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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm happy to report that my guest is Margo Livesey. Her newest book is The Boy in the Field.

It's published by Harper. And it's said correctly that it's a cross between a mystery thriller and a coming-of-age novel.

But you mention a particular kind of thriller, a locked room mystery.

Tell us what a locked room mystery is.

Well, I am someone who doesn't read many thrillers, but my understanding of a locked room mystery is that there is no possible solution, and yet a solution exists.

And certainly in my novels, I think of people's brains as locked rooms, the locked rooms we're trying to get into or trying to get out of.

Yes. Now, when I read that in the book, I thought, yes, the brain is the ultimate locked room, but what about the heart?

Oh, the heart, yes, perhaps even more the heart,

because the heart has its reasons that reasons does not comprehend.

So, yeah, there are no syllogisms for the heart.

It's a beautiful book because what happens essentially is that three children find a boy lying for

all intensive purposes asleep or dead in a field.

They're afraid because they see that his legs are bloody,

and the youngest of them, Duncan, a boy who's been adopted, is sent out to the road to flag down

...