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The Crime Cafe

The Crime Cafe

Von: Debbi Mack
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Interviews and entertainment for crime fiction, suspense and thriller fans.© 2015 - 2021 Debbi Mack Kunst Sozialwissenschaften
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  • Interview with Carl Vonderau – S. 12, Ep. 10

    Interview with Carl Vonderau – S. 12, Ep. 10
    Nov 1 2026
    This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with international banking expert and crime fiction writer Carl Vonderau. You can access a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today had a career in international banking before turning to crime writing. He’s also interviewed crime— Carl (01:03): Why wouldn’t you? Debbi (01:08): One naturally leads to the other. Carl (01:11): Yeah. Yeah. Debbi (01:12): Certainly. He’s also interviewed true crime authors to explore the effects of crime on the lives who may be tangential to that of the crime itself. I believe it was “behind every crime, there’s a family.” Carl (01:29): Yes, that’s right. That’s sort of my motto when I write. Debbi (01:33): I like that a lot. His interviews appear on a show called Person of Interest, part of the Authors on the Air Network. And he lives in one of my favorite cities, San Francisco. Carl (01:46): No, San Diego. San Diego. Debbi (01:48): Oh, you’re in San Diego because San Francisco was what was in your bio. Carl (01:52): Really? Really? Debbi (01:54): Really. Carl (01:55): Oh, I got to fix that. Debbi (01:55): Oh my God. Good heavens. So much for my questions about San Francisco. Well, San Diego is an awesome city, I have to say. I love San Diego. I’ve been there once and it’s like, oh man, this place is awesome. Carl (02:10): Oh, well think of this. Before that I lived for 15 years in Montreal, right? In Montreal, there’s like six weeks of summer and it rains most of the time. So can you compare that to San Diego? I mean, somebody at my old bank asked, “Well, when your wife got an offer to teach here, how long did it take you to decide that? About three nanoseconds?” Debbi (02:38): Seriously. No kidding. That is like, whoa. That’s where I’d go if I could. Yeah. Great place. Well, I’m just glad you’re with us today. Carl Vanderau And I think I got that right. Even the second time. Carl (02:54): Yeah. Debbi (02:55): All right. So awesome. So how are things in San Diego today? Carl (03:02): It’s overcast. Debbi (03:04): Overcast. Carl (03:04): Yeah. It’s getting down into the 60s. Debbi (03:08): Well, good grief. That’s just freezing. Carl (03:10): That’s tough. I may have to put on a sweater. Debbi (03:14): Oh my word. Well, stay warm. I urge you to stay warm. Keep that sweater on. We don’t want you to catch your death or anything. Let’s see. I see that you were in banking and you specialized in anti-money laundering. Carl (03:35): Well, that’s what’s on the back of the book. Debbi (03:38): That’s what’s on the back of the book. Carl (03:41): I didn’t really specialize so much yet in banking. I took some courses on money laundering and I was involved with some people that tried to do some money laundering with me. And then I did a lot of international trade and I think it’s something like 7% of international trade is actually money laundering. Debbi (04:04): I can believe it. There’s a lot of that going on. Carl (04:08): Yeah. Debbi (04:09): Yeah. Was there a reason in particular that you decided to start writing crime fiction? Carl (04:16): Well, write what you know. Debbi (04:21): I followed the same kind of advice. Yeah. Carl (04:25): No, for some reason I thought that would be the easiest way to get published, but then I found that I tend to write about dysfunctional families and there’s nothing that makes a family more dysfunctional than crime and the possibility of wealth. So that’s what I found. I think it amplifies all the conflicts that are already there in these characters. Debbi (04:57): That’s interesting. I know what you mean about focusing on dysfunctional families. I have a tendency to do that myself. Sometimes I wonder if the concept of family can extend to things like workplaces or communities. Carl (05:17): Well, that’s an interesting question because quite often I worked at banks and one bank in particularly and they call it a family. We’re all a family here. We treat each other like a family. Some companies do that, but when the numbers go bad, that kind of disappears. When they have a down year, you may be family, but you got to go. Debbi (05:42): That’s right. Profits get thicker than blood, something like that. Carl (05:50): Yeah. Debbi (05:50): There’s no blood there to thicken. It’s all about money. Yeah, it is unfortunate when things like that happen. So how would you describe your writing style then? Do you feel it’s very realistic or psychological suspense? Carl (06:10): I think it’s more psychological suspense. I’m most interested in the characters, but I love a good plot, so the two really have to go together and they’re categorized as thrillers, so it has to start off strong. It’s interesting in this book, Saving Myles, which was the last book out, it’s about a family who has a very difficult son. So they sent him to a residential treatment center against his will, and ...
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  • Interview with Doug Kari – S. 12, Ep. 9

