Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 362 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is best-selling thriller writer Jeffrey Deaver.

He's the author of more than 35 novels and three short story collections.

And his books have been sold in 150 countries and translated into 25 languages.

His 1997 novel, The Bone Collector, the first volume in the Lincoln Rhymes series, was adapted

into a feature film starring Dental Washington and Angelina Jolie.

And we'll be speaking with Jeff today about his latest novel, The Never game,

about a kidnapper who seems to be modeling his crimes on a popular video game.

And now here's our interview with Jeffrey Dever.

All right, so we're here with Jeffrey Dever. Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, Dave.

Okay, so your new book is called The Never Game. So what made you want to start up a new series with a new protagonist?

About 30 years ago it pains me to say that I'd actually written a few books at that point

but a long long time, I had a series about a fellow who traveled around the country sort of an itinerant, amateur private eye, I guess you'd call him, and he was a location scout for a film company and he would go to town looking for movies and of course something

untoward would happen you know you know like in a Tom Cruise movie or Bruce Willis movie, you never want to be the side kick because in the first 20 minutes the side kick gets gets off. Well, that's what happened to my character, John Pellan.

And it started to get, I love the idea of regional mysteries,

of a fellow traveling around the country, sort of Allah Shane,

you know, the old Alan Lads Jr Junior movie, but it got a little, I guess I would say,

contrived because he'd come to town, get set with the movie, and then something bad would happen.

So I went on to write books like the bone collector

and several other series.

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