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What drives people to crime, on the page and beyond it? In this spirited conversation, two bestselling authors explore the art of and rationale for writing about murder and mayhem. Margot Douaihy, whose Sister Holiday hardboiled series follows an unlikely nun-sleuth through the understory of New Orleans, discusses her latest novel, Divine Ruin, a mystery that confronts the fentanyl epidemic. William Mann presents his groundbreaking investigation The Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood, the definitive account of America's most famous unsolved murder. Together, Douaihy and Mann examine what it means to write crime narratives (fiction and nonfiction) with conscience and aesthetic edge.

William J. Mann is the author of numerous bestselling books including Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, for which he won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Fact Crime and which is soon to be a major documentary, and biographies of Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Humphrey Bogart, the Roosevelt family, and Katharine Hepburn, the last of which was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. Mann is an adjunct Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University.

Margot Douaihy, PhD, is a poet, crime writer, and assistant professor at Emerson College. She is the author of the lyrical hardboiled mysteries Scorched Grace and Blessed Water, both published with Gillian Flynn Books (a Zando imprint) and both named a Best Crime Novel of the Year by The New York Times (2023 and 2024). The next mystery in her series, Divine Ruin, published in January 2026 and was an American Booksellers Association Indie Next Pick. Margot is an active member of the Radius of Arab-American Writers, the Queer Crime Writers, the Sisters in Crime, and the Mystery Writers of America.