Archives for July 2017

‘Justice Burning,’ A Talk with Scott Pratt

July 31, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Scott Pratt is the author of the bestselling Joe Dillard series of legal thrillers which has sold over a million books. A former attorney, Scott worked as a criminal defense lawyer before writing his first novel, An Innocent Client. Although originally published by a major house, Scott decided to publish his novels independently, thus gaining control over the entire process.

Justice Burning is the second novel in a new series featuring criminal defense attorney, Darren Street. After having spent two years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Darren Street—now exonerated—is trying to rebuild his practice, restore his reputation, reconnect with his son, and build a deeper relationship with attorney Grace Alexander.

Though tormented by nightmares of his prison stay, Darren is making progress until trauma strikes once again: his mother is killed in an explosion, but the police (and Darren) believe he was the intended target. Darren quickly discovers he hasn’t so easily overcome the horrors of prison and must now take matters into his own hands and face a deadly new foe.

Darren Street is a new protagonist in what is now a two-book series. What made you decide to leave Joe Dillard and take on a new series?

I haven’t left Joe, I just wanted to expand a bit. I wanted to write about an anti-hero. Though Joe has some anger issues, he’s a straight-laced guy and a family man. I wanted to write about somebody a little edgier, and a bit younger. After eight Joe Dillard books, I wanted a change. I’ve already written a third Darren Street book which will be published in February 2018. But, I’ll be going back to Joe and staying with him for a while.

There’s no courtroom scene in “Justice Burning.” The novel is very different from all your previous ones. Tell us a little about that.

I wanted to stay out of the courtroom. Darren was in such a transitional stage he wasn’t really practicing law. He’d been in prison, been released and was starting to practice, but then his mother was blown up. He’d negotiated the overwhelming trauma of being falsely convicted and imprisoned, and was starting to recover. Suddenly, he’s hit with another trauma—the violent death of his mother. It becomes a question of how much can the human psyche endure? The police basically told Darren who they thought had killed his mother. He went off the deep end and took matters into his own hands.

I wanted to make people see how a person can be so traumatized, he will abandon his usual moral code. Not wanting to return to prison, Darren became very calculating as he planned to settle the score.

It’s a huge change from the Joe Dillard books because Darren is an anti-hero.

That’s always a risk with an anti-hero, isn’t it? By definition, an anti-hero has significant character flaws.

Definitely. But just like artists don’t want to paint the same picture over and over again, and composers don’t want to write just the same kind of songs, novelists don’t want to write the same type of stories again and again. I wanted to challenge myself by tackling something quite different from the Joe Dillard series, and my editor at Thomas and Mercer encouraged me.

“Justice Burning” deals partly with the concept of justice in our legal system. What are the differences between justice, fairness, and truth.

In our system, I think justice is a gussied-up term for revenge. There may be elements of truth and some fairness, and occasionally justice or revenge is tempered with mercy.

Victims and criminals view justice very differently. Victims look at justice as, Get me some state-sanctioned revenge. Criminals view justice and say, Look at and understand what I did, and temper your revenge with mercy.

Justice is different things to different people.

Darren Street is suffering from symptoms of PTSD. As a former defense attorney, you’ve probably seen a great deal of this disorder. Tell us about the capacity of prison to evoke PTSD in inmates.

A majority of inmates suffer PTSD to some degree. Prison is a horrific experience. There are gangs where you must stay with members of your own race or ethnic group. Inmates are totally powerless. They see and experience abuses normal people cannot understand. They see guard-on-inmate violence, inmate-on-inmate violence, and inmate-on-guard violence. They see things such as superheated baby oil thrown into someone’s face. They live with the constant threat of annihilation. An inmate is constantly on guard for his life. One can get shanked for something as inconsequential as looking at someone the wrong way. It’s a Darwinian existence.

As far as politicians are concerned, the criminal justice system is a bastard stepchild. They don’t want to fund or think about it. They don’t want to reform prisoners, and the way the system is set up, they might be right. By the time someone is a hard-core criminal, that inmate’s personality is irredeemable. The inmates are simply warehoused. Once they’re released, they cannot cope with freedom.

“Justice Burning” is such a fast-paced story it could very well become a movie. Has there been Hollywood interest in either the Joe Dillard books or in the two Darrel Street books?

There’s been interest in the Joe Dillard books but so far, nothing has developed. I’ve been told the Darren Street books are more likely to generate movie interest because they’re edgier.

As a bestselling author of legal thrillers, what has surprised you about the writing life?

