Erik Larson, who’s made a career out of turning history into best sellers that read as urgently as thrillers, is sitting comfortably in his bright, quiet, luxurious apartment overlooking snow-covered Central Park.He jokes, a tad chillingly, that he’s “Hannibal Lecter — a literary Hannibal Lecter. “But there’s no need to check the pantry to see what (or who) might be in the freezer. A former journalist with a wry sense of humor, Larson simply isn’t sentimental about his subjects.
“There’s the good me and the bad me. The good me is, ‘Oh my God, this is horrible.’ The bad me is, “This is great, this is such a fabulous detail,’ ” he says.