WHY DO WE LIKE SUSPENSE FICTION?

Linda J. White writes "white-knuckle fiction," FBI thrillers with a twist of faith. Her goal in life is to keep readers up all night turning pages. Born in Washington, D.C., her great aunt dated J. Edgar Hoover. A national-award winning journalist, Linda lives in rural Virginia now, near the FBI Academy where her husband worked for 27 years. She has three grown kids, four grandkids, 1.5 cats, and a Sheltie who tries to herd them all. When she's not writing, Linda loves being with her family, at the beach, or doing something with dogs.

What keeps you on the edge of your seat? A woman in danger? A man thwarted? A puzzling crime? Why do we read (or write!) suspense fiction?

Stories fascinated me even as a little kid—stories of struggles, of heroes, of people overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. I can remember playing “Lost in the Arctic” in hip-high snow, plunging through drifts, exhorting myself not to lie down no matter how tired I was lest I freeze to death. (Had I read Jack London at that point?) Of course, all the time I was in my backyard. My mother was probably in the kitchen shaking her head at my drama while making hot chocolate for me.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

As a child, I needed those “brave knights” and that “heroic courage.” Even as an adult, the struggles of life often send me scurrying for fortitude. In suspense fiction I find good guys and bad guys, a puzzle to solve and problems to overcome. I find heroes. And Christian suspense not only prompts me to be courageous and to persevere, but reminds me to trust God, the Author of the Great Story which we are all living.

That’s why I love these books. Now, why do you read suspense?

Leave a comment for your chance to win a copy of Linda's novel, SNIPER! (U.S. only) 

Shocked by the murder of a friend, FBI Special Agent Kit McGovern vows to bring the killer to justice. Then the shooter kills again, and again … and again.

Saddled with an unpredictable partner, forced to put her personal life on hold, Kit doggedly pursues the sniper. Quantico sends a geographic profiler to help identify him, but the killing of a young woman outside the probability zone casts doubt on that technique. As panic grips the Hampton Roads area, pressure mounts, and Kit soon finds herself in the crosshairs of failure—and death.