Interviews | Mark Rubinstein Blog

‘Bone Box,’ A Conversation with Faye Kellerman

March 3, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Faye Kellerman is the bestselling author of 30 previous novels, most of them featuring the husband and wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. Faye and her husband, Jonathan Kellerman, are the only married couple ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously for two different novels. And both are authors very long-running series.

Bone Box, the 28^th installment of the Decker/Lazarus series, begins with Rina making a shocking discovery of bones found in the woods of her upstate New York community. It leads her husband, police detective Peter Decker, to investigate a series of gruesome unsolved murders which point to a diabolical serial killer who’s been hiding in plain sight. And whoever this psychopath is, he may be on the hunt for a fresh victim.

It’s clear from reading Bone Box that you know a good deal about forensic science. How did you learn so much?

As you know from our last talk, in my early years, I was trained as a dentist. We studied gross anatomy, which is where I got the title Bone Box. Dental students have a different experience from medical students: while medical students are given the entire body in gross anatomy, we are given parts of the body in a bone box. This is how we dentists begin learning the anatomy of the body, especially the head and neck.

As for forensic science, I ran with my basic knowledge of anatomy and medical science and talked to a few experts. I also went online—an easy and wonderful way to do research these days—and found all the forensic information I needed for the story.

Of course, over the years there have been advances in forensic science’s ability to make determinations about a very decomposed body, and all that research was available online. So, I used my basic knowledge and updated it by reading articles.

What do you feel makes Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus so appealing to the reading public?

I think they’re appealing because they’re full, fleshed-out characters.

I like that Peter is a great family man and is passionate about his work. To him, solving each crime becomes a personal mission. I like characters who care about what they’re doing and who are concerned about the victims. I think readers also like that.

I think Rena and Peter have a very good marriage, but it’s a realistic one. Sometimes they fight and I think lots of people can identify with that. She’s also a good homemaker and enjoys cooking her kugel and brisket, but contributes to Peter’s investigations whenever she feels it’s necessary to join in.

Part of why I moved them to a small town and away from Los Angeles was to allow Rena to play a larger role in the investigations. With the L.A.P.D., there was no way she could have access to the material Peter shares with her now. The L.A.P.D. is a huge, monolithic bureaucracy, but in a small town, there are fewer resources, so she can become involved.

In Bone Box, Peter Decker’s interrogation tactics are quite impressive. Have you studied interrogation techniques?

I haven’t studied interrogation techniques as a field of endeavor, but I haven seen interrogations moving away from the old concept of ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop.’

In my books, Peter and the interviewee simply talk. If you get a person talking, he or she will tell you all sorts of things. I think to be a good interrogator, you must be a very good listener. If you get guilty people talking, they will inevitably come out with a contradiction to a lie they’ve told. A good interrogator must engage in active listening, and that’s what Peter does.

Do you ever brainstorm with Jonathan for plot ideas or twists?

We don’t really brainstorm. I’ll come up with the root of an idea and I might mention it to him. Sometimes I show him a finished book. Many times, I give him the first fifty pages and ask him what he thinks.

I tend to do a lot of walking to stimulate my imagination. I love to walk and think about what might make an interesting story that will provide readers with a few hours of entertainment and relaxation.

Which question do you get asked more often than any other?

The question I’m asked most often is ‘How do you come up with ideas?’

The thing is, I never know what’s going to become an integral part of a novel, but it all derives from some part of my life experience or imagination.

I write well-fleshed out characters, and—you know this better than I do—inevitably, more ideas spring from my subconscious. They all have a little bit of me in them. It’s very hard to figure out in advance how a story will unfold, but after having written so many novels, I feel more comfortable letting the ideas come up from somewhere in my own subconscious. Writing is much easier now because that sense of panic I used to experience doesn’t set in as I begin a new book.

What moves you most in a novel?

I’m most moved by very interesting characters.

Occasionally, I’ll find a novel that’s so cleverly plotted, it grabs me; but mostly, I want to follow a person in whatever journey he or she is taking, if that character is likable and identifiable. And I try to impart that in my own novels. I always ask myself: how does the crime affect the people involved?

If you could re-experience reading one novel as though reading it for the first time, which one would it be?

Wow. That’s a tough one. [Laughter]. Leaving my husband’s books aside, and my son Jesse’s, I’ll pick Jane Eyre. It’s a very personal story of a girl who becomes a woman. I’d also say The Count of Monte Cristo, that’s a novel of world adventure and a swashbuckling account of extreme revenge.

Both books moved me as a teenager and opened my eyes to a world far beyond my very confined one.

What’s coming next from Faye Kellerman?

I have my first, standalone novel coming out some time this summer. It’s called The Killing Season and involves a seventeen-year-old boy looking for the murderer of his older sister.

Congratulations on writing Bone Box, a superb police procedural with a great deal of warmth and heart. It takes the reader into the world of detective work, forensics, marriage, medicine, murder and mystery.

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‘Ripper,’ A Conversation with Patricia Cornwell

February 28, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Patricia Cornwell is known to millions of readers as the award-winning and bestselling author of the Kay Scarpetta series. In 2001, she was pulled into a real-life investigation of her own—the long-unsolved “Jack the Ripper” murders that appalled and fascinated London in the late 1800s. Applying old-fashioned as well as modern forensic techniques to a century old crime, Patricia Cornwell’s research led to the publication of Portrait of a Killer, in which she identified the renowned British painter Walter Sickert as the Ripper.

