Bookwild - The Grave Artist by Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado: An Aesthetic Serial Killer, and an AI Investigator

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

This week, I got to talk with Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado about their second in their Sanchez & Heron series The Grave Artists. We dive into how they create a Serial Killer 2.0, the positive and negative uses of technology, and how they write together.The Grave Artist SynopsisA wedding reception is coming to a close in the Hollywood Hills when the blissful day is shattered by the death of one of the newlyweds. Though the incident appears to be an accident, Homeland Security Investigations agent Carmen Sanchez and her partner, security expert Jake Heron, discover that the tragedy is the third in a series of similar deaths and conclude something far more sinister is at play.The two uncover chilling evidence pointing to a serial killer who has taken evil to the next level. Dubbed the Honeymoon Killer, this man isn't interested in his victims but in creating his own macabre masterpiece from their graves--focused on the survivors and reveling in their grief. And now his dark obsession has turned to Carmen and Jake...The Honeymoon Killer has decided they are the perfect next target. Take one out and delight as the other crumbles. Time is running out as a deadly game between predator and prey begins. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

This week I got to talk with Jeffrey Deaver and Isabella Maldonado about their new thriller in their series called The Grave Artist. If you heard me last year talking about fatal intrusion the first in the series, you know how excited I was that there was a second one in the series. It is so good. This is what it's about. A wedding reception is coming to a close in the Hollywood Hills when the blissful day is shattered by the death of one of the newlyweds. Though the incident appears to be an accident, Homeland Security Investigations agent Carmen Sanchez and her partner, security expert Jake Heron, discover that the tragedy is the third in a series of similar deaths and conclude something far more sinister is at play. The two uncover chilling evidence pointing to a serial killer who has taken evil to the next level. Dubbed the honeymoon killer, this man isn't interested in his victims, but in creating his own macawad masterpiece for their graves. focused on the survivors and reveling in their grief.

And now his dark obsession has turned to Carmen and Jake. Action-packed. Really, really fun banter between the two main characters. And I said this about fatal intrusion last year as well. The pacing and the structure feels like Nordic noir. So if you really love having the serial killer's perspective and having really short, dark chapters, you will love this one. It focuses on a serial killer, and it's also a very tech-driven thriller, like the first one in the series as well.

And I always have so much fun talking to Jeffrey and Isabella. They are just so fun together. That being said, let's hear from them. So one of the, there's all kinds of things going on in this one as well, which is probably what I enjoy about both of them. I just love having multiple things to keep track of in a book. But I really enjoyed how you carried technology and conversations about technology, both good and bad, into this one as well. So I think it's going to be a series long thing. Did you guys know you wanted to do that for the whole series?

It seems intentional or was it kind of like you started writing the second one and it was just still on your minds? Well, we should mention a little bit about the way we work, which is planning out everything ahead of time. We have long, long conversations before we come up with anything more. Isabella had the idea of a honeymoon killer, and that was just the germ of the idea. And then we went back and forth for a long time, literally hours of phone calls, and came up with an outline. But we're true to the characters. So we have, and Isabella can talk more about Carmen Sanchez as she being a former law enforcement officer, captain. And I have a, I don't really have a tech background, but I've written a number of books that have technology as a hook, hacking, data mining, podcasting, and things like that.

And so we knew that Jake Heron, the other character, was going to have a tech. background and we were going to use that both to aid in the investigation and as a, you know, a threat to the characters and therefore to the readers too because they're thinking, oh, my computer's a little glitchy. I can't imagine that happening. But then, oh, my gosh, somebody's hacked in and stolen my life. So that was kind of the way we approached it. Yeah. It is. I did figure kind of with Jake's background, that was probably the direction we were going to stick with. So,

Isabella, you had the idea for a honeymoon killer. Where did that one come from? Or was it just one of those moments where you were like, this would be really cool for a thriller? Well, it was intentional in the sense of it's a, we wanted to write a serial killer type thriller,

but it's like that has been done so much. We were thinking, we have to make it different. And so it's sort of, of formed from the concept of like what is even worse? Like what, how can you make murder worse than it already is? And so that's how it, it's sort of, that was the germ of the idea, as, as Jeff said. But then, then, you know, we just sort of ran with it. And then that's when Jeff in particular sort of he popped in with the concept of serial

killing 2.0, which really is. It's like next level. Yeah. Yeah. So you can obviously correct me if this gets into spoiler territory, but I think we learn it early enough on. This killer has, you know, probably like a lot of killers, has a little bit, some delusions of grandeur. But in this case, this serial killer 2.0, he both thinks of himself as an artist. and as someone who is, like, improving the population. So how did you guys kind of come up with that blend for him? Well, we both have said, actually, before we started working together, we each had said independent that we believe that the villain is the hero of his or her own story.

