Local photographer Christopher Little publishes his first thriller

By Courtney Maum

Affable, witty and generous with his time, local photographer and EMT volunteer Christopher Little is the last person Norfolkians would call “frightening,” and yet his new book, “Ever So Silent,” is one scary ride. The first in a series, this spiffy murder mystery focuses on the plight of police officer Emma Thorne, who is promoted to chief of police at the exact same time that a serial killer starts terrorizing the town of Hampshire. Inconveniently, Emma’s Yale professor husband has also disappeared, adding “marriage problems” to a list of troubles that includes a growing body count. Early readers of Little’s debut confessed that the book was “too scary to read in a remote house alone,” and Kirkus Reviewscalled it “nerve-wracking.” If safety lies in numbers, perhaps locals should gather to read this debut en masse.

Although his photojournalism work has won him many accolades, Little has, in fact, been writing for a great deal of his life. In 1994, he published a travel book, “The Rockbound Coast: Travels in Maine,” with W.W. Norton, and he wrote two novels before “Ever So Silent.” But it was in the no-nonsense, too-smart-for-her-own-good heroine of Emma Thorne that Little knew he had something to run with. He polished the manuscript in a local writer’s workshop led by our own Mark Scarbrough, and leaned on “smart friends” for further help, including his “publishing guru” Michael Selleck and his “social media expert” niece, a popular DJ with a large online following.

Readers who love comedy of manners will thrill to the jabs at societal affectations that pop up throughout the book (“If he owns a Corvette, why did he steal the Escalade?” Emma asks a witness in the book’s first pages), while adepts of Gillian Flynn and Michael Connelly will appreciate the narrative’s many twists and turns. Little buttressed the more macabre elements in his novel with hands-on research. In addition to his own experiences as an EMT volunteer, he traveled to local towns to consult with medical examiners and police chiefs, and—in one dedicated example—even participating in an autopsy under the supervision of the chief medical examiner in Farmington.

“I got to know a lot of cops,” Little laughs, adding that his fellow EMT volunteers gave him the confidence and inspiration for the book’s research and writing. “When I was an active photojournalist,” Little says, “I went everywhere, spent time with famous people. Moving here and joining the ambulance was a way to put unexpectedness back in my life. You never know what degree of a test you will be put to, and now I find that I get that same excitement out of writing. I just love the process; it’s so enjoyable. I find it easy to concentrate—I can sit down in a room of people watching TV and get lost in my little world, and write.”

This is good news for fans of “Ever So Silent,” who will want to know what the intrepid Emma Thorne gets up to next (should she make it out alive!). While the first Emma Thorne book took several years to write, Little is working on the sequel at a quickened pace. On the topic of efficiency, so far Little has nothing but positive things to say about his experience self-publishing with Amazon. He’s revels in an on-demand printing structure that allows him to make changes to copies between printings, unlike traditional publishing, where a typo or timeline error that appears in hardcover will be there until the paperback. “I can make changes to the cover, add review copy; you can buy a copy and it will be at your house the next day. It’s very liberating,” Little says. “I’m having lots of fun.”

“Ever So Silent” is available on Amazon.com as an e-book or a paperback, and because Little participated in Amazon’s “Expanded Distribution” option, it can also be ordered through your favorite local bookstore. Little will happily sign copies: simply contact him at EverSoSilent@christopherlittle.comFor more information about the book, visit www.honeysucklepublishing.comAnd as applies to all hard-working authors, if you like Little’s latest, leave it a nice review on Goodreads or Amazon.