The book created considerable controversy and thereafter, Patricia devoted countless hours and resources pursuing new evidence against Sickert. In Ripper, The Secret Life of Walter Sickert, she revisits, revises and expands upon her findings of the most notorious unsolved crime wave in history.

Give us a brief overview of Jack the Ripper’s crimes and the impact he had on London in the 1880s.

Jack the Ripper’s crimes began then, but there was nothing in the London newspapers about a “Jack the Ripper.” The first reports noted some fiendish killer was terrorizing the impoverished East End, an area of slums known as Whitechapel. A prostitute was killed at the end of August of 1888; she’d been stabbed more than twenty times. Nobody paid much attention to it. Then, another woman was murdered soon afterwards; her throat was cut in the streets of the East End, in the early hours of the morning.

The murders became infamous when “Jack the Ripper” began writing letters to the media and to the police. He named himself “Jack the Ripper” and signed the letters using that name or others such as “Saucy Jack” or “Jackie Boy.” The letters were hateful, violent and mocking. By the end of September of 1888, there were five, if not six, murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. In the London slums where the prostitutes and immigrants lived in a sea of misery, they talked about “The Knife” and warned each other to be aware there was someone out there who killed.

Then the worst murder occurred which was the killing of Mary Kelly in early November of 1888. She was not murdered in the streets, but in her hovel. All her organs were removed but her brain, and she was flayed to the bone. Her right leg was flayed down to the femur.

We don’t know how many murders Jack the Ripper actually committed. There’s a great deal of evidence that there were at least seven, and probably many more as I point out in the book. These kinds of killers change how they commit murder. The stakes escalate for such a killer. From a psychological standpoint, it takes more to satisfy the compulsion to kill. I believe that’s when Jack the Ripper began to dismember his victims.

What made you so interested in solving these crimes?

It’s what happens to me with anything that gets my attention.

In the Spring of 2001, a Scotland Yard investigator gave me a tour of the Metro Police headquarters, and took me to the East End where these murders had occurred. I was simply being given a tour. I then asked a fateful question: ‘Who were the suspects?’ He rattled off the names, many of which were familiar to Ripperologists. He said they were suspects with no basis in fact or evidence. It was just speculation. I asked about any evidence and he told me the only evidence left in the case were the actual letters the Ripper wrote to the media and police. They were in the national archives. I considered the fact that documents can provide a plethora of forensic evidence.

There can be DNA evidence or even statement analysis, which can be a valuable tool in an investigation—the perpetrator’s choice of words, his language, the spellings and misspellings—can be revealing.

I decided to look at the letters.

The investigator told me an artist had been named as a possible suspect in the Ripper case: one Walter Sickert, a prominent English artist during the Victorian era.

I began looking at art books and the hair on the back of my neck stood up: Sickert’s paintings were very disturbing. They conveyed an undercurrent of morbidity and violence, particularly against women. But that wasn’t enough to make me think Sickert had committed the crimes.

I looked at the archived letters and was shocked. Readers will see in both the e-book and print edition of Ripper these paintings and letters. You can see how the watermarks match, and how the paintbrush strokes where he painted a letter instead of writing it conform to each other. The art work itself presents a compelling and multi-layered and very clear case against Walter Sickert.

As the book notes, Walter Sickert was a well-known painter and student of James Abbott Whistler. Tell us a bit more.

The most amazing thing about the Ripper case is that nobody ever imagined that Jack the Ripper was part of the Victorian art world—the theatrical stage and the art studio. Sickert started out as an actor. Interestingly, his stage name was ‘Mr. Nemo’ which means Mr. Nobody. One of the telegrams Jack the Ripper sent was signed ‘Mr. Nobody,’ then it was crossed out and replaced with ‘Jack the Ripper.’

Jack the Ripper wrote letters he signed ‘Nemo.’ He wrote many letters to the editor of a newspaper. This perpetrator had graphomania; he was a compulsive writer. Sickert was also a compulsive writer. He would apologize to friends for writing so often. He had a psychological compulsion to murder. It was an addiction that took the place of sex and other normal things people seek for gratification.

Speaking of psychology, in Ripper you compare Walter Sickert’s compulsion to murder, likening him to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Will you talk about that?

This all sprang forth from the London stage.

Sickert went from being a failed actor to becoming an apprentice of James McNeill Whistler, the painter of ‘Whistler’s Mother.’ Whistler was flamboyant and famous for running around the streets of London with Oscar Wilde. He was like a modern-day rock star. Sickert felt diminished around this famous man, which added to his feelings of belittlement and rage. This tapped into his sexual inadequacies concerning a deformity of his genitalia, as detailed in the book. Sickert had three surgeries for a fistula on his southern hemisphere by the time he was five years old. He underwent these surgeries without anesthesia which left him physically and emotionally scarred for life.

In the summer of 1888, A famous American actor, Richard Mansfield, wanted to bring Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the London stage. Mansfield mounted the production in August of 1888. Sickert knew all about this because he was an actor in that same theater, and in fact, the stage manager was none other than Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. They all knew each other.

