This week, thriller authors (with brand new novels!) discuss how to write a breathtaking thriller, from pacing to twists to turns and everything in between. Edgar Award-nominee Mindy Mejia delves into the latest installment in her Iowa Mysteries Series, the gripping and unsettling The Whisper Place. Bestselling author Joshua Moehling shares insights into his latest, Beneath a Broken Sky, the fourth book in the Detective Ben Packard series. Moderated by Sue Grafton Memorial Award winner Tracy Clark, author of the Cass Raines Chicago Mystery and Detective Harriet Foster series, whose most recent installment is Edge.
This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.
About Beneath a Broken Sky by Joshua Moehling:
From USA Today bestselling author Joshua Moehling comes a tense, atmospheric thriller about one detective’s search for a mysterious killer in the chaos following a deadly storm… The heat suffocates. The violence simmers. Before the summer is out, someone else will die.
About Edge: A Detective Harriet Foster Novel by Tracy Clark:
When a tainted drug starts claiming lives across the city, Detective Harriet Foster and her team race to track down the source…before it takes one of their own. Chicago’s finest are scouring the city for a tainted new opioid making the rounds, but they’re coming up empty. With five people already dead―a college kid, a new mother, and three poker players―all they really know is the drug’s name: Edge. Where it’s coming from is still anyone’s guess.
About The Whisper Place by Mindy Mejia:
Nicknamed “the dark voice of the Heartland” by William Kent Krueger, Edgar nominee and Silver Falchion Award finalist Mindy Mejia picks up the trail from the USA Today bestselling Iowa Mysteries series in The Whisper Place, a new suspenseful thriller showcasing her expertise with the Midwest and teeming with ’80s pop culture references.
About the writers:
TRACY CLARK is the author of the Cass Raines Chicago Mystery and Detective Harriet Foster series, award-winning books with tough, smart, Black female characters working the mean streets of the Windy City. Her debut novel, Broken Places, was CrimeReads’ Best New PI Book of 2018 and made Library Journal’s Best Crime Fiction list that same year. She is a proud member of Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime and sits on boards at Bouchercon and the Midwest Mystery Conference.
MINDY MEJIA is a CPA and a graduate of the Hamline University MFA program. She lives in the Twin Cities with her family, and is the author of A World of Hurt, which was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award by the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the USA Today–bestselling To Catch a Storm that kicked off her first series, the Iowa Mysteries; Strike Me Down; Everything You Want Me to Be; and Leave No Trace.
JOSHUA MOEHLING is the USA Today bestselling author of the Ben Packard series. The first book, And There He Kept Her was a Barnes & Noble monthly Mystery/Thriller pick and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ+ Mystery. His second novel, Where the Dead Sleep, was described as “a well-paced whodunit” and “devastating” by The New York Times. Joshua lives in Minneapolis.