Through the maze of subdivisions in this Atlanta suburb where she lives, past the waterfall, beyond the dogs, Iris Johansen sits regally in a spacious salon filled with soft, sighing couches. It's a scene that could fit nicely in one of her many, many romance novels (her editor claims Johansen first hit the New York Times list with her 46th book). Johansen has taken time out from her busy stay-at-home-and-write schedule (she has four books out this year, two hardcover and two paperback) to discuss her latest novel, Dead Aim (out last month, and now a national bestseller), and how a successful romance novelist (which she was) becomes a successful writer of romantic thrillers (which she is).
"Actually, I can't say that I don't try other genres," she says, her soft voice echoing in the cavernous chamber. "I first started with small-category romance, and then I moved to historical fiction." She is referring, of course, to her beginnings in the early 1980s with the Loveswept romance imprint, when her novel Stormy Vows was plucked from the slush pile by Nita Taublib (then just an editorial reader) to become Loveswept #14. Thus was established a working relationship between the two that built up to Johansen's breakout book, The Ugly Duckling (1996), weathered the twin storms of Bertelsmann blitzkrieg and BDD consolidation, and continues dauntlessly to this day—to Dead Aim, a fast-paced thriller of seismic catastrophes and cabalistic conspiracies mushrooming in the shadow of September 11.
"I had already started Dead Aim before 9/11," Johansen says seriously (and oh, so quietly). "After it happened, I redid the first two chapters. There was just no way I could ignore it." The novel follows photojournalist Alex Graham, who, scarred from that fateful September day, plies her trade shooting disaster sites and stumbles upon a deadly secret involving earthquakes and a coup d'état plot. It also revives two previous Johansen stars, commando Judd Morgan (from One to Trust) and Sarah Lawrence ("When I decided that my main character probably had been at the World Trade Center, it seemed only natural that I bring in Sarah Lawrence, because of the [rescue] dogs"). True to form, Graham is a feisty, hands-on professional, embodying an independent woman who can still be swept off her feet by the right kind of alpha male—rugged, dependable and not too heavily sketched ("His profession really fascinates me, but if you go into too much detail...").
Johansen's current position in the romantic suspense genre is a natural progression, she maintains, although her writing does not (despite her prodigious output) come easily. "I'm an author who has a great deal of difficulty outlining, knowing where the story's going—I have no idea. I let the story tell itself. And when you're writing thrillers, that's a real challenge." There are the characters to draw (Taublib claims Johansen was one of the first novelists of the form to use recurring characters) and the research to paint the background. Johansen is a big fan of libraries and the Web: "When I started doing the contemporaries, there's so much science... [and] you've got to get the flavor of the place."
What she is describing is a trend in what has been generically dubbed "women's fiction" from the pure romance of pink-paperback notoriety to a more commercially viable hybrid, the romantically tinged suspense novel. Johansen is as good an example of this process as any of her peers. (Despite her repeat bestseller status, she readily doffs her hat to the other women in her league: "Of course, there's Sandra Brown. And Nora Roberts. Linda Howard. Kate Hooper.") Taublib plots the sea change with the familiarity of a longtime editor: "Iris wrote a trilogy of books called the Wind Dancer series. The third book [Reap the Wind] was a contemporary, and she loved writing it. It was a romance with a lot of suspense in it, as opposed to what she writes now, which is suspense with romance. It fired her blood... .after that she started writing romances with a lot of suspense, and at one point it just sort of clicked the other way, suspense with romance." This observation is echoed by Fraser Dobson, a buyer for the Atlanta-based Chapter 11 chain: "The trend in the last few years for many romance writers, including Iris Johansen and Nora Roberts, has been to go from writing a straight romance to writing romantic suspense. Which is another indication that women really enjoy suspense novels." Johansen's popularity with book clubs supports this notion as well: Dead Aim is a Bookspan Main Selection and a BOMC Alternate, not to mention both Literary and Mystery Guild clubs and the Doubleday Book Club. Taublib predicts Johansen's star will continue rising over distant shores as well: "She does very well in Australia. She's just beginning to hit her stride in the U.K., which is traditionally a very different women's market than ours. I think in the next couple of years, she'll be a bestseller in U.K. as well."