The theme of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde concerns a duality of someone who, on the surface is respectable, but who transforms into a monster. It’s a metaphor for the psychiatric pathology of a compulsive killer. It’s a picture of the two faces of this type of person. I once asked an expert who had dealt with sexual psychopaths—people like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer—when do we know when someone who is charming and attractive is truly evil, and a killer? He said, ‘You know it about one minute before they kill you.’

This book shows people what this kind of killer really is like. It speaks to the need to get away from mythologizing him.

Jack the Ripper was not a charming top-hatted man in the London fog. He was a monster in the fog, with whom you might have coffee in the morning and think he’s witty, nice-looking, but a bit cold, not empathic, and who never feels guilt or regret about anything.

Tell us about the modern forensic techniques you brought to this investigation.

My investigation was an alchemy of the lowest and highest forms of technology imaginable. I used both in this case. I put letters on an old-fashioned light box or under a microscope. I even used a magnifying lens to examine the paper on which the Ripper wrote. I brought in experts to examine the paper which involved taking precise measurements of the hand-made paper and studying its watermarks. It became like fingerprints in the case.

As for the latest technology, we used spectroscopy and DNA analysis—non-destructive techniques to learn more about these hundreds of letters. Because they’re considered national treasures, we couldn’t take these letters to a laboratory and run forensic tests because they cannot leave the archives or risk being damaged. I brought over a Harvard scientist to look at colored pencils, lithography instruments, etching materials, and paint brushes. In one of the letters, Ripper penciled the letters first and when looking at it under a lens, you can see he dipped a paint brush in red ink and painted the letter. That wasn’t done by some deranged miscreant living in the London slums.

Congratulations on writing Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert. It’s a highly readable expose of perhaps the world’s most famously chilling case of serial murder; the vain efforts of the police to solve the crimes; and the compelling revelations your exhaustive research has unearthed.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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‘Heartbreak Hotel,” A Conversation with Jonathan Kellerman

February 27, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Jonathan Kellerman, the bestselling author of forty-one crime novels, is known to mystery-lovers everywhere. With a doctorate in psychology, Jonathan has applied his knowledge not only to his novels, but to those he has co-written with his wife Faye, and son, Jesse. All three of them are bestselling authors. Additionally, he has written two children’s books and many nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children, and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He’s won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony Awards, and has been nominated for a Shamus Award.

Heartbreak Hotel, is the latest novel in Jonathan’s acclaimed Alex Delaware series. Along with Sue Grafton’s “Alphabet series” The Alex Delaware series is one of the longest running on the literary landscape.

Heartbreak Hotel begins with nearly one-hundred-year-old Thalia Mars asking Alex to come to her suite at the Aventura, a luxury hotel with a checkered history. Thalia asks him questions about guilt, criminal behavior and victim selection. When Alex inquires about her fascination with these issues, Thalia promises to reveal more in their next meeting. But when Alex shows up the next morning, Thalia is dead in her suite.

Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis find themselves peeling back many layers of Thalia’s long life, and nearly a century of secrets slowly emerge—secrets that unleash an explosion of violence.

Alex Delaware has evolved over the years. Tell us a bit about that evolution.

It’s funny because it wasn’t a conscious decision to have Alex evolve over time. People reading the earlier books are in a better position than I am to see the changes in him. I rarely read my earlier books unless I’m doing research for accuracy. My son, Jesse, said the earlier books are a bit more literary, there’s more verbiage and description in them than in the later novels.

While I don’t age Alex in real time, he’s mellowed out over the years. Maybe you’re the better judge than I am. Maybe he’s mellowing as I’ve mellowed over time. [Laughter]. I must say, I don’t want him to lose his edge. I still want him to be compulsively driven because that’s what drives a crime novel forward. I don’t think there’s anything more boring that a crime novel in which the protagonist is really laid back.

The dialogue in Heartbreak Hotel is edgy and realistic. Talk to us about the importance of dialogue in your novels.

Dialogue is interesting. When I first started writing novels, I felt creating dialogue was a weakness of mine. I thought my strengths were playing with language and description. I’m a visual person. I’ve been a serious artist for most of my life. I was able to paint and draw like an adult when I was ten. I tend to perceive the world in a visual manner.

My wife Faye is an auditory writer. She has an amazing ear and can imitate people after hearing them speak once. I learned to write dialogue from Faye, and from reading Elmore Leonard. I realized when you write dialogue, it must sound like people talking. But of course, it’s not like people talking because when they talk, the conversation is replete with ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and pauses. Dialogue in a novel is an artifice in which you construct a false reality. I learned to keep it snappy and to open my ears to what people say and how they say it. The rhythm of dialogue came easily to me because I’m a musician and understand cadence and timing. Over the years, I’ve tried to make the dialogue better, because I don’t want it to seem stale. I think I’ve improved writing dialogue by listening to people talk and by keeping the dialogue brief, avoiding too much running on and on.

In Heartbreak Hotel, Alex’s internal thoughts and descriptions often reflect on issues larger than the novel itself. An example: “Some cops toss a room with the abandon of deranged adolescents. My friend’s grooming may come across as hastily assembled but he puts things back exactly where he found them.” Your novels not only tell a story, but serve as a vehicle for commentary about life. Tell us about that.

I think that’s just naturally the way I see the world. You as a psychiatrist and I as a psychologist must acknowledge we got into this field because we see things in multiple dimensions.