I’ve been surprised by how anonymous the writing life can be. I’m glad for it because I’m a private person. Nowadays, I can write a bestseller from my writing room upstairs, and it can go out on Amazon and sell very well without my having to do a single book signing or appear in public.

What’s coming next from Scott Pratt?

The ninth book in the Joe Dillard series is coming after the third Darren Street book.

Congratulations on penning “Justice Burning” a hair-raising and propulsive thriller that raises questions about the law, the penal system, revenge, and what constitutes justice.

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“Deadfall,” A Conversation with Linda Fairstein

July 25, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Linda Fairstein, the internationally bestselling author of the Alexandra Cooper novels and former Manhattan assistant district attorney, has written Deadfall, the latest in the series.

Killer Look, the book immediately preceding Deadfall, ended with Alex and Mike on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where Alex’s boss, D.A. Paul Battaglia was shot in the head.

Deadfall, the 19th book in the series, picks up the story with Paul Battaglia falling dead into Alex’s arms. Alex immediately becomes the prime suspect, based not only on her proximity to the shooting, but also due to her tension-filled relationship with Battaglia and the fact that he made a series of telephone calls to her shortly before his death. Despite being a prime suspect, Alex, along with Mike, sets out to find the truth. They soon find themselves immersed in the case files of Battaglia’s associates, and in a world of secret societies involved with big game hunting on U.S. soil.

“Deadfall” begins only a few hours after the previous novel, “Killer Look,” ended. Did you already have the idea for “Deadfall” in mind when you ended “Killer Look”?

Unlike most suspense novels, Killer Look had a shocking ending.

My agent and editor loved the cliffhanger element of that book, and it made it so easy for me to begin to write Deadfall.

The novel starts six hours after Battaglia was killed. In Deadfall, Alex Cooper is both a witness to the murder and the prime suspect. Writing the first one-hundred pages was so exciting for me because I’d never before had her in that predicament.

Alex immediately becomes a suspect in the murder. Her interrogation by Detective Jaxson Stern is brutal. Tell us about that.

Yes, Alex becomes a suspect. I turned the tables on her. As a suspect being interrogated, she finds herself having the same reactions to questioning as other people have had when she’s been the questioner.

One of the first things I learned as a prosecutor was the art of interrogation. I learned it from colleagues in the D.A.’s office, and from the best homicide detectives in the NYPD. It’s an extraordinary skill when it’s done well. It’s terrifying when it’s done wrong or badly. As an interrogator, Jaxson Stern has an axe to grind and there may be no getting out from beneath it for Alex.

To make matters worse, Alex is still recovering from PTSD due to her having been abducted two books earlier. Tell us about that.

I wanted to write Devils Bridge partly through the eyes of Mike Chapman, the other major character in the series. So, at the beginning of that novel, Alex is kidnapped. Part of the reason I wanted to do that is the fact that many women readers have developed crushes on Mike. [Laughter]. I also thought having Alex deal with PTSD was important because she’s seen it in so many victims of various crimes with whom she’s been involved as a prosecutor. I wanted to explore how she would react after having survived being kidnapped.

In Deadfall, she’s still suffering from PTSD, but her predicament jolts her into wanting to get back on her feet.

The book’s title “Deadfall” has more than one meaning. Will you describe them for us?

I’d never heard the word before. When I was researching this novel at the Bronx Zoo, among other places, I first heard the term ‘deadfall.’ The zookeeper explained that in nature, when lighting or some other phenomenon has felled trees and creates a huge tangle of brush, it’s called a ‘deadfall.’

The other meaning of the term, which is appropriate to this book, involves hunters laying a trap by digging a pit and covering it with brush and branches so when an animal walks on the covering, it falls below to its death.

It also refers to the victim, Paul Battaglia, on the first page of the novel, falling dead into Alex’s arms after being shot.

I love how you bring current and recent events into your novels. In “Deadfall,” there’s mention of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. Tell us about that.

Antonin Scalia was a charismatic law professor at the University of Virginia where I went to law school. When he died, I was completely surprised that he died at a private hunting lodge and game preserve, and was a member of an order involved in shooting big game. I was also surprised that Scalia died alone in a cabin and there was no investigation into the cause of his death. When I looked into it, I was amazed by the number of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. It played into this very secretive world of hunting clubs and preserves all over the country which fit easily into the novel.

And the issues of species extinction and of hunting, and smuggling plays an important role in “Deadfall.”

Yes, it does. I love animals and I’ve become increasingly concerned about the probable extinction of many species of animals in the next few years. There are many animals that will no longer live on this planet if the current rate of decline continues. Some are hunted for their body parts and this frequently ties in with drug smuggling. It seemed a natural issue for me to tackle in this novel.