And that means that we have to create fully fleshed out characters. you know, we're on camera now, of course, so the typical made-for-TV bad guy has my hairstyle, which is to say not much hair, but a ponytail. And therefore, with all respect to bald people with ponytails, that's the bad guy that you see in Stephen Seagal movies and so forth. But that doesn't work because you need an entire emotional engagement on all levels for the readers to get into the book.

And so what we did was we kind of wrote a bio of, Gar, and he was a failed artist and a painter, but he was obsessed with art. But after that, he's not a failed serial killer, but the act of killing isn't enough for him. And the only way he could find satisfaction is to create what we call tableaus, and that is a crime that involves the death of a newlywed, the man or the woman, the bride of the groom. And then the ripples out into the world of all the people who were affected by that, that serial killing 2.0. And only in that way could he become satisfied. Yeah. It adds like a whole other level of creepiness for me, kind of like in any situation

when it is killers who like returning to the crime. But this, I felt like this was such a unique take on it too, because he's also even like getting off on the grief. specifically, which is like even more sinister. So yeah, I was like thoroughly both fascinated and terrified of him, which is, you know, what you're going for when you're reading a serious thriller. Thank you, Kate. Thank you. We're happy that we gave you a miserable few days.

Yes. Yes. And there's also like you're mentioning his art history and he's an art. It's not professor necessarily. Or was it? He teaches art history, yes. And so it's even more like, oh, these normal people in your life can be so terrifying. So that like added to it, obviously, too.

But I was telling I was telling Isabella, we were talking a little bit before about how I, like, not all stories have the perspective of the serial killer. And sometimes for me, it kind of kills the suspense. But in the case of your guys' stories, it really adds to the suspense to like kind of know what the killer's doing and like versus what our heroes are doing. So what kind of what is it that draws you guys to structuring your both of your stories that way? Well, we both write that way. and we always have, and this is something that we talk about in that I think that the people who are looking for, you know, trying to solve the crime, they're the ones who like a mystery. And as Jeff often points out, that's when you try to figure out what happened past tense.

And we write thrillers, which is what's going to happen. And so if you do it right, you can absolutely. show the killer on the first page, which we do, and still maintain edge of your seat, nail-biting suspense the whole way through. It's a different kind of skill set. It's a different way to write, but done properly, it can be so tense as you are telling me that you enjoyed reading it. Yes. We live for twists and turns. All of our books, my independent books, Isabella's independent books have surprises. And they have to have that.

There's nothing more exciting than a surprise and a twist. But they're very, that's very hard to do with first person point of view. Because then you're dealing with unreliable narrators. And that wears things very quickly. And, you know, when I teach my course in writing, I tell my students many things. But one of the basic rules about writing actually all books, I apply to genre writing, but it's what I call the famous literary trope, give me a break. I'm sure Dickens use that.

You know, I'm sure Escalis used that in Shakespeare. And to give me a break is when you create a scene or a, you know, lines of dialogue or you create a character. And the reader says, oh, give me a break. It could be coincidental. It could be written for the, basically for the author's convenience. And but by writing in third person, we can maintain misdirection. And so that when the big twist comes and we have like in our two books fatal intrusion and now the grave artist and this will be true of the third book. Oh, oops, spoiler, I gave that away.

There are like three surprise endings at the, obviously at the end. And so that's writing in this way. Let's us let's us do that. Yeah, I love that distinction between mystery and thriller. And it's not that I don't like mysteries. There are mysteries that I do enjoy, but it is like the insane fun and a thriller is like, what's going to happen next? So like you're so in the moment with the characters too. And yeah, it's always fascinating to me too, doing third person or the unwork.

reliable narrator because it's like I think especially in these stories since you have like multiple characters who are important to it it feels right in third person as well um the other thing that was really fascinating to me with this one specifically so I sometimes end up on a soapbox talking about how like the internet and technology in general is what you make of it so if your Instagram feed if you hate it and you're like it's all all of this like vitriol and blah, blah, blah, like you're just telling me that that's the stuff that you're actually drawn to and you kind of don't know it.

So I'm kind of always talking about how technology, like there are very, very good uses of it. And yes, there are also very, very bad uses of it. And this story was really reminding me of that conversation because we have the killer who is using technology and social media to kind of pull off his murders or inform them. But then you also have, which is very interesting, this AI partner named Declan, who is helping the people trying to solve it as well.

