At its heart, THE LAST WIDOW is a book about a cult: The Invisible Patriot Army. What made you drawn to this subject matter?
I’ve always been fascinated by cults. It probably originated with two of the seminal books of my childhood—HELTER SKELTER, by Vincent Bugliosi and THE STRANGER BESIDE ME, by Ann Rule. HELTER SKELTER is about Charles Manson, and he obviously led a bona fide cult in the way we tend to think about cults. THE STRANGER BESIDE ME is about Ted Bundy, and I think he was like a kind of cult leader too. When he was initially caught, so many people thought he couldn’t be the culprit because he was so charming. He’d even convinced his girlfriend and her child that he was a good guy. He fooled everybody. That’s what interests me. Ann Rule’s story is particularly fascinating because she worked with Ted on a rape hotline (apparently he was great with the victims on the phone). Ann was talking to Ted one night and she told him she was really worried about her daughter because the young woman had long, dark hair like the victims, and was about the same age. Years later when Ted was caught, she remembered that Ted had told her at the time: “Don’t worry, she’s safe”. How creepy is that?

In your opinion, what are the key traits that mark out a cult leader?
When you look at cult leaders: David Koresh, Rajneesh, Ted Bundy, Dash in THE LAST WIDOW, and also politicians: Clinton, Obama, Trump (depending on your viewpoint), the key uniting factor is a certain type of charisma. We can put these folks into good or bad categories, but the fact is, they have the ability to develop a cult-like following that sees no wrong in anything they do. But then to really lead a cult, the leader has to find people who are susceptible to being led—it’s almost a kind of hypnosis. And I’ve often thought that real cult leaders are a bit like predators; they figure out what people need and give it to them. It’s why there’s often a big resurgence of cults after wars. Soldiers return home and discover their wives and families don’t need them anymore, and they’re angry at the world. They think the world has changed, but in reality it’s them who have changed. This sense of uncertainty and isolation are definitely key factors in explaining why cults have such an appeal.

In THE LAST WIDOW, Faith goes inside the Center for Disease Control. How did you research this?
I was lucky enough to be able to visit the CDC itself, which is on the Emory University campus. Everything Faith does in the book I had to do too—they asked me if I had any weapons to check (I didn’t), they sent dogs under my car to sniff for explosives. The control room was what I imagine NASA is like.

And what exactly do the CDC do?
A big part of their job is food safety. Say a hospital in Idaho calls and tells them they have cases of E. coli and then a hospital in a neighboring state calls and says the same—the CDC will try to track the source (it’s usually lettuce, fyi) to prevent it from spreading any further. They also have “disease detectives” who go all over the world and figure out how and why people are getting sick. They’ll go to West Africa to track Ebola, they’ll go to Puerto Rico after a flood and advise on how and where cholera could spread. They also have quarantine stations around the country to try to prevent biological attacks, and they track natural disasters too.

So how likely is an attack like the one that occurs in THE LAST WIDOW?
The CDC has been gaming out all kinds of horrible things from the beginning. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks both foreign and domestic. They try to prepare for every scenario, and they train to respond to it in the best way possible. For instance, they go through a pseudo-attack like anthrax being mailed around the country: How would patients present at the hospital? What are the early signs of an attack? What message would they use to control hysteria? Would water facilities be safe? Who would be in charge of the police structure? How soon everything would fall apart? The funny thing is that prior to 2001, funding for the CDC had been decreasing, but when anthrax was sent out to politicians, the government suddenly decided to massively bump up the funding! With something like botulism, of course an attack is a possibility, but the reaction would be so instantaneous, it would get de-railed pretty quickly. There is hope for the world yet!