I never set out to write a ‘message book,’ but things concern me, and by dealing with larger issues, I hope to elevate the story beyond it being just a good crime novel. And, I call what I write a ‘crime novel’ rather than a mystery, because the story is always propelled by the crime.

Of course, my experience as a psychologist informs my writing. For example, as someone who worked with children in oncology, an event like a terrible cancer diagnosis can become a catalyst for unlocking all kinds of other issues. That awareness colors my writing in the sense that a specific crime can open up a Pandora’s box of reactions. Every crime impacts people, and trauma can bring out the best or worst in them, whether in a novel or in real life.

Alex Delaware had a difficult childhood. As psychologists, both he and you know the indelible effects of the past on current functioning. How does Alex’s past affect his present life?

I developed and evolved Alex’s past as I got to know him better by writing books about him. When I wrote the first one, When the Bough Breaks, which was published in 1985, I had a certain notion back then about Alex. I never thought I’d get published or that it would become a successful series. I learned about Alex along with my readers, and things began falling into place. I parcel his childhood and all of Alex’s personal history into the books very judiciously. In some novels, he’s a protagonist; in others he’s a consulting psychologist. Of course, his past has impacted his interest in psychology and in wanting to set certain things right.

You once said, “Psychology and fiction are actually quite synchronous.” Tell us more about that.

I think both involve attempts to better understand people.

As a psychologist, I love my work because I learn about people and what drives them.

As a writer, I get to play God by creating characters, and then get to see how they react to difficult situations.

What unifies psychology and fiction is they are both avenues to explore more about the human condition.

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

“I’ve never been asked that question. [Laughter] That’s a tough one. The Count of Monte Cristo was the seminal novel in my life. I read it as a youngster. It struck me as an amazing book. There was so much going on: adventure, comradery, relationships and revenge.

What’s coming next from Jonathan Kellerman?

I’m working on the next Delaware novel. Jesse and I have a book coming out called Crime Scene. It’s the beginning of a new series. I always wanted to write a novel about a crime scene investigator, which is what this novel concerns. Jesse and I wrote it together and we’re now outlining the second one.

Congratulations on penning Heartbreak Hotel, another Alex Delaware mystery that goes far beyond its genre. It’s a compelling psychological crime novel with deeply imagined characters told in a literary style that kept me turning pages to the very end.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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‘What You Break,’ A Conversation with Reed Farrel Coleman

February 7, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Reed Farrel Coleman is well-known by thriller lovers everywhere. He’s the author of many novels and the winner of the Shamus, Barry, and Anthony Awards as well as being a three-time Edgar Award nominee. His books include the Moe Prager series and the Gus Murphy series, among others.

What You Break features retired Suffolk County cop Gus Murphy who’s caught up in a heinous crime committed decades earlier. Gus’ friend, ex-priest Bill Kilkenny, introduces him to a wealthy businessman who wants Gus to look into the motive of the brutal murder of his granddaughter. That’s when Gus finds both his own life and that of his girlfriend Magdalena, in imminent danger.

Tell us about the title, What You Break, and how it relates to the story.

We’re all familiar with the sign in many stores saying, If you break it you own it. To me, What You Break is the story of people who have things in their lives that have been broken. Some things they themselves broke; some things, broken by others. It’s a story about who accepts ownership of what they’ve broken and who refuses to do so. And it’s about the price one pays for the damage done.

We’ve all broken things in our lives, but how many of us have paid the price for having done so?

Gus Murphy is a somewhat cynical guy whose life has taken some terrible turns. He’s a complex character with different facets to his personality. Will you tell us a little about him?

If you look at my other popular protagonist, Moe Prager, and compare him to Gus Murphy, they have similar back stories: both were cops; both have families; both become private investigators, but Moe has always been cynical, whereas Gus, had been an optimistic guy, who believed in people even after twenty years as a Suffolk County police officer. However, after Gus’s son dies unexpectedly, while playing pick-up basketball, Gus is in the process of becoming someone different—someone the old Gus wouldn’t recognize. Gus is becoming cynical, and he’s far less optimistic about the future. He has a darker view of people. Gus is evolving, and my goal in the series is to see who Gus becomes. I think that’s what makes the series interesting.

Two of the issues in What You Break are guilt and redemption. Will you talk about that?

In classic hard boiled fiction, a crime is committed. The PI or cop comes on the scene, and his duty, against great odds, is the restoration of balance and of some small measure of redemption. In What You Break, guilt and redemption are explored in what I think are interesting ways.

There are two characters about whom Gus has very different feelings. Both have committed terrible crimes. Can Gus restore any humanity to either one of those characters? And, do they want it restored? Gus dirties himself by trying to redeem both of them, but we won’t talk specifics because we don’t want to put out spoilers.

One of the things I loved about the first Gus Murphy novel, Where It Hurts, and now in the second one, is that Gus comments to himself about the human condition. How does this relate to crime novels?

Let’s think about the arena in which Gus operates. It’s the worst and most emotionally trying arena. It’s one reason why people are drawn to war movies: the characters are operating in the most emotionally heightened conditions possible. Murder does the same thing. You deal with people who are in the most extreme situations, which exposes them for who they really are. In day-to-day life, we all do a great deal of covering up about who and what we are, but when we’re stressed and pushed, that’s when our true selves are revealed.

Seeing people in this heightened state of reality gives Gus insight about them and on himself. It’s a great arena for him to be an observer of the human condition.