The dialogue in each new Alex Cooper seems edgier than before. Is that a fair statement?

Yes, it’s very fair. When I wrote the first six books in the series, I was still a prosecutor. I was very careful about language because I still worked for the government. It took me a few years after leaving the DA’s office to loosen up. Over the last three books, with Alex having been kidnapped and with her becoming a suspect, another side of her has emerged. It probably reflects more of me than the character. Alex is feeling very liberated, as do I. I’ve always loved writing dialogue. It’s always been my favorite part of storytelling.

Can you complete this sentence: Writing novels has taught me_________________?

Writing novels has taught me how difficult it is to use language well. I’ve always been a voracious reader and never thought about the process of writing. But writing about the same characters in this world I’ve created, and wanting to express things sharply and clearly, has taught me a great deal about the use of language. It’s taught me about using words, how to put them together, how to be clear, and ultimately, by learning how to better express what I want to say, I’ve learned more about myself.

What’s coming next from Linda Fairstein?

The next Devlin Quick mystery is coming. It’s a middle-school grade book called Digging for Trouble and will be coming out in November. It’s set in Montana where there are many dinosaur bones which play into the story.

Congratulations on penning “Deadfall,” the nineteenth Alex Cooper novel in an addictive series that’s become an annual staple in so many readers’ literary diets, including my own.

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A Conversation with Walter Mosley

July 17, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Walter Mosley was born in California. When he was 12 years old, his family moved from South Central to a more affluent West LA neighborhood. Although racial conflicts flared throughout Los Angeles at the time, his family was non-political. He later became more politicized and outspoken about racial inequality in the U.S., which continues to inform much of his fiction.

He earned a political science degree at Johnson State College, then abandoned a doctorate program in political theory and began working in computer programming. While working for Mobil Oil, and after being inspired by Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, he took a writing course at New York’s City College.

He began writing at 34 and has continued ever since, having penned fifty books in different fiction genres including mystery and Afrofuturist science fiction. He has also written non-fiction and plays.

In 1990, Devil in a Blue Dress was published, and featured the iconic character, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins. The book received a Shamus Award and was adapted into a 1995 movie starring Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizesmore, Maurey Chaykin and Don Cheadle.

His works have been translated into 21 languages. He’s won many awards and has served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards.

You once said your writing imagination was due to ‘an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies.’ Will you tell us more about that?

I was an only child. My mother was an only child and my father was an orphan. So, there was a lack of interaction between and among us. I was alone a lot. That being the case, I had to fill up time, so I made up stories. And I think that has stayed with me all these years.

Were your parents profound influences on you in relation to reading and storytelling?

My parents were extremely sophisticated. I was reading comic books and my father said to my mother, ‘He’s not reading. What’re we gonna do?’ My mother said, ‘The house is filled with books. You and I are always reading, so if there’s any possibility of him turning out to be a reader, he will be.’

That was the most they ever said about it. And it’s true: books were everywhere. I was looking at them, thinking about them, and I learned to revere them in certain ways.

I wasn’t told to read one book or another. My parents left it up to me to discover reading.

You once described your father as a deep thinker and storyteller, a ‘black Socrates.’ Will you elaborate a bit?

If you were poor and white, you might have claimed Socrates as an inspiration.

If you were poor and Chinese, maybe you would have said Confucius.

But if you were poor and black, there was nobody from your race you could claim.

Maybe you’d look up to someone, but that person wasn’t from your race or ethnicity.

My paternal grandfather was the only black man in New Iberia, Louisiana who could read. Everyone brought him their contracts, letters or whatever else required a written response.

My father, like his father and like Socrates, was first and foremost an educator. To me, my Dad was a ‘black Socrates.’

What inspired you to begin writing fiction?

I was in a Political Theory program at UMass Amherst. One day, I was sitting in class and listening to a revered professor of political theory—a man who studied Thucydides, the Greek historian, physician and general—and though I was really interested in the subject, I was incredibly bored by his lecture.

It was at that moment I realized I’d never be happy or truly successful as a teacher.

So I walked away from pursuing my doctorate, and went back to working in computer programming. Some years later, while still working in programming, I started to write.

You were thirty-four years old, and attended a writing course. I understand you were inspired by Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple.” What about the book inspired you?

I don’t know that I was inspired by The Color Purple, but when I read the book, I thought, ‘I could write like this.’ Not that I thought I was as good a writer as she was, but I knew I could use dialect and the black experience and make it into fiction.

I hadn’t had that realization before, even though I had read Richard Wright and other black writers.

