A native of Georgia, Mike Cobb splits his time between Midtown Atlanta and Blue Ridge, a tiny lake town tucked in the North Georgia mountains where Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina intersect. His body of literary work includes both fiction and nonfiction, short-form and long-form, as well as articles and blogs. He is the author of four published novels, Dead Beckoning, The Devil You Knew, its sequel You Will Know Me by My Deeds, and Muzzle the Black Dog. While he is comfortable playing across a broad range of topics, much of his focus is on true crime, crime fiction, and historical fiction. Rigorous research is foundational to his writing. He gets that honestly, having spent much of his professional career as a scientist. In his spare time, Mike enjoys reading, cooking, boating, and spending time with his family, including four granddaughters.
In Muzzle the Black Dog, when a mysterious stranger appears at Jack Pate’s isolated cabin door, his life is forever changed. The stranger’s cryptic message sets off a chain of events that lead Jack on a harrowing journey to uncover the true meaning of his own existence. As a series of unexplained fires threaten to consume everything he holds dear, Jack is forced to confront his deepest fears and question everything he thought he knew about himself. Set in the aftermath of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, Jack’s search for the truth takes him to the edge of sanity and puts him on a collision course with a dark and powerful force that has been lurking in the shadows. Readers will join Jack on a gripping and thought-provoking quest for answers in this tale of self-discovery and redemption.
Mike Cobb stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:
I was a scientist before I became a writer, and while the tools have changed, the instincts and rigor remain the same. Curiosity still drives me, and research is where I feel at home—whether I’m digging through archives or reconstructing a vanished world on the page.
When I set out to write Muzzle the Black Dog, I knew the story would brush up against real, painful events that I remember well. The novel draws in part on the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, Eric Rudolph, and his brother Daniel. To get it right, I immersed myself in newspaper coverage from the time, sifting through headlines, timelines, and firsthand accounts. I combed archives for details that had long since slipped from public memory—what streets looked like, how events unfolded minute by minute, what the air might’ve felt like that day in the park.
It wasn’t just about facts—it was also about feel. I spent time in the places I was writing about, trying to capture the texture of the environment, the cadence of speech, the lingering tension in the aftermath of trauma. And because the book is fundamentally a work of fiction, I let my fictional characters speak to me and help me interweave their story around the panoply of historical events.
Just as I once studied data in a lab and scientific journals, I now study people, places, and moments—hoping to translate that understanding into fiction that feels true.
This deep-dive approach to research isn’t unique to Muzzle the Black Dog. It’s something I’ve brought to every book I’ve written and published. Whether I’m writing about a historical moment or a fictional crime, I ground my stories in real places, real people, and the real-world forces that shape them. I’ve spent countless hours in libraries, archives, on city streets, and in quiet corners of the internet, chasing down the smallest details—a street name, a weather report, the scent of a room—because those are the threads that help a story come alive. Research, for me, isn’t just a step in the process—it’s the heartbeat of the work.
You can learn more about Mike Cobb and his books at his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Goodreads. Muzzle the Black Dog and Mike’s other books are available from Amazon and all major booksellers.