, and that makes for fertile ground when it comes to writing fiction. When I wrote The Cold Kiss, the romantic relationship between the two main characters was front and center in my mind the entire time. Same with The Grove, albeit with a slightly more disturbing twist. Still, it’s those relationships that interests me. I want to take a couple and really tighten the screws on them. I want to put them through hell and see what they look like on the other side. If they make it to the other side, of course.  

What’s your attraction to crime writing?

The voice, the simplicity of language, and the unflinching look at people’s baser instincts.  When it’s done well, when it’s honest, there’s a certain beauty to it that you don’t find in a lot of other genres.  

Was there a book or an author that grabbed your imagination early on and inspired your career?

Definitely Stephen King. I still remember reading Pet Sematary as a kid and feeling like someone kicked me in the chest when that damn cat came back. It was my first experience of being completely leveled by a book, and I’ll never forget it. He’s the reason I fell in love with reading.

I suppose The Grove counts as much as a horror novel as a mystery. Do you have any straight horror ideas percolating?

A couple.  Most of the short stories I wrote back when I started writing were horror stories, and a lot of my novel ideas tend to gravitate that way, too. But because publishers across the board complained that The Grove was too in-between genres, I began making an effort to keep my other books from blending over too much.  These days I don’t care as much.  I’m having a great time writing these plot twisty, noir thrillers, but if the next book wants to be a horror novel or an adventure novel or a PI novel, I’m going to let it.  Maybe it’ll be a combination of all three, who knows?

Is there a writer with an ideal career you'd like to emulate?

I’ve always admired writers like Richard Matheson and Ira Levin who could write so brilliantly in multiple genres, and I’d love to be able to do the same. Beyond that, all I really want is to make a good living writing the books I want to write and reaching the readers who are interested in reading them. If I can look back on my career and see that I did that, then I’ll be happy.

Three books in a year and a half is a pretty steady pace. Will we have another book from you in six months?

I’ll have a new novella out in about six months, but the next full length novel probably won’t be out until the fall. After that one, I hope to have a new book out every nine months or so, but we’ll see what happens.

Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.