In Mary Monroe’s latest novel, Deliver Me From Evil, reformed bad girl Christine Thurman is up to her old tricks. Although she’s crawled out of the gutter and married a successful businessman, she begins an affair with a shifty old acquaintance. It’s a risky and potentially deadly venture. “I like to write about things that I know or have experienced,” laughs Monroe. “The characters are composites of people I know — including myself.”
Monroe — who grew up in Alabama and Alliance, but now lives in Oakland — shot to the top of the best-seller lists with her God Don’t Like Ugly series, which debuted seven years ago. She says stand-alone books, like Evil, give her a welcome break — even though she doesn’t stray too far from the cheating, backstabbing ladies that made her a hit with black female readers. “I need a vacation from some of those [Ugly] characters,” she says. “I need time away from them to figure out what I’m going to do next. Sometimes those characters just get on my nerves.” www.bordersstores.com.
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This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.