So where did you kind of get that idea to have that tension with this one? Well, I think, you know, we're, Isabel can speak more to this because, of course, with her crime background, but, you know, law enforcement do whatever they can, uh, within the bounds of the law, of course, to catch the bad guys. and they have all tools that they can possibly use. Now, generally, the bad guys tend to be a step ahead because they not only have more resources than most police departments, you know, drug money or whatever,

but they also have access to, you know, the dark web and the, like, the evil aspects of technology out there. But the, you know, we thought, well, let's give our guys, Jake and Carmen, a leg up in a way. And so we're going to create an AI assistant. And I'm sorry, who does not have AI now? Right. I mean, I do, I never write with chat GPT, but I do a lot of research that is invaluable.

And it's only going to get better and frankly more insidious, but that's a different issue. Yeah. I mean, it's just always going to go both ways, no matter what. I can't really control it. So we also get, we get a little more insight. into Carmen's personal life. Her dad and her sister, her sister is like an actual character in it.

What was, what was kind of the idea behind that? I feel like it might be something that extends throughout the series. I'm not trying to talk about spoilers, but what was kind of the thought process there? Well, part of the thought process is just the idea that, that people who actually are in law enforcement are fully fleshed out individuals and they have families and they, it's very difficult sometimes to balance work and what you do. I mean, it's something that I had to deal with myself.

And so Jeff and I in the very, very beginning, you know, when we started creating these two characters as our lead characters, Carmen and Jake, we talked about that and we're like we need to make sure they are both fully fleshed out and we gave them both families and complicated backgrounds and you know it's kind of like in book one we learn a little bit about Carmen's family and in book two we delve into that more and in book three we'll find out more about Jake's family so it's going to be very interesting and but that's very intentional. Yeah. Yeah, I do, I do appreciate that. It makes them a little, it makes them more memorable is something I've also, I was just talking to some of my friends about in thrillers, because there can be

action that's so similar throughout it. It's like some character work that makes you like remember them compared to other books is kind of what I've been experiencing lately. And there's just, there's obviously more attention to it in her characters experience because she has this like high stakes job that she's trying to do but there's like also personal stuff happening at the same time um i think we may have talked about it last year i'm not sure but another cool thing that i love that you guys do is you guys like to start chapters in one direction and we really we think we know what's happening and we don't even know what's actually happening in the chapter and that's like that's one of the things i still remember about starting fatal intrusion was like the opening chapter you like think you think it's going one direction

and then the ending is so surprising and then you do it through a lot of chapters as well so it's kind of like even though it's not like a twist that changes everything that's happening in the story overall you kind of have these deceptive storytelling arcs even within one chapter and we we get that with our first chapter with jake as well in this one so when you guys are planning it out because you said you guys plan out everything. Is that even the kind of stuff that you're planning out? Or is it like when you start writing the chapter, you're like, oh, it would be fun to flip it on the reader? Well, it's a little bit of both.

I mean, most of the changes, those twists, you know, we call them reversals as opposed to a twist. They're built into the outline. You know, we do very extensive outlines. but I think the beginning of fatal intrusion you're talking about, we don't want to spoil anything. Yeah. But that was done. And I don't think it was written.

I think maybe a version was written, but Isabella came up with the idea for that, you know, wonderful surprise. And that came not out of the outline, but out of just sitting down to write. And that happens for both of us, you know, the outline is, say, 90% there because books, are structure as much as they are prose and, you know, literary tropes and, you know, the

conventions of genre thriller writing. But there are other things that just occur and that, and some things come out. I mean, I had a final, you know, like Freddie, who was the bad guy that in the horror movie, who wore the hockey mask. I don't know. I mean, it seems like, why wear a hockey mask? Because they're going to recognize you more with the hockey mask walking around the street and they are looking like a guy who's a killer. But anyway, that's, John Carpenter didn't ask me about that. But, but so the, you know, and he's dead. Okay, he's buried. And then you turn around and there he's back again. And then they shoot him again. And Jamie Lee Curtis, whoever has a machine gun and shoots him. And then, okay, he comes back again.

Well, I did a little bit of that in fatal intrusion. And maybe it, I call it a twist too far. And so we backed off of that. So sometimes the outline is, it's a good starting point, but we don't hesitate to make the changes. Yeah. Do you guys, I can't remember if I asked you already, but do you guys then like choose which chapters each of you will write? Or do you guys kind of like both write each chapter collaboratively? Well, we write individually as far as like, you know, depending on the, on what's going on and also on the characters. Like I started out by writing a lot of the Carmen

chapters and Jeff wrote a lot of the Jake chapters. And we would take turns writing the villain chapters and that often depended on, you know, my mood. Like if I'm feeling really shooty and stabby, I would say, I'm ready to, you know, I'll take one of those today. And but, and I think this is what's really important. We, it looks like a patchwork quilt in the beginning, but then we smooth it out because we both edit each other substantially. We declare a no ego zone and we both go in there. And then that way, people read it and they really, it is like one person wrote it.

