Nancy Piccione asked Erik Larson:

Your writing and research merges together so well in your Books. I just finished "Dead Wake" and I Was impressed with how you built tension In a story, when readers already knew the outcome. It was the first Time I have read a book, admired how it Was crafted and thought about how it was Edited. Would you comment on the editing process For Dead Wake?

Erik Larson Thank you for noting the tension in the story. That's the main reason I wrote the book. There was so much amazing archival material available on the Lusitania that I saw an opportunity to infuse the book with real-life suspense--to put on my Hitchcock hat. Truly, it became for me an exercise in nonfiction suspense. My brilliant editor helped me ramp up the suspense by insisting that I add context, in particular context about the war.

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