I also read that a mentor at City College encouraged you by saying, ‘You’re Black, Jewish, with a poor upbringing: there are riches therein.’ How did that affect you?

That was Edna O’Brien. I think she’s the greatest living writer of English prose. She was teaching at City College.

Yes, she said that to me, but I already knew it. However, what Edna did do—which was much more important—one day, while reading something I had written, she said, ‘Walter, you should write a novel.’

I went, ‘Wow!’ This was Edna O’Brien, a brilliant person, who was also unbelievably beautiful. I would look at her and fall in love. And six weeks later, I’d written a novel—because Edna had told me to do it.

I don’t think she understood the impact she had on me.

Six weeks, first draft?

Yes, Gone Fishin’ was my first work of fiction.

Easy Rawlins is your most famous character. At the end of the 2007 novel “Blonde Faith,” you had him die. Or so it seemed. Will you talk about that?

I’d gotten to the end of the book. Easy was broken hearted and drunk, driving a car barefooted on the Pacific Coast Highway. He would pass cars and finally, he passed one. A truck was coming from the opposite direction and he was forced onto the shoulder. Then, the shoulder ended.

Now, I was simply writing this…I wasn’t really thinking. I was just writing. I wasn’t sure if I should have him go down the embankment. Then, I thought, ‘That’s what you wrote, you must have had a reason to write it, so leave it that way.’

And I did. I left it that he drove off the side of the mountain.

Now, it’s a first-person narrative, so obviously, he can’t be dead because in a first-person narrative, he’s telling the story to the reader. So, it’s impossible for him to be dead. But everybody else thought he was dead. That was fine with me because I didn’t know if I could write about Easy Rawlings anymore.

What made you feel you didn’t know if you could write anymore about Easy?

I couldn’t think of anything new, or anything different. Some years later, I realized the reason for that was I had been writing about my father and his world, but at that moment in time, I was entering my world. When I began writing from my own point of view, I could inform Easy from that perspective, and that’s when I wrote Little Green.

Yes, after “Blonde Faith,” you turned to writing novels about a New York-based private eye, Leonid McGill. But in 2013, you brought Easy Rawlins back in the novel “Little Green.” So, you rethought his disappearance?

Yes. I never thought of him as being dead. As I said, in the first person, he knew he’d gone off the cliff.

So where was he for six years? [Laughter]

He was nowhere.

I wasn’t writing about him for six years because I didn’t think I could. But then I realized, I’d write about him from my own vantage point.

I told myself, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

So, I resumed writing about Easy Rawlins in Little Green, which begins a few days after the accident in which he survived going down the embankment.

There have been debates in academic literary circles about whether your work should be considered ‘Jewish’ literature, or if you should be viewed as a ‘black’ author. What are your thoughts about being thus classified, and how do you view your work?

Well, let’s talk about generations.

My mother’s generation would say, ‘He’s a Jewish writer. He’s one of us.’

Their children would say, ‘Oh, Walter’s writing stories.’

Historically, the thing about being Jewish has been assimilation. You like to think of yourself as being part of the dominant culture. For example, you identify as being German because you were a heroic soldier in World War I. You think of yourself as a good German until the day you realize the dominant culture doesn’t want you anymore.

In America, you identify as being white. You think you’re assimilated until the day you’re not wanted because you’re a Jew.

A lot of people would say, ‘He’s not a Jewish writer.’ I mean, Philip Roth wrote a novel about a black university professor having sex with one of his students, and yet he was still Philip Roth, a Jewish writer.

Bernard Malamud wrote about Roy Hobbs in The Natural, but Roy Hobbs wasn’t Jewish.

So, the idea of excluding me from being a Jewish writer and just seeing me as a black writer, is an act of racism.

So obviously, you consider yourself simply a writer.

My mother’s Jewish, that means I’m Jewish. And so, I’m Jewish, and I’m a writer…so I’m a Jewish writer.

I’m also a black writer in America.

And beyond all that, I’m a writer. Period. The fact that people argue about it is wonderful. I enjoy that. [Laughter].

It’s nice to be argued about, isn’t it?

Absolutely. [More laughter].

You once said your first love is the genre of science fiction. What about it do you love so much?

It’s hard to say. It’s like being asked what you love about your children. Or, what do you love about the ocean? But science fiction is wonderful because it opens your imagination to all kinds of possibilities. Children’s stories are really science fiction or alternative fiction of some sort. I mean, think about Jack and the Beanstalk or Alice in Wonderland or Winnie the Pooh. They all involve an alternative reality.

Also, if you’re black in America, science fiction is one way to overcome your own history. If you write, ‘In 1832, there was a black president,’ that’s science fiction. It didn’t happen; but by writing that, you’ve created an alternative history which is science fiction.

