Most great thrillers start with a bang. Starting with a troop of leather-clad thieves on motorcycles conducting an audacious jewelry heist in a crowded Las Vegas casino, the novel pinballs from a ketamine high in Princeton New Jersey to the beaches of Mexico, where an expert thief runs into bad luck trying to get out of the game.
Parish, who was born in Houston, lives in Los Angeles, and has been hanging out in Europe this summer, worked as a culture magazine writer and editor for years, an ideal apprenticeship for his eye for beautiful places and the haunting details. Parish takes Interview on a tour of some of the criminal influences for Love and Theft. When I was three, my dad took the family to the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles, where he was shooting a commercial.
Briefly unsupervised by the pool, I wandered over to a man in a leopard-print bathrobe and purple bandana. I grilled him about being a pirate until my dad intervened, apologizing profusely to Steven Van Zant as he dragged me away.
I eventually gave up my dream of the pirate life, but age and experience did nothing to dull my interest in the illicit and the occult. I became a kind of diviner, but instead of water, I had a sixth sense for strange subcultures, suspicious characters, and after-after parties. If there was a large BDSM community hidden in the castle-like mansion of a posh suburb, I would somehow be invited for dinner. A high-end jewel heist opens Love and Theft , my new novel.
Much of the book was inspired by true crimeโsome of which I read about or watched on YouTube, some of which I stumbled on myself.
