Thriller and mystery novels get readers’ hearts pumping fast, just like outdoor sports, and with New Year’s resolutions kicking in soon we’re profiling the workouts and diets of 16 top authors in the genre. Their answers are inspiring, intimidating, and funny. While compiling these fitness profiles, 85 percent of the novelists that SFA’s David [...]

Age: 50 Height/weight: 5 feet, 11 inches; 205 pounds Residence: Boynton Beach, Fla. Born has written five Florida mystery novels, including Escape Clause (Putnam), which won the gold medal in the inaugural Florida Book Awards. In June, under the pseudonym James O’Neal, he published The Double Human (Tor), a sci-fi novel set in Miami. For [...]

Age: 67 (which means for 62 years I’ve never acted my age) Height/weight: 6 feet, 4 inches; 220 pounds Residence: Lakeland, Fla., but please, no stalkers. I already have groupies camping in my driveway Corcoran’s recent mystery novel is Hawk Channel Chase (The Ketch & Yawl Press), his sixth Alex Rutledge mystery set primarily in [...]

Height/weight: 5 feet, 10 inches; 172 pounds Residence: Sarasota, Fla. For two consecutive years Bruns has won the Royal Palm Literary Award from the Florida Writers Association in the category best mystery of the year. His next mystery, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff (Oceanview Publishing), went on sale last week. DonBrunsBooks.com Why do you work [...]

Age: 59 Height/weight 5 feet, 5 inches; 135 pounds – muscle! Residence: Hollywood, Fla. Hendricks’ most recent book is Florida Gothic Stories (Kitsune Books), a collection of short stories, and her noir novel Cruel Poetry (Serpent’s Tail) was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2008. It’s the story of a love “pentangle” centering on a [...]

Age: Kidding, right? Okay, I’ll play—I’m 53. Height/weight: 5 feet, 6 inches; 123 pounds (solid sinew and muscle) Residence: Las Vegas, Nevada Coonts’ debut novel Wanna Get Lucky? (Forge Books) was released in May and is the first in a series of funny, sexy, murder mysteries set amid the glamour, glitz and naughtiness of Las [...]

Age: 38 Height/weight: 5 feet, 7 inches; 132 pounds Residence: New York Davidson’s debut crime novel, The Damage Done (Forge Books), went on sale in September. It centers on a travel writer who is called home to New York after her sister dies, but she discovers that the corpse belongs to a woman who had [...]

Height/weight: 6 feet, 3 inches; 200 pounds Residence: Tampa, Fla. Kuzneski’s new thriller is The Prophecy (Putnam). When the prophetic writings of 16th-century visionary Nostradamus begin to ring alarmingly true, Jonathon Payne and David Jones find themselves in a life-or-death race across the world to stop those who would use the French seer’s predictions for [...]

Age: 56 Height/weight: 6 feet, 5 inches; 210 pounds Residence: Boca Raton, Fla. The sixth book in King’s Max Freeman crime series, Midnight Guardians (Open Road), puts Max in the middle of players who have melded Medicare fraud and prescription drug dealing into a deadly combination. It’s truly a South Florida novel. King’s first mystery, [...]

Age: Confidential! But I’m a masters runner (over 35) and a martial artist—aikido Height/weight: 5 feet, 6 inches; 120 pounds Residence: Chicago Freveletti’s first thriller, 2009’s Running from the Devil (William Morrow), is about Emma Caldridge, an ultramarathoner and chemist whose plane crashes on a flight from Miami to Bogota. It was named the best [...]