I didn’t think about that element at the time I began reading science fiction, I just enjoyed the genre.

You’ve written stage plays in addition to novels. You’ve also written screenplays. How did you learn these crafts, and how do you approach them as compared to writing novels?

I could spend a long time talking about that. I’m not sure I studied the craft that much. To me, art is an unconscious activity. People’s desire to make it conscious baffles me. I don’t know much about the craft or how to consciously write these things. I’ve been teaching screenplay writing at Sundance for twenty years. Every time I teach, I expect they won’t ask me back. And then they call and ask me to come back to teach some more. If that’s what they want, okay, I’ll do it. [Laughter]. Each genre of writing has its own avenues and its own limitations. I like playing with that. It’s true about non-fiction, too. It’s really true about all art, and especially true about poetry. I don’t think much about the craft or the means by which I write. I just write. It flows.

Speaking of poetry, David Mamet says rap music is the operative poetry of our time.

Mamet’s a brilliant guy and I really like him. Yes, rap music certainly has poetic elements in its use of language and cadence. So do pop songs. So does really good oration. It’s all over the place.

Is it true that you’ve written virtually every day since 1986?

Yeah.

You never take a day off?

Maybe if I have a plane trip, or if I’m sick. Before I came down here to meet you, I was writing.

What’s a typical writing day like for you?

I get up and I write for three hours. That’s it.

You’ve been outspoken about racism in the publishing industry. What do you think can be done about it?

The publishing industry has become more and more corporate. Everything it publishes—from children’s books to pornography—is catering to different types of readers: native Americans, so-called Hispanics, so-called black and white, and Asian people.

I think it would behoove publishers to have people from all these groups as editors—not necessarily editing just the books from their race or culture. To have a native American edit a book for, let’s say, Scandinavians, would be very interesting. I think the writers and the readers would learn something.

Art is unconscious, and so is racism. There are those people who are afraid of others whom they don’t understand. And there are people who think they are right because other people think like them. And there are people who think they’re smarter than those in another group.

One of the things I love about the Easy Rawlins character is that he sees racial issues even in their most subtle forms.

He has to deal with racism all the time. When the waitress at the diner is afraid to take his order, he has to deal with it. So, it becomes a very practical matter.

In his own mind, Easy always describes people he meets as having various shades and tones of skin color. He’s very aware of racial differences.

Yes, it’s done in very practical ways. He’ll think so-and-so has very good-looking skin. It’s white, or pink, or olive-colored, or black, or bronze, or shiny.

The idea of defining race by color is idiotic.

I don’t believe in the existence of a ‘white’ race. I mean, there are people we call white, but the differences between and among then can be startling: one person is tall and beefy, has pink skin and red hair and blue eyes, while another you’re calling white is short and thin, has ivory-toned skin, black hair, and dark brown eyes, with totally different features, and speaks a different language. What makes them the same?

I think the thing that makes them the ‘same’ was colonization. So-called white people came here and felt they had to kill the so-called red man, and enslave the so-called black men and women. So, the people who did the killing and enslaving decided they needed to have a color, too; and they became ‘white.’ If you call something white, it should be white, like the whites of your eyes, right? [Laughter]

Who are the authors you enjoy reading most these days?

They’re probably the same authors as years ago. I re-read books a lot. I reread Marquez all the time. Even though I don’t like his politics, I re-read Eliot. I read a lot of science fiction. I’m almost positive that other writers don’t influence me. I write about the world I experience.

If you could read any single novel again as though reading it for the first time, which one would it be and why?

It has to be The Stranger by Camus. It’s an extraordinary book that speaks so much to the modern world. It speaks to the issue of humanity which is dealing with our instincts and our passions.

What if anything keeps you awake at night?

Nothing. [Lots of laughter]. I think it’s because I’m old enough that I could have been dead for a long time by now. And, I live in America, and have my arms and legs. I’m in pretty good health. And as far as I’m concerned, I’ve had enough success. If there’s anything I could get upset about it pales in comparison to the troubles of people living in Mosul. It’s extraordinary to think about how lucky I am to have the life I have. Something really bad has to happen for me not to sleep.

So you don’t let ‘first world problems’ eat away at you?

I don’t let my ‘first world problems’ eat at me. I mean, 2.8 million people in America are in prison. Two million of those fall within the definition of people of color. Those people have trouble in the first world. If I was about to go to trial tomorrow for something that might send me to prison, I wouldn’t sleep tonight. [More laughter].

