City of Windows is the new thriller penned by former Montreal antiques dealer Robert Pobi, and is the first time the author will create a series of books with the same protagonist.
Pobi enjoyed the life of an antique dealer, but after a traumatic year decided he needed to start going further with the books he was writing but leaving in a drawer.
"I had a bad year and lost three people in my life that were important. My best friend died, a mentor in my life died, and a friend of mine was murdered, and I was the last person to see him alive," said Pobi. "I stood in front of my store the next morning with my key, and – I'll never forget it – I said, 'if I put my key in this door, I'm going to end up doing this for the rest of my life.'"
Four books later, he's created Dr. Lucas Page, the former-FBI agent, who comes out of retirement to investigate the sniper shot murder of his former partner.
The book promises to be the first in a series, which is a first for Pobi.
"It was five weeks after the deadline that they gave me the 'yes or no' that I finally said yes a series because I didn't envision the book as a series," he said. "I thought about it, they made me a very nice proposal as far as the freedom I'd have with it, so I thought, 'I could spend five or six books with Lucas Page.'"
He's always written thrillers, and has friends in the FBI and New York City Police Department he speaks to regularly to help him inform his books.
Since Thomas Harris's hugely successful serial killer series including Silence of the Lambs, thrillers tend to dip into the world of those that kill and kill again.
Pobi, whose prior work has featured serial killers, calls them the "Mac Daddy of the bad guy in society."
"Someone that can do this again and again and again, and does it for their own gratification, not just to get a grudge off their chest, I think we're fascinated by the mentality and the psychology behind that," he said.
