The most memorable e-mail I ever received from a reader was also the most emotional. There’s a scene in my second novel, STRIPPED, in which Detective Serena Dial interviews a woman whose child has died in an accident.  A reader wrote to me and asked if I had ever lost a child myself.  He and his wife had gone through that experience, and he told me that I had captured the emotions of that situation so well that he assumed it must have happened to me, too. Fortunately, I was able to say no.  In fact, I don’t have kids.  But I consider that e-mail one of the most meaningful compliments I have received as a writer, because it gets to the heart of what I hope to achieve in my books – empathy.  I want to get inside the heads of my characters.  I want them to reflect the moral and emotional depth of real people, not just hollow caricatures of good and evil. You can find thrillers around almost every theme these days.  Forensic investigation.  Corporate espionage.  Political intrigue.  Terrorism.  I’ve read plenty of those books and loved them.  I can remember reading Robert Ludlum‘s THE CHANCELLOR MANUSCRIPT…