In What You Break, Gus appears to be evolving in relation to his son’s death. Will you talk about that?

Immediately after his son’s death, he was grief-stricken, but I think his major reaction was anger at how dare the universe operate in a way he could never have imagined. He always had everything he wanted; a job he loved, a wife and family, a house and a pension. When his son died, the rug was pulled out from under his feet. He was angry at everyone and everything. Also, he was angry at himself.

What You Break takes place three years after his son’s death. He’s become more philosophical. He used to think there were answers for everything. He now realizes that sometimes there are no answers, and sometimes even when there are answers, it barely matters. It’s an interesting dilemma for Gus, because as a PI, he’s in the business of providing answers.

How much of Reed Farrel Coleman is embodied in Gus Murphy?

Actually, unlike Moe Prager, who is very much like me—he’s a better-looking, less intelligent and braver person than I am—Gus isn’t me at all. People think only someone who has suffered tragedy could write such a book, with Gus having lost his son. That kind of tragedy hasn’t befallen me. I’m grateful not to be Gus. I’m enjoying imagining someone in that situation and seeing how he goes on with his life.

What has surprised you about the writing life?

What’s surprised me is how hard it is. As much as I love writing, the fact is it’s hard work. Even if I don’t feel well, I sit down and write. If I had another job, I might call in sick, but the job of writing is always there, right in front of me. I always tell people who say they would like to write, if it’s not a calling and you earn a living doing something else, keep doing that something else. It has to be a labor of love to write.

What’s coming next from Reed Farrel Coleman?

I’m writing the 2018 Jesse Stone book, it’s Robert B. Parker’s, The Hangman’s Sonnet.

Congratulations on writing What You Break. It’s a gripping and beautifully crafted novel about a fascinating character whose complexities and observations about life elevate the novel beyond its genre, and which the Washington Post described as an “evocative mystery readers will remember as much for its charged sense of place as for any of its other considerable virtues.”

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‘The Travelers,’ A Conversation with Chris Pavone

January 10, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

‘The Travelers,’ A Conversation with Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone, formerly a book editor, is the author of two previous New York Times bestsellers, The Accident and The Expats, and winner of the Edgar and Anthony Awards. His latest novel is The Travelers.

The Travelers features Will Rhodes, his wife Chloe, and Malcomb, his boss at the magazine Travelers at which Will is an international correspondent writing about food, wine, foreign cultures, celebrities and expats. But Will has no idea of the secret agendas of some people, including those of his wife and Malcomb. When Will travels to Capri, Bordeaux, Paris, London and Argentina, he finds himself at the center of a dangerous web, one imperiling his marriage, career, and his life.

The Travelers takes readers from the beaches of France, to Barcelona, New York, Argentina and to Iceland, all places hiding a dark story of surveillance, lies and espionage. How did you acquire so much knowledge about clandestine espionage operations?

[Laughter] I don’t think I’ve acquired much knowledge about espionage.

I imagined this novel as a story about people who don’t really know for whom they work. We all live in a universe in which we’re either asked to or are forced to accept certain premises about our employment without having the opportunity to verify them. There are some types of employment where it’s perfectly clear for whom you’re working: for instance, teaching in a public school, your boss is the principal, who works for the Board of Education which is publicly funded, it’s very clear.

It’s less clear in the private sector. We go to work every day and often don’t know who owns the company or what their real agenda may be. We don’t truly know what kind of contribution we’re making to some hidden end-game. It took me a decade of working for a large company before I had the curiosity to find out who actually owned that company.

That experience became the premise of this novel. Espionage is somewhat incidental to the story I wanted to tell.

In most espionage novels, the characters risk their lives trying to save somebody, or while protecting a nation from some threat. In The Travelers, that’s not what’s going on. I used espionage as a device to heighten the characters’ personal dramas.

Self-interest thrusts the characters into conflict with one another. Deceit in both personal and business relationships results in their lives spinning out of control.

Speaking of conflicts, I loved your depictions of the inner workings of various characters’ minds, especially Will’s and his boss, Malcomb’s. Will you talk about that?

I try to construct each of my novels around one central theme—core tensions shared by the characters. In The Travelers, everyone is defined by his or her relationship to work. I put each character on a different rung of the ladder: from the lowliest assistant to a powerful man in the world of media.

Will occupies a middle rung; while Malcom, as the editor, is perched at the top.

Their seemingly comfortable and enviable lives have been intertwined for many years, and they consider each other friends; but certain tensions are added to the mix when Will finds himself working for Malcom. That tension is central to the drama in this book.

One man is lying to the other about something critically important to the other.

We’re not worried someone’s going to get killed, but rather, we’re worried someone will be found out.

Much of The Travelers orbits around marital secrets, as did your novel, The Expats. Will you talk about secrets and lies in a marriage?

I think secrets are a compelling issue for a novel to explore. Most people are married and I don’t think Im going too far out on a limb by saying no one is completely truthful about everything. What if a particular lie your spouse is telling you has enormous consequences ?

What if he or she isn’t who they claim to be ? What if what they actually do for a living is not what you’ve been led to believe they do? What if you’re waking up each morning next to someone who at least in part, is a stranger?

