Why do you write the genre that you write?
I fell in love with PI stories a long time ago. I used to watch all those old black-and-white ‘30s and ‘40s movies with my Mom on Sunday afternoons—Boston Blackie, Thin Man, the old Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan series. I then started reading the stories, zeroing in on the PIs—Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, all those tough palookas with busted noses and major cigarette habits. That segued into all the Nancy Drews and Agatha Christies, which got me all the way through to the Golden Age of female crime writers with your Kinsey Millhones and your Marti MacAlisters. I absolutely love a snarky, dogged, hardheaded PI. These are characters who definitely do not play well with others or color inside the lines. I envision them as being that loudmouth kid from the fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes” all grown up. They cannot be quiet and let a single injustice go by unchallenged. They never learn their lesson. Beat them up? Ha! Back next day with a black eye. Blow up their cars? Double ha! Back next day on a friggin’ bicycle. When everybody else zigs, these jokers zag. Every. Single. Time. I love it. So, when I started to write, I knew exactly what kind of character I wanted to go for. Bam. Cass Raines.

Tell us how you got into writing?
I can’t remember not writing, really. I got one of those little diaries when I was a little kid, the ones with the lock and key? You’re supposed to write down stuff that happened to you every day, record the ups and downs of your uneventful pre-teen life. My diary had stories about haunted houses and missing bodies in them. I wanted to write my own Nancy Drew adventure, so I kinda tested it out on those little pages. When I moved from the little pages to full-size paper, I was off and running.

What’s next for you?
Runner, book four in the Cass Raines series, releases on June 29, 2021. Cass has to find a runaway teen in the middle of a Chicago winter, but she soon learns she’s not the only one looking. It quickly becomes a race to find the kid before the bad guys do. I’m cold just thinking about it. After that, I’m writing my first stand-alone, tentatively titled Hide. I’m three chapters in and so far it feels pretty good.

What are you reading now?
The Darkest Evening, Ann Cleeves
Murder My Past, Delia Pitts

Where can we find you?
Twitter: @tracypc6161
Website: tracyclarkbooks.com
Facebook: facebook.com/tracyclarkbooks
Instagram: tpclark2000

Now to have some fun . . .

Vanilla or chocolate
Vanilla.

Pizza or burgers
Burgers. You’d think it’d be pizza, since I live in Chicago, a town
kinda famous for it, but I prefer a good burger. No lettuce. Plain bun,
none of that pretzel bun stuff. Who came up with that anyway?

Broccoli or squash
Neither. Blech. If there were a gun to my head, maybe, broccoli,
but under normal circumstances, not the first thing I’m reaching for.
Squash? You might need more than a gun for that one.

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner
Breakfast. Most important meal of the day, and my reward for getting up at 5:30 AM to write.

Mountain or beach
Mountain. I hate sand. I don’t like walking on it, sitting on it, looking at it,
hearing about it. Ask anyone who knows me. Hate. Sand.

Introvert or Extrovert
Introvert.

And even more fun . . .

You are stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?
A satellite phone, a speedboat and a map. I can’t do a deserted island. It has everything I’m not all that wild about — sand, tropical sun, a large body of water, nothing to read, palm leaves for a blanket. Nope. Give me a nice, dark, cool library with stacks of books just for me. I’d volunteer to get stranded in a deserted library.

My bio:
Tracy Clark is the Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author of the highly acclaimed Chicago Mystery Series featuring ex-homicide cop turned PI Cassandra Raines. She received Anthony Award and Lefty Award nominations for her series debut, Broken Places, which was also shortlisted for the American Library Association’s RUSA Reading List, named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Books of the Year. Her second installment in the series, Borrowed Time, was a Lefty Award and Anthony Award. A native of Chicago, she works as an editor in the newspaper industry and roots for the Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks equally. She is a board member-at large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland, a member of International Thriller Writers, and a Mystery Writers of America Midwest board member.