    Interview with Doug Kari – S. 12, Ep. 9
    Oct 18 2026
    This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features true crime writer, Doug Kari. A writer who isn’t just Googling to get answers. 🙂 Check out the episode. How often do you get to hear stories from an actual “boots on the ground” journalist, these days? Well, their numbers may be dwindling, but they still exist and here you go! And for a PDF copy of the transcript, click here! Debbi (00:52): Hi everybody. I have with me today a fascinating guest for you. He is a true crime writer known for his hands-on investigative approach to research and writing. His work has taken him to places like shallow graves. He just lies in the shallow grave and kind of gets a sense of what it’s like to have to be in a shallow grave, maybe avoiding gunfire or avoiding something. (01:22): And he also has followed leads on missing persons through Death Valley and Mexico, among other places, I assume. Anyway, he was an English major at UC Berkeley and received his law degree—All right, lawyers!—from UC Law, San Francisco. His latest book is called The Berman Murders. It’s my pleasure to introduce Doug Kari. Is it Kari? Doug (01:54): It’s Kari. And thank you, Debbi. It’s a pleasure to be on your show. Debbi (01:59): Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for being here. I do appreciate it. And your work just amazes me. I’m just blown away by it. How did you get involved in investigating the Berman murders? Doug (02:13): For the Berman murders case, that was one that was really near and dear to my heart because of the location where the crime took place. It’s a desert valley that’s very difficult to access, that’s in between the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley in Eastern California, and it’s quite inaccessible. To get there, you have to follow a 50-mile dirt road. You have to cross mountains that are sometimes impassable depending on the time of the year. And once you’re in the valley, it’s like being on another planet. It’s the kind of place, Debbie, that attracts counterculture types, the kind of folks I hung out with when I was a student at Berkeley, the hippie crowd, the seekers, and word of mouth, people have come into this valley and they travel there to hang out at Hot Springs. It was sort of like a mini Burning Man before Burning Man ever existed, a very eclectic crowd. (03:18): You might find firefighters mingling with people from a magic bus. Everybody seems to share the same vibe, the same energy, the same aura. So it was quite stunning, quite shocking when in January 1986, a couple of nondescript hippie campers walked off on a morning walk and never came back. And three years later, their remains turned up miles away in a shallow grave. They’d been murdered. Debbi (03:58): Yeah, that had to be kind of shocking. It was in 1986 that they disappeared? Doug (04:08): January 1986. And that was a time period when myself and others that were into mountaineering out there and exploring the desert, we would go to these hot springs. I took my kids out there. In fact, or January 1986 was just a few months before I brought my newborn daughter out there for the first time. So to have a crime like this occur in a place that you think of as being completely off the beaten path, very laid back, peaceful, beautiful, to have people turn up murdered was just outside the realm of what most people could comprehend. And because of that, it was a real shock for those who frequented this valley. And it nagged me for years, Debbi. And finally in 2014, I decided I was going to investigate what happened, because there had never been an arrest or a conviction in the case, and I wanted to see if I could figure out what happened to these people and why. Debbi (05:24): So how much research did you do to create the book? How many hours of research and how many hours of going through doing interviews and going through those interviews and that research before you were able to write the book? Doug (05:42): It was a very lengthy process. I started with a real intense push in the first year, and that resulted in a cover story for LA Weekly about the case. But then off and on, I continued to work on the case over the span of about nine years, interviewing people, trying to gather information. Debbi, information gathering was really tough in this case. Some of the people that I wanted to talk to wouldn’t talk to me, and it took years and repeated efforts for them finally to soften up and agree to tell me what they knew. Tracking down, getting the case files from the sheriff’s office took time. Everything was really difficult in this case. There are cases where there’s a wealth of information available. This wasn’t that kind of a case, but slowly the facts began to emerge. I began getting cooperation from people, locating people. (06:39): I got the records from the sheriff’s department. I went to the scene multiple times, and I already had a lot of knowledge of the area, and I started ...
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  • Interview with Charles D’Amico – S. 12, Ep. 8