Although I don’t have those concerns about my wife [Laughter]; at times, I do have those irrational thoughts about people in general. And, I don’t think I’m alone in that regard. So, I like that kind of tension in a novel. It allows the reader to root for both sides: on one hand, you want the person to be found out, but you also want the secrets to remain intact.

I was impressed by your rich descriptions of even the most quotidian things: an airport, a party, a yacht, a room, or a building’s basement or lobby. How would you describe your writing style?

I think my writing style is sensual. I attempt to engage all the reader’s sense memories when I’m writing descriptive passages. I use descriptions to set a mood and drive the reader to expect or worry about something. It helps to engage every sense—not just seeing things, but tasting, smelling, and hearing things. I try getting as much of that onto the page as is reasonable. I try to engage readers so it feels like they’re actually there, in the scene.

Who are the writers who have influenced your own writing?

That’s such a hard question to answer. The truth is that I’m influenced in some way by practically everything I read, and I read an enormous amount of fiction. I’m constantly taking notes on things that occur to me while I’m reading someone else’s book. The jottings have nothing to do with the book I’m reading, but something I’m reading triggers my own imagination in a completely different direction. There’s very little that makes me want to write more and better than my being immersed in a very good book.

What do you love about the writing life?

I absolutely love writing. As a kind of labor that people will pay you to do, I can’t imagine anything better. I love making things up and my favorite part of writing is when creating the first draft of a novel. I love making decisions and finding new plot twists. I love the invention. The one thing I don’t like is that too frequently, I get ideas in the middle of the night. I have to write them down or I won’t remember them. Then, I can’t get back to sleep because my imagination is all fired-up.

What’s coming next from Chris Pavone?

I’m writing a sequel to my first book, The Expats. This one is called The Paris Diversion and features some of the characters from the first novel.

Congratulations on writing The Travelers, a propulsive, richly imagined, insightful, literary thriller that had me guessing all the way to the last pages.

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a medical/psychiatric memoir.

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You’re Invited to Dinner with Famous Authors

November 28, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Over the years, I’ve interviewed many well-known authors, and we’ve discussed their writing careers as well as some aspects of their personal lives. One question I sometimes ask has been “food for thought” for many writers, and their answers often reveal much about them. Readers of my blog seem to especially enjoy this query, and the responses it engenders:

Here’s the question: You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five people, living or dead, real or fictional, from any walk of life. Who would they be?

Here are responses from some well-known novelists:

Alex Kava: I would start by inviting Harper Lee because To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book. It would be amazing to be able to talk with her. Then, I’d invite Alfred Hitchcock because I love using the Hitchcockian approach to suspense thrillers—bringing the readers to the edge and leaving them there. My next guest would be Scout Finch. Can you imagine Scout contradicting some of the stories as Harper Lee would be trying to tell them? Amelia Earhart is fascinating, so I’d invite her. And the fifth would be Jack London, a real ‘dog person,’ because I just loved Call of the Wild.

Michael Connelly: An obvious one would be Raymond Chandler. The other one is easy: my father passed away before I was published and had any success, so I’d like to have a meal with him now. I was very close to a cousin who passed away when we were twelve. I’d like to catch up with her. And maybe I’d like to meet the real Hieronymus Bosch. But, he might throw soup at me for taking his name.

Daniel Silva: Churchill would be there. I’d invite George Orwell who might be coughing and wheezing and not feeling well but I’d love to talk to him. It would be fun to have FDR along with Churchill—to have the two leaders who saved the world sitting at the same table. How about inviting the acerbic Graham Greene? And then, I’d love to have Hemingway join us. Can you imagine the amount of drinking going on with Churchill and Hemingway there? [Laughter]. I’d watch the whole evening explode.

Laura Lippman: I’d invite Stephen Sondheim. I’d love to have Ferran Adrià, the chef from el Bulli, a seminal figure in the world of cooking. My husband would be there because I love him, and he’s great company. I would also invite a friend who’s the most provocative, no-holds-barred person I know, Rebecca Chance; and I’d love to invite Michelle Obama. I wouldn’t invite any dead people because I’d have to spend so much time bringing them up to speed on stuff. Imagine saying to Shakespeare, ‘The other day, I Googled someone…’ and he would look at me like I’m insane [Laugher].

Reed Farrel Coleman: I’d invite Moses, Jesus of Nazareth, Marilyn Monroe, T. S. Eliot, even though he’d hate being with so many Jews. [Laughter]. And then I’d invite my grandfather. He apparently loved me, but I don’t remember him. He died when I was very young.

Tess Gerritsen: I would ask Cleopatra. She’s a fascinating character who could purportedly twist men around with her intellect. I’d also invite Margaret Meade. And then, I’d ask Amelia Earhart. I’m really interested in accomplished and interesting women. [Laughter]. The funny thing is I don’t find writers all that interesting. We writers live in such a world of imagination, we’re too busy to go out and do things ourselves. I’m most interested in people who’ve done things. I would also like to have the young King Tut at the dinner. And last, but certainly not least, I’d invite Genghis Khan.

Robert Crais: I’d probably invite a couple of painters. There would also be a couple of architects. Painters and architects fascinate me. I think we all do the same thing: it’s just that their mediums are different. Their brains work in a different way and I’m fascinated by that. I’d also invite someone like Ray Bradbury or Robert Heinlein, science fiction writers. They would see the world very differently than I do.

