ZJ Czupor‘s On Tour with Dead Writers brings us clues to a mystery author each second Tuesday of the month. Dust off your investigative skills and send your answer to mysteryminutecontest@gmail.com by the 20th of the month. From the correct responses, one will be randomly drawn to win a copy of Trace Evidence by Lisa Black!

The One World Trade Center, New York City, was rebuilt on the site of the World Trade Center complex in lower Manhattan and completed on April 30, 2012. At 1,776 feet, it is the tallest building in the U.S. The building opened on November 3, 2014. The construction of the original Twin Towers at the World Trade Center site inspired two bestselling novels and an award-winning movie which inspired another famous novel and movie.
This author’s novel, which developed out of a dream, became a bestselling thriller about a brooding detective, Joe Leland, who, on Christmas Eve, visits his daughter who works in a 40-story office tower in Los Angeles where terrorists hold her hostage. The Los Angeles Times called the novel, “a ferocious, bloody, raging book so single-mindedly brilliant in concept and execution it should be read at a single sitting.”
If that plot sounds familiar, you’re right. His novel was adapted into the iconic thriller film Die Hard (1988). While the film retains many of the novel’s elements, the novel is more cruel, gruesome, and cynical and ends on a down note.
Who was this famous author?
Did you guess Arthur Conan Doyle last month? Amy in California won Trace Evidence by Lisa Black!
Subscribe to our Newsletter to receive an extra clue at the beginning of each month as well as automatic entry to several more monthly Giveaways and first looks at weekly blogs!
Contest rules:
1. All US addresses are eligible to win.
2. Each month’s prize will be a book written by one of the Rogues and donated by that author.
3. All subscribers who email us with the correct answer before the 20th will be entered in a drawing to win.
Z.J. Czupor’s new murder mystery, When The Fog Rises, is published at zjames.substack.com. He’s also the author of the thriller Cut Right Through Me (also at Substack) and a book of poetry THE BIG WEIRD: Haikus in Times of Pandemic and Chaos. Z.J. is immediate past president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and is an active member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. He is represented by Terrie Wolf, founder and owner of AKA Literary Management.

Die Hard was one of the best Christmas movies ever. That and White Christmas. I wanted to Google the author’s name. I absolutely don’t know! But then, I never know! I always learn!