If you could host a dinner with any five people from history or contemporary times, living or dead, real or fictional, from any walk of life, who would they be?

I know a lot of people, some of whom are quite famous or very wealthy, and they’re much sought after. But some of these people bore me, even though they’re smart and have accomplished great things. I’m just not interested in what they have to say.

Would I want to have dinner with Abraham Lincoln? If I said ‘yes’, maybe I’d regret it: he might be boring.

I know lots of people who’ve never done anything noteworthy, and I love spending time with them. I learn from them and enjoy their company.

So, I’ll pass on hosting your dinner party, and stick with inviting my friends.

What’s coming next from Walter Mosley?

I’ve written a book—not an Easy Rawlins novel—called Down the River Unto the Sea which is coming out in about nine months. I’ve written another book I’ve worked on for years about a deconstructionist historian. It’ll be published a few months after Down the River Unto the Sea; and I’ve written a children’s book for nine or ten-year olds called The Adventures of Renny a Little Brown Mouse.

Congratulations on such a diverse and successful career. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.

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‘House of Spies,’ My Talk with Daniel Silva

July 11, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Daniel Silva is the international award-winning author of the Gabriel Allon series which has topped the New York Times’s bestseller list many times. He burst onto the literary scene with his debut novel, The Unlikely Spy, which became a bestseller.

He soon began writing books about Gabriel Allon, an Israeli art restorer, assassin and spy. These novels have been translated into twenty-five languages and are available in more than thirty countries. Before becoming a novelist, Daniel was the Chief Middle East Correspondent for UPI in Egypt, and the Executive Producer of CNN’s Crossfire.

In House of Spies, London is the target of a horrific ISIS attack. Though coordinated brilliantly, there is one loose thread which leads Gabriel to the south of France where contact is made with a wealthy Frenchman and a British former fashion model. Gabriel must expertly engineer the situation to fight the global war on terror.

You completed “House of Spies” just before the recent ISIS attack in London. And last year, you completed “The Black Widow” just before the Paris attack. Is this prescience or do you have connections in the world’s intelligence communities?

It’s a little of both. Anyone who seriously follows these issues knew ISIS was desperate to attack the United Kingdom. ISIS painted a bulls eye on the UK. There were twelve or thirteen plots British intelligence and security services thwarted and disrupted, but it was only a matter of time before one slipped through the cracks. The Director General of MI 5 told the British people point blank there would be attacks in Britain. That’s why I chose to use Britain as a jumping off point for this story. While I was deeply saddened to see certain aspects of my book actually happen, I was not at all surprised.

“House of Spies” involves two fascinating new characters—one is Jean-Luc Martel. Tell us a bit about him.

Jean-Luc Martel is a wildly successful French entrepreneur who is in the hospitality industry—restaurants and hotels. That’s all a cover for his job as a drug trafficker.

After the eruption of the Arab Spring, and the eventual toppling of Muammar Gaddafi, ISIS set up shop along the Libyan coast, moving huge shipments of hashish and narcotics into Europe.

In my book, Jean-Luc Martel’s drug network is doing business with ISIS.

This presents Gabriel Allon and his allies an opportunity to penetrate ISIS indirectly by enlisting France’s biggest drug dealer as an unwilling asset of Israeli and French intelligence.

Among other things, the book explores the very real subject of coerced recruitment of assets.

The other new character is Olivia Watson. Tell us about her.

Olivia Watson is a former British fashion model who left the industry with some expensive habits, shall we say. She wasn’t in great financial shape and wanders down to St. Tropez where she works in a small art gallery. She meets Jean-Luc Martel. They form a partnership. He sets her up in business in a posh art gallery, but the gallery is a front for a giant money laundering machine for his drug enterprise.

Is there some significance to your having decided to make Gabriel Allon, a spy-assassin, and also an art restorer?

When I created Gabriel, I wanted him to have a distinct and prominent “other side” to his character. He had been a gifted painter, until he lost his will to create art because of his work as an assassin for Israeli intelligence.

Art restoration not only provides the perfect cover for him, but allows him to stay connected to art, which is his passion.

He’s a complex man, and it’s important to me that the reader see him in all his dimensions.

At the time I was creating Gabriel, I happened to be having dinner with one of the world’s foremost art restorers. He helped me turn this Israeli assassin into a restorer of Italian masterpieces.

You publish a new book during the second week of each July. Is there any significance to that date?

If you look at the publishing calendar, many authors publish books around the same date each year, whether it’s John Sandford, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, or myself. We all have our ‘slots.’ Mine became the second Tuesday of July. I’ve had at least ten books published on that day: it helps the industry with such things as production schedules and ordering; and hopefully, I’ve got readers who know to look for my next book at that time.

