Our author interview is with Pat Brown who has written several books including Only The Truth (4.4 stars, 178 reviews) and is a Criminal Profiler. Before the interview a brief book description: Harkening back to the writing styles and small town settings of earlier American authors – John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, and Carson McCullers – “Only the Truth” is a psychological mystery with as many twists as the country road leading to the humble home of Billy Ray Hutchins, a lonely uneducated man living in the hills of Arkansas. Life changes little for him from day-to-day until he brings home a young drifter he meets at the railroad tracks, the mysterious Charlene, whose last name he never asks. He becomes her Sweet Billy Ray and his love for Charlene is steady and uncomplicated until the sheriff shows up to take her away in handcuffs. With the only woman he has ever loved behind bars for the cold-blooded murder of the old man across the road, a confused and devastated Billy Ray sets out on a quest to find the truth, only the truth, whether it leads him to be able to save his Charlene from a death sentence or it frees him from her spell.

Interview with Pat Brown

1. You are a criminal profiler and have written books on serial killers and homicide investigations. What made you decide to write a fiction novel?

I actually wrote fiction short stories years ago, some 35 years ago, and managed to at least sell one of them to a magazine. I actually went back and found one, Me, Abe, and Greyhound U, that I still liked (not the published one) and put it on Amazon for the fun of it. I stopped writing when I got too busy raising children (and then working as a sign language interpreter and a criminal profiler) and I didn’t get back to serious writing until I wanted to get information out to the public. I went on to author Killing for Sport: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, The Profiler, Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, How to Save Your Daughter’s Life, and The Murder of Cleopatra. As to why I wrote Only The Truth, I have to say the story just came to me one day and I started in on the first line and kept on writing until it was finished.

2. Only The Truth is not what I would have expected from a criminal profiler. I would think you would write more like Patricia Cornwell, a gritty detective story. What made you write a rather old-fashioned, small town mystery narrated in first person by a man who is slow and uneducated?

I have to confess, I am not a lover of serial killer novels and gruesome, violent detective stories. Actually, I am not a reader of hardly any crime novels, true or fiction. I do like Sherlock Holmes and Ross Thomas (not really crime, per se) and that’s about it. I think I have seen enough viciousness that if I write about crime, I don’t want to glorify it or get overly detailed about it.

3. So your book is a mystery, but it is more focused on the characters? Read more »