ASK THE AUTHOR: Rene Gutteridge
LATEST PROJECT: Misery Loves Company (9781414349336, $12.99, August).
PUBLISHER: Tyndale House Publishers.

Please start us off with a brief summary of your latest suspense novel.

Misery Loves Company involves Juliet Belleno, recently widowed when her husband is killed in the line of duty as a police officer. With her grief, she retreats inside her home, cutting herself off from the rest of the world except through the small window of her computer. She writes reviews of books and keeps up with her blog, but does little else that involves contact with people other than brief outings to the nearby grocery store. When Chris Downey, her late husband’s best friend, receives a call from Jules’ father explaining that Jules is missing, he at first thinks perhaps she’s taken a long weekend. But as he searches deeper, more and more evidence is pointing toward something more sinister. As it turns out, he may be right. The last thing Jules remembers was running into her favorite author at the store. Now she has awoken in a dark room, is tied up and her own words from her latest book review are scrawled in red across the ceiling above her. Everything she believed about her life, her husband and her faith is about to change.

What kind of character is Jules?

Jules is the epitome of all a person can become when life unravels in the way you fear the most. Her very heart is ripped from her when Jason dies, and she has no way to deal with her grief. Her husband was full of faith, but Jules is less sure of a God who seems unable to keep her safe, secure and happy, so she retreats into herself, into her home and into her own life.

What is Patrick Reagan like?

There is the Patrick Reagan on the book jacket of all his novels. He’s handsome. Regal. The library behind him looks massive, expensive and showcases every book you’ve always intended to read. You think, Man, just to have an hour to chat with him! Then there is the Patrick Reagan who is quietly losing his mind. Jules believes she knows this man from his books. She’s read every one he’s written. But she does not know the man he has become since facing his own devastating loss.

There are many thought-provoking themes threaded throughout the novel. One is the idea of not always knowing the good guys from the bad. Will you expand on that?

When I teach writing, I often remind writers that the scariest bad guys aren’t the dark monsters in the closets, but more the ones that, on some level, you can relate to. Right from wrong is fairly easy to navigate. More frightening for people, I believe, is when they’re having a hard time discerning what is good and what is bad. In a world that seldom holds the Bible as absolute truth, those lines can be blurred very easily. Even in my personal life, there have been times when I have had to pray through situations because what seemed right to me at the time was proved later not to be the right thing at all. Proverbs 14:12 comes to mind: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” I rarely trust my own instincts when there are shades of gray. I have to go in prayer and seek God and search His Word. As I get older, I am learning to be more patient with this process. I don’t always have to know. I have to trust the One who does.

What else should Christian retailers know about Misery Loves Company?

First and foremost, I think it’s an unusual and entertaining tale, even with some of the deeper themes it explores, such as grief and loss and a God of suffering. I think readers will have a lot of fun imagining what they would do if their favorite author kidnapped them. ... But, as I try to do with all my books, this story points to some ways we can all search our own hearts and what we believe about a God who does not stop tragedy. These are the things my characters wrestle with. It is the thing we must all come to terms with at some point in our lives. Just this year, my beloved town of Moore, Okla., had to confront this tremendously heavy question as we buried friends and family and children after the May 20 tornado. Why does a loving God allow His children to face such grueling misery? Jules Belleno and Patrick Reagan must search for their answers together in what has become the heartbreak of their own lives.

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