How long does it take you to write a novel?

Roughly, from Labor Day until April Fool’s Day. I finish my draft by about March first, and spend the next month rewriting and editing.

Do you have first readers for your novels?

I rely on two people only: my wife, and Lewis Toscano, my editor. Lewis has been editing my manuscripts and making them better since I was a twenty-four-year-old kid.

I’ve learned you write in longhand on a legal pad. Is that true?

Yes, that’s true.

Why not use a computer for that first draft?

I do use a computer for parts of that first draft, but I sit comfortably and quietly while I write in longhand. I think better by writing in longhand. I love the quiet atmosphere of it. I prefer not staring at a computer screen all day. For me, the pace of putting words on paper with the human hand lets me form my sentences as I go. I end up with a skyscraper-tall pile of legal pads by the end of a book.

I’ll tell you something: you could go through those papers and pull out large sections of the novel written in one take from beginning to end. For me, writing in longhand produces a far more polished first draft than I could ever produce by typing on a keyboard. I think it has to do with the slower pace of physically executing words and sentences. Thoughts go from my brain to my fingers and onto the paper via my pen.

All your novels, have plot twists and explosive turns. Do you usually pre-plan them or do they arise as you write?

For the most part, they arise as I write.

I don’t outline at all. My first draft is my outline. [Laughter]. I tried outlining once and felt it was a complete waste of time.

Tell us about the deal with MGM Television to turn Gabriel Allon’s adventures into a series. And why TV instead of a feature film?

It’s the deal I’ve been waiting for. We’re moving forward at full speed.

I had to make a basic choice: film versus television.

That decision became easy when I considered having the prospect of twelve hours of a television series devoted to Gabriel Allon versus two hours of film.

There’s a vast amount of material to capture and explore, and I’m fascinated by the prospect of seeing some of the older material updated.

Television has become quite innovative, and I think it was the way to go.

You once said you wanted Gabriel to live solely on the page. What changed your mind?

For many years, I was convinced Gabriel should live only on the page.

But, after The Black Widow was published, I was inundated with so many offers, I was finally able to feel pretty confident that the offer I would ultimately select would get the complex character of Gabriel and the tone for the series done correctly.

Do you see Gabriel Allon continuing for many more books?

That’s a difficult question to answer. Let’s just say that I’m working on another Gabriel Allon novel right now. [Laughter].

Congratulations on penning “House of Spies,” another electrifying novel about one of the most intriguing protagonists on the planet.

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‘The Boy Who Saw,’ A Conversation with Simon Toyne

July 4, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Simon Toyne was a highly successful writer, director, and producer in British television. He worked on many award-winning shows. Now, he is a full-time novelist, whose first book, Sanctus, became part of an internationally bestselling trilogy. His second series features a mesmerizing character, Solomon Creed.

In The Boy Who Saw, Solomon Creed is a mysterious hero who has no memory of who he is, or from where he came. The only clue to his identity is a label stitched inside his jacket saying: “This suit was made to measure for Mr. Solomon Creed.”

The jacket fits perfectly, but there is a second name on the label: the name of the tailor who made the suit and an address in Southern France.

Solomon heads to France in search of this man, hoping to discover more about his own identity. But instead of answers, he finds a bloody corpse with the Star of David carved into its chest and the words “Finishing what was begun” written in blood on the wall. Solomon continues his quest and finds himself amid a decades-old conspiracy that threatens his life and the well being of France.

It’s clear that The Boy Who Saw explores some dark themes based on some recent political events. Will you tell our readers what those events are and how they relate to the novel?

The central story revolves around a killer who has murdered a tailor and is trying to get the names of other people to kill. Along with the body of this tailor, the police discover a wall in his shop on which is written in blood, ‘Finishing what was begun.’ The ritualistic murder suggests it had something to do with the Nazi deathcamps. The victim, this tailor, was one of only four survivors from a specific death camp.

As the anniversary celebrating the end of the Second World War looms, someone is trying to complete the murders that began seventy years earlier. The novel is also set amidst the current political shift in both America and Europe—the turning toward hard, nationalistic right wing politics. The nationalists are looking for scapegoats, just as the Jews were scapegoated by Germany in World War II.

The entire story is really about the importance of remembering our history; otherwise, it will repeat itself. While it’s a thriller, with Solomon becoming a suspect who must escape and clear his name, it deals with modern themes and larger concerns set against the backdrop of a survivor’s memoir which ties it into what is happening today.

I like to explore a relevant theme through my writing, but I didn’t want to do so in a non-fiction format. I wanted it to be a dramatic rendering so it would be an exciting read that would still explore these larger themes and questions.

