Missing Rebecca Book Tour

I've been lucky enough to take part in the Book Tour for Missing Rebecca, and as a part of that I've interviewed the author John Worsley Simpson.

What do you enjoy most about being an author?

I enjoy discovering and exploring characters and their lives and adventures. While it may seem that I, as author, create the characters, the reality is that they make themselves known to me — as characters do to all writers. If you “make them up,” they won’t be real, they won’t be true, their stories will be yours, not theirs.

Which authors inspire your writing?

I’m inspired indirectly by Shakespeare and Flaubert and Dickens, et al. More directly, I’m inspired by Elmore Leonard, Rex Stout, Eric Ambler, RossMacdonald, Colin Dexter, Dorothy Sayers, Georges Simenon and G.K. Chesterton.

What are you favourite books?

Madame Bovary, Maigret Hesitates, The Moonstone, Jude the Obscure and the Nine Tailors.

What was the inspiration behind Missing Rebecca?

It began with a fantasy: man goes to the mall with his wife and she vanishes. That takes on a particular slant if it’s a comedy, and an entirely different one if it’s a mystery. In the first, the man can conveniently let the missing wife stay missing; in the second, despite his wishes, he has to look for her, or he must have bumped her off, or arranged for her removal.

What is next for you as an author?

I’m working on the fifth book in my Harry Stark, detective series. Stark, retired from the Toronto police service, is in England, workingas a private detective, charged with investigating the robbery of a million-pound ruby.