In Conversation: On The Committee

Dennis Lehane is the author of the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro mystery series (A Drink before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; and Moonlight Mile) and the award-winning novels Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day. Four of his novels have been made into award-winning films. He is the editor of Boston Noir and coeditor of Boston Noir 2: The Classics. His most recent work is the stand-alone novel, Since We Fell.

Sterling Watson is the author of eight novels, including Deadly Sweet, Sweet Dream Baby, Fighting in the Shade, and Suitcase City. Watson’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, the Georgia Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Southern Review. Gainesville, Florida, in the late 1950s, seems to be a sleepy university town. Its residents appear to live ordinary lives. And yet the town is far from ordinary. The most private acts of professors, students, townspeople rich and poor, and politicians are under the close scrutiny of a shadowy group of men –the Committee– who use the powers of government and the police to investigate, threaten, and control this increasingly fearful community. Based on actual historical events and set against the backdrop of political, cultural, and class turmoil, Sterling Watson’s The Committee (Akashic Books) is a story of love, war, friendship, betrayal, and finally the need to stand firm against the encroachments upon freedom by men who believe they are doing God’s and the government’s work. The Tampa Bay Times praised Watson for a “sharply crafted novel. [He] re-creates the era with rich detail and a creeping sense of dread. The Committee is the kind of story that makes you hope it can’t happen here–but reminds you that it already has.”