I mean, first, our style is quite similar anyway. And then we go through and we make it smooth. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so impressive about co-writing teams, the way that, like, for the most part, I don't feel, I don't feel an obvious difference where I'm like, oh, this is probably her chapter or this is probably his. I mean, sometimes I don't know that I've written this passage. I don't know who wrote it. It's my own, my own prose, I suppose, or maybe it's Isabella's post. It could be hers or mine. You just can't, it just can't tell because we've been through it through it so much. That's so cool. I hear again, I keep saying I can't remember if we talked about it already, but fatal intrusion especially last year made me aware of how like one of my favorite is,

I don't even know if it's a trope. It's just like something in books. But I love when the female is like a badass and the male like still is. He is intellectually. But he is like almost literally still the bumbling professor. And we have like Carmen who's who and like, like you're saying, can go after bad guys and all of that. So was there anything that made you guys want to write that dynamic? Or was it kind of even just like, well, I want Carmen and I want Jake to lead this series? Well, these are all about, again, emotional engagement, emotional conventions of, I say genre writing. I think, you know, even literature, whatever literature is would benefit from, you know, a little more grounding in the art of storytelling,

which is often creating characters, living, breathing characters, in the case of heroes, we care for, and yet who are diametrically opposed and who have the conflicts off and on. I mean, Jake doesn't color within the lines, and Carmen is a sworn law enforcer. And that causes a lot of tension between them. But in the end, they have this connection that keeps getting, you know, stronger and stronger as the,

the stories go. And Jake, as a former felon, you know, he can't touch you a weapon. He just can't. It's illegal for him to be in possession of a gun, but not to say that he won't at some point. But that may be a surprise in the future, we'll have to see. But so that, you know, that tension between them. And, you know, let's face it, a man and a woman, both around the same age, both attractive in many ways. I mean, physically. He's a bit of a nerd, but we don't really describe them too much, but there certainly is an attraction there that probably transcends a bit of the professional respect they have for each other. And of course, we're going to play with that. I mean, let's face it. That's just the way. I was talking to my nieces, and they agreed that it's like the hunger games was a love story that

happened to have some dystopia attached to it. And Game of Thrones is a bunch of love stories that happen to have guys in, you know, seal skin jackets and swords. So, you know, people love that soap opera stove. Yeah, definitely. Oh, I lost where I was going. I think I scrolled. So with the killer who got really obsessed with staging the scenes. And you were mentioning earlier, the tableau is kind of,

what you guys call what he wants to do. Did you, spoiler alert, he is a serial killer. So there are multiple scenes that we end up seeing throughout the book. Did you guys, did you have any trouble like coming up with ideas for that? Or was it kind of,

to use a weird word in thrillers, kind of fun trying to come up with murder scenes? Well, I will let Jeff handle most of this, but I just wanted to, you know, lead into it by, that the art thing, that is something that is kind of Jeff's specialty. He's traveled all over the world and seen so much art. And the idea of having the killer be kind of obsessed with creating his own form of live art was really cool.

And then Jeff just really sort of took it to the next level. No, and we just brainstormed about the, You know, to get the various scenarios. Now, we should say for those who haven't read the book, these are not gory books. There is some death, but, you know, there's no, we don't hurt animals. We don't hurt children. There's no sexual violence, things that are, you know, a little unpleasant. You know, Agatha Christie, Ms. Marple's investigating murders.

Okay, crimes happen, but there's a delicacy to that. We try to maintain a bit of that. We had fun coming up with the relatively few deaths that actually occur in the book. And in fact, one of our conventions, and this is giving a bit away, a tool of the trade, is that we set up right at the beginning that we are fully capable of killing. And then we rely on suspense and maybe not many deaths following that because the, you know, you create a reader that, or you create a character that the reader's like. And then, oh, no, is something going to happen to them?

And, you know, more likely than not, it doesn't, but they could still be injured or something. And occasionally, just for the fun of it, you know, I wake up. The cable guy hasn't shown up like he said he would. So I kill somebody that day. Of course, that happens, you know. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. I hadn't even really thought of how writing thrillers could be cathartic to whatever's happening in your day.