    Interview with Charles D’Amico – S. 12, Ep. 8
    Oct 4 2026
    This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer and independent publisher, Charles D’Amico. His Neil Baggio series has a villain, who’s got his own story, too. And you can learn more about that here! And you can download a PDF of the transcript here. Debbi (00:55): Hi everyone. My guest today is originally from Metro Detroit. He writes the award-winning Neil Baggio suspense series. In 2020, he founded the small press Blue Handle Publishing. It’s my pleasure to introduce Charles D’Amico. Hi, Charles. How are you doing today? Charles (01:16): Good. How are you doing? Debbi (01:18): Oh, I’m hanging in there. Not bad, considering I’ve been kind of nonstop all week doing something crazy of some sort, either editing a film, doing a book signing or being at someplace or other doing something that I haven’t. Charles (01:34): It’s always good stay busy though, right? Debbi (01:36): I suppose. Charles (01:37): Because some of us when we get quiet, we don’t know what to do. Debbi (01:40): Oh, I always know what to do if I’m quiet. That way I can pick up a book or watch a movie. It’s like, at last a quiet moment. I can read. So I was going to ask you about the Neil… Is it Neil Baggio? Charles (01:57): Yeah, Neil Baggio. Debbi (01:59): Baggio. Charles (02:00): Yeah. The original framework for what is the book I have coming out in November, Why I Kill is called the Neil Baggio series. And that started as an FBI agent, Neil Baggio, whose mentor goes on a killing spree. And the book picks up four years after that, the first one, where he didn’t catch him. He leaves the FBI and it picks up with that broken down anti-hero. He was piecing everything back together. The killer comes out of hiding and now he’s got to find that lane, work with the FBI. They have to work with him and figure out how he’s going to catch his old boss. And that’s the first book Veritas, and it kind of goes off from there, the next three books. And then for years people would ask me, “How does an FBI agent become a killer?” So I wrote it, which is Why I Kill, the Cappelano journals that comes out in November. (02:46): And it used to be actually really thick, but I was like, “To be that dark and that thick might not be the best idea.” So we kind of trimmed it. Debbi (02:54): Yeah. Kind of gradually get there? Charles (02:57): Yeah. If it kicks off, we’ll really see an unabridged version. Debbi (03:02): Wow. Yeah, I noticed that. I noticed those Frank journals and I was like, “Oh, what is this?” And I’m looking, I’m like, “Oh, how interesting. Okay.” Charles (03:14): I had a son who read the first version of that years ago and he kind of ducked my call for like three months. I was like, “Everything okay?” And he’s like, “Honestly, man.” He goes, “Didn’t know what to think that you thought of that stuff.” Debbi (03:29): Well, you got to come up with a reason why they turn out to be a villain. Charles (03:33): Exactly. It’s just a thought process. Debbi (03:37): Yeah, it’s just a thought process. Exactly. It’s a hypothetical exercise. Charles (03:42): You hope that an FBI profiler can think and understand the way a criminal does without being a criminal. Debbi (03:48): Exactly. Charles (03:49): I get it. Yeah. Debbi (03:51): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s not like hearts and flowers stuff, if you’re going to write about killers. Which was very interesting because it makes me think of the old adage, every villain thinks they’re the hero of the story. So wouldn’t it be interesting to go back, look at all of my antagonists, my major ones, my killers and so forth, and just figure out what their story really is, go deep into it. That could get a little depressing, if I do it too much. Charles (04:20): I started off with him being reluctant and then him rationalizing certain decisions and certain things that he wouldn’t say. And I’ve talked about this before, so it’s not like it’s an Easter egg or anything, but in the first volume, he doesn’t say kill. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s killing people. He keeps rewording it. He’s just removed people from the mathematics of life. And he’s rationalizing these crazy ideas on what he’s actually doing. And then eventually there’s a turning point in the middle that really flips the switch and he goes all in on it and he’s even aware of the moment. In these testing moments where he’s cognizant enough of what’s going on and he’s like, “If I was normal, I should feel something here.” And I don’t. It’s kind of cool to just think through what someone who’s rational enough, but even admitting, “Well, there might come a time I won’t be.” And there’s a couple moments where he, because it’s told from his perspective where he’s having the thoughts that there will come a time where I’m not rational about the irrational decisions I’m making. Debbi (05:27): Yeah. Yeah. ...
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    31 Min.
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