Karen Slaughter: I’d invite Flannery O’Connor. Then, I’d have Margaret Mitchell and Truman Capote, two Southern writers. I’d invite Bill and Hillary Clinton because they could get any one of those other guests to talk and be interesting, even if some of them had a little too much to drink or if they were typically shy writers. I’ve met both Clintons. Bill has an amazing mind, and Hillary really has it together. It’s incredibly impressive when you’re a woman and meet another woman with so much to offer.

Robin Cook: I’d invite David McCullough, a wonderful historian, writer and conversationalist. I’d invite Simon the Magician—the bad boy in the Bible. From St. Peter, he tried to buy the ability to cure. I would have to invite Jesus of Nazareth. If one wants to believe the stories in the New Testament, he was the most amazing healer of all. I’d invite Upton Sinclair whose book, The Jungle, changed something really bad—certain public policy. And, I’d invite FDR. He probably had the best chance of all presidents to get us a rational national health policy.

Catherine Coulter: Georgette Heyer, a British author who died in 1972. She’s the one who invented a sub-genre called the Regency romance. Then, I’d love to have Agatha Christie for dinner. I would love to have dinner with Charles II. And I’d want to meet the modern Plato—the same philosopher, but brought into contemporary times. And then, maybe Edward I. He’s very much alive in my books—he’s a character for me—and I’d just love to ask him questions about how he deals with my other characters. He lives on in my own private little realm of ideas.

David Morrell: Thomas De Quincey would be high on my list as would Benjamin Franklin. My mentors, Philip Young and the screenwriter Stirling Siliphant who wrote Route 66 would be there, too. If we’re talking about the great minds, I think St. Thomas Aquinas would be at the table.

Patricia Cornwell: I’d love to have dinner with Dickens. And with Agatha Christie. I’d love to have met Lincoln. I’m so sorry I never got to meet Truman Capote. I think In Cold Blood is one of the greatest true-crime books ever written. I think dead people might be my specialty [Laughter]. And then there’s Harriet Beecher Stowe because she and I write basically about the same thing: abuse of power, whether it’s slavery or anything else.

Harlan Coben: Well, I’d love to have my parents with me. If I chose writers, I’d invite those I’ve known personally, who have passed away: David Foster Wallace, Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, and Ed McBain. They were writers whose work I admired greatly, and whom I personally admired enormously.

James Rollins: I would love to sit down with Michael Creighton. When I wrote Subterranean, the book right above me on the shelf was Jurassic Park. I had no formal training in writing, so I used Jurassic Park as a template. I’d love to meet Howard Carter, the archeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Mark Twain would make for some very entertaining conversation. It’s a poorly kept secret that I have written fantasy novels under the pen name of James Clemens. Plato or Socrates would round things out and we’d have a great mix of people.

Let me ask you, the reader, the same question: whom would you invite to dinner. I’d love to read and share your responses.

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‘Chaos,’ A Conversation with Patricia Cornwell

November 22, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Patricia Cornwell, known to millions of readers worldwide as a bestselling author, has won many prestigious awards. She researches cutting-edge forensic technologies that inform her Kay Scarpetta novels.

Chaos is Patricia Cornwell’s twenty-fourth Scarpetta novel. Kay and her investigative partner Pete Marino receive a call about a dead bicyclist whose body reveals very strange clues. An anonymous cyberbully named “Tailend Charlie” has been sending cryptic communications to Scarpetta, and when a second death occurs hundreds of miles away, it becomes clear that something more dangerous than Scarpetta has ever imagined is at work.

At the outset of Chaos, you quote Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, ‘There is love in me the likes of which you’re never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape.’ Tell us how this relates to the novel.

What I’m hinting at is that Scarpetta is reaching a stage in her life where the inner quality of her character is emerging. Referring to the quote from Frankenstein, I’m saying Kay Scarpetta is the most loving and healing human being you will ever meet, but you don’t want to mess with her. And you certainly see that at the end of this book where Kay takes matters into her own hands in more ways than one, especially when the FBI takes over her medical examiner’s office. Kay’s gloves are off and we won’t know from one book to the next how far Kay Scarpetta will go if she’s pushed to do what she must. This character quality makes writing the books a lot more fun for me since I’m not constricted by the conventions I thought were in place when I first started writing these novels. I’m going to let Kay Scarpetta do whatever she wants to do.

Speaking of a character evolving, how has the relationship between Kay and Pete Marino evolved over the course of the novels?

Scarpetta and Marino went from having a rather adversarial relationship to one of being compatible partners, except for the times they find themselves at loggerheads over some issue.

In The Book of the Dead, published in 2007, the pair entered a very dark phase when Marino went off the rails and acted very badly. Everything they had built together had to be torn down, and they needed to start all over again.

Over the last nine years, they’ve matured and there’s no bitterness or edge to their working together, harmoniously and with great synergy.

I think the decision I made to have Marino return to working for the police department rather than as a death investigator was crucial to the series. He derives a sense of power from being a cop. Their relationship is stronger because of that development.

Chaos depicts some frightening possibilities about technology and the use of weapons. Tell us about that.

In the first decade of my career, the main character in the novel was the forensics. In my writing, I spent a great deal of time showing readers things with which they were totally unfamiliar. For example, in the mid-nineties when Unnatural Exposure was written, no one gave a thought to the possibility of biological terrorism involving the idea of weaponizing a plague like small pox. Now, we worry all the time about this kind of scenario.