While it’s a true thriller, The Boy Who Saw, also deals with the beguiling mystery of memory, both on a grand scale and for an individual. Tell us more.

Memory is a theme that permeates all the Solomon Creed books. Solomon is a sort of genius in the sense that he knows virtually everything about anything. He has a Wikipedia-like mind. He knows history; he can speak many languages; but he can’t remember anything personal. His story, both in this book and in the rest of the series involves him being on a journey back to finding himself.

In this book, he’s in France because he’s wearing a beautifully tailored jacket with a note in the pocket saying it was made expressly for him. And in tiny stitching is the name and address of the tailor who is the person who was killed at the beginning of the book. Solomon knows he must have met the tailor, but of course, he has no recollection of it.

In the world-at-large, populism is rising at the same time the people who lived through the Second World War are dying off. So, I felt it was crucially important to tell this story lest we repeat our pasts.

The Boy Who Saw begins unravelling some of the mystery of Solomon Creed’s life. Do you intend to reveal more of it as the series progresses?

Yes. When I started writing these books, I knew who he was and what the ultimate revelation will be. I want each book to take place in a different location, with a distinct element of mystery, each addressing a specific moral dilemma or question. I want each volume in the series to solve a mystery, as Solomon goes through these experiences on his way to finding out historical bits about himself. By taking part in these difficult and dangerous experiences, he will learn more about himself. And of course, I want to take the reader on that same journey with Solomon.

It’s a gratifying challenge for me as writer to tell a satisfying story with a beginning, middle and ending in each book, but also with a thread running through it. It’s as though each book is a bead on a necklace.

There’s something mystical and mythological in your books. I’m reminded of the Myth of the Birth of the Hero by Otto Rank. Will you talk about the “myth” of Solomon Creed?

Even though the Solomon Creed books are modern thrillers, they have historic backstories, whether it’s The Searcher or The Boy Who Saw. And, though the books are thrillers, Solomon isn’t a stereotypical action hero. He’s somewhat ethereal. Typical action heroes have solid pasts—they’re ex-cops or ex-military who use their skillsets to solve crimes. With Solomon, the biggest mystery is himself. He lacks that centeredness. He has a mythological—nearly a supernatural—quality.

Yes, he bleeds and is mortal, but I wanted him to have a somewhat mythical dimension. And the novels raise the question—perhaps even the possibility—that he’s been reincarnated. There’s a tension and a question about the reality of Solomon, and he keeps cropping up in these historical contexts. I like playing with that possibility. As a reader, I enjoy characters who assume a quality of being slightly larger than life, someone who’s slightly other, or heroic. In fact, this Solomon Creed series is effectively, an odyssey of self-discovery.

You left a successful television career to begin writing your first novel. What motivated you to do so?

I was thirty-nine and perhaps it was a classic midlife crisis. I’d done everything I had wanted to do in TV. I always had this notion that I wanted to tell big stories. Approaching forty, I felt I was getting stale with my TV work, and told my wife I’d love to write a book and get it out of my system.

It would mean taking time off from my television job, which was all consuming. I didn’t want to write at night when I would be tired, and leave open the possibility of blaming any failure on fatigue. If I was going to fail, I wanted it to be an honest failure.

When I told my employer what I wanted to do, he offered me a one year sabbatical. That was certainly a sensible way to go, but I turned it down. I felt I had to remove the safety net and take on the dare for myself—without the security of knowing I could go back. I knew writing a novel would be very hard, and wanted to remove any possible temptation to give up and return to my old job.

We saved up some money. I quit my job; we rented out our flat, and went to live in France for six months. That’s how it started.

My first novel Sanctus was a hit and was translated into twenty-seven languages.

What, if anything, keeps you awake at night?

I’m a good sleeper. With three young children, I’m worn out at the end of the day. I do have fitful sleep when I’m about two-thirds of the way through a book. At that point, I know everything I’ve written needs a good deal of work, and there’s a deadline looming. I know I’ll have to tidy things up, and it feels like I’ve got this terribly heavy weight on my back. That’s also the point in the writing where I think the idea that I first thought was really good, suddenly seems like the worst idea anyone has ever had. [Laughter]. And, I still have to show up every day and finish this thing that’s fallen out of favor.

What’s coming next from Simon Toyne?

I’m well into Solomon Creed’s third book which is set in England.

Congratulations on penning The Boy Who Saw, a propulsive thriller with historical, philosophical, mythical, political and religious undertones, a novel that hooked me from the first page and propelled me to the vary last one.

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