So the two things that you guys kind of even specifically bring to writing together is, Isabella, you've worked in law enforcement. And then Jeffrey, you really, you write really like puzzling stories. And so those two come together really well with you guys writing together. Is there, was there anything about that about each other that made you guys want to write together? Or was it kind of just like, I think we write similarly and then those just paired well together? well why don't you tell how we how we got started in this whole project actually you know what we before you came on she um kate was it was was remembering she actually remembered the story from last time

that we met in a convent and everything you know so she actually knows that part but um but another part i can add a little bit to it by um saying that i think that part of it for um you know know, Jeff has written so many, I mean, he's written more than 50 novels. So his work, you know, has been out there such a large body of work for so long. But I think his first exposure to my work was when he read the cipher. And then that's when, I mean, because I had had readers that read my books comparing me to Jeff already. But see, he wouldn't have known that until he read one of mine to blurb it. And he read the cipher. And I think that's, when he saw, oh, wow, you know, she writes a thriller, she writes third person close,

she writes multiple POV, she tells things from the POV of the killer. Her style and her prose is very lean and straightforward and, you know, just, and a lot of the sort of the structural elements are there, the twists are there. I think at that point, you know, Jeff could see, and neither one of us have ever written with anybody else, but I think that he could, he could envision it that it would work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's the same writing style. I mean, someone who wrote a classic murder mystery in the first person I could not work with. And I have to say we were friends before we started working together. And because it's, you know, we've had, there's been no difficulty at all. But there are differences of points of view about different things. And we just work through it. And sometimes, you know, we'll say, well, let's, I'm not sure this is going to work. And, you know, Isabel will say, well, okay, that's fine.

And I'll say the same thing. And then occasionally we feel somewhat strongly. And the other person will say, oh, absolutely fine. So it's, I think, fairly unique. I've heard some horror stories of co-authors who have had, you know, it just isn't fun. And what's the point? I mean, I tell my students, give me a break. Is one, playing everything out ahead of time?

That's rule two. And number three, have fun. If you don't enjoy it, don't do it. There's a lot of other fun stuff out there because it's a lot of work and you're setting yourself up for, believe me, there are reviewers out there. I think Isabella and I have both had one-star reviews on Amazon. Why? Because the book arrived with a torn jacket.

And it's things like that that, you know, can drive you crazy. Oh, my gosh. Enjoy it. Have fun. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I have a friend, um, Hallie Sutton who talks about how she loves when she's reading a book and can tell that the, ought that the writers were having fun with it. And it like translates to the reader too. Because like you can feel that they were having fun with it. That when you just said that, that, that would be such a horror story having to finish a book with someone that it was just not working with. Oh, that would be so bad. And I feel like it really keeps. an app and because it's like sometimes as you're saying it I'm like sometimes you have a good personal relationship with someone and then you go to work with them and you're like we do not

approach work the same way yeah exactly or the flip side you're like working with someone and you're like we don't need to hang out outside of work so it is cool that it that it came together for you was that was there anything right about writing this second one that was like notably different than the first one that stood out to you? Not creatively, just some technical issues. We use Word, Microsoft Word, and there were some changes to Word. They introduced co-pilot, integrated. Co-Pilot is AI, you know, OpenAI system.

And part of that and then some improvements, but that made one drive less helpful. So we tend, which we use for the first book. The second book, we used that a little bit less. But there was no archer. We just emailed dress back and forth. And we really paste, cut in pace. So just a technical thing. And who knows?

I mean, there's so much change now. They may have gone back to an earlier version. But the third book, we'll try it and see what happens. Nice. I am excited there's going to be a third one. So you guys heard it here. do you um that was the other thing that i was starting to wonder do you with like the you guys both publish uh books on your own as well do you guys ever like talk about what you're

working on personally as well or is it mostly like i'm assuming in some situations it really is we're just going to talk about this book right now that we're writing together but do you guys ever kind of like cross-pollinate with what you're working on personally? Not creatively, but we always, you know, we're writers, so we like to gossip, and so we do that. But, and, you know, we know, because time is very tricky and because we do a lot of other projects. So we have to kind of know what we're working on at a particular time. So I'm busy with my Putnam book now. I'm busy with my Amazon Original Stories book, a short story now. So on a lot of commission.

So that, you know, practical stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I think more than anything,

we just, we commiserate. Yeah. There's that. Is that? Is that? Is that? Yeah.

That, that goes on. Yeah. You know. Well, I'm super excited for the third one. So I will be anxiously awaiting the email that, that it's available.

And yeah, thank you guys for talking about it with me. Yeah. Oh, it's great fun. always. And if we're lucky enough to come back, we'll be able to share some some continuations of the stories and the themes you've brought up in the third book next year. Yeah, I'm excited for it.