When I started writing, I seized upon the idea of having some malevolent person or organization exploit the wonders of technology by perverting them to achieve catastrophic ends. That kind of situation puts the characters through unimaginable stress to try to figure out how to prevent a cataclysmic event from happening.

This formula has served me well; and I’m even more inspired now than ever before because technology is proliferating at lightening speed. I can barley keep up with all the developments and advances. In fact, the weapon used in Chaos is already in use, albeit not in the manner it’s employed in the book.

There’s a technology war going on, and that’s what I use in my stories.

Speaking of technology, especially concerning weapons, does anything about the future frighten you?

Everything about the future frightens me. The possibility of creating weapons for which we have no defense is immense. There’s no end in sight for the creative things people can do to wreak havoc on civilization. Whether it’s cyberattacks on an election or on the power grids, these are vulnerabilities that if creatively exploited, would be devastating to our society. I sincerely believe that if you allow yourself to think about it, someone will try.

Reading Chaos and your other books makes clear that you’re well-versed in science. What scientific resources do you use to stay so current about forensics and technology?

People don’t know that I have a whole team of consultants available to me. Over the years, I’ve amassed a network of the best and the brightest people out there—whether its expertise on DNA, medical examiner’s techniques, microscopic or trace evidence experts, I’ve had the privilege of being in the company of some of the best and most skilled professionals in the world. They’re also my friends, and even when we’re just hanging out, having dinner, we talk “shop.” Many of them have one foot in the military and a good deal of the latest technology is born during warfare. A decade later, it trickles down and pops up in law enforcement. So, fortunately, I hear about some things before some people in criminalistics and forensics hear about them. I try to run with it in my writing.

You’re producing a Kay Scarpetta novel each year. How do you remain so prolific?

It’s not easy. The actual sitting down and writing a novel requires intricate work, and can be painstakingly exhausting. I can do it when I have the time, but occasionally, something else comes up, like book promotion, and finding time to research and write becomes more difficult.

What’s coming next from Patricia Cornwell?

In January, 2017 Ripper, the Secret Life of Walter Sickert will be published. There are also a couple of potential Hollywood projects you may be hearing about. And, I’m in the early stages of researching the next Scarpetta book.

Congratulations on writing Chaos, another high-stakes Kay Scarpetta novel melding psychology, technology, forensics and suspense in an un-putdown-able novel sure to be another bestseller.

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Gizmodo Interviews Me About “Bedlam’s Door” and Mental Illness

September 3, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Real Stories About Real People Show Complexity of Mental Illness

A Hungarian-born man is found ranting in the street that he is “king of the Puerto Ricans.” A perfectly healthy woman feels compelled to undergo over a dozen operations. A man in a straightjacket somehow manages to commit suicide while inside a locked psychiatric ward.

These are just a few of the compelling stories in Mark Rubinstein’s new book, Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope. (You can read an exclusive excerpt here.) Rubinstein is a former practicing psychiatrist turned novelist who has drawn on his years of clinical experience to follow in the nonfiction footsteps of Oliver Sacks, shedding light on the complexities of the human mind with real stories about real people. Gizmodo sat down with him to learn more.

Gizmodo: What drove you to write this nonfiction book, after years of clinical practice and novel-writing?

Mark Rubinstein: It all came down to my wanting to tell the general public a little bit more about mental illness. When someone has a physical illness, people feel some kind of empathy, but they still respond to an obviously disturbed person with fear. It’s not just your heart, lung, or liver that’s sick—it is you. That is very threatening to people. And people don’t really understand the mental health dilemma, and the issues that mental health practitioners face.

Q: You brought a novelist’s sensibility to these stories, with composite characters and reconstructed dialogue. How much is fiction and how much is nonfiction?

Rubinstein: It is kind of a combination of fiction superimposed on a nonfictional layer of things that really happened. These were all real people and real cases—sometimes a composite of more than one person to protect their privacy. Oliver Sacks was accused of unwittingly giving away the identities of some of the people he wrote about in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

I never wanted to be accused of anything like that, so I changed everything: times, places, people, venues, even races. I didn’t even use a real hospital. Of course, I couldn’t remember all the dialogue from 30 years ago, but I created dialogue consistent with the story line. But these were all real stories and real people from people I had treated. There isn’t a story in there that isn’t true.

But the overarching theme running through most of the stories is that even with the most bizarre cases, if time is taken to listen to these people and understand their stories and background, perhaps we can offer them help. It’s all about storytelling. That’s what novelists do, and in a sense that’s what patients do when they come to see a psychiatrist: they tell a story.

Q: I was struck by your statement that even people who suffer from the same diagnosed condition can have very different stories.

Rubinstein: [Mental illness] can affect almost anybody, given certain circumstances. Some of the most successful people on the planet have a touch of hypomania. I know physicians and attorneys who don’t have full-blown manic episodes but they are filled with boundless energy. They are restless. They feel bored and unhappy unless they are facing a challenge. And they are highly successful. Take that to a more severe degree, however, and it can be completely disabling. And 100 different people can have 100 different pathways to the same diagnosable psychiatric disorder.

You contrast two very different examples of PTSD in the book, for instance.

Rubinstein: In one case, a police officer was shot while sitting in his patrol car outside a store near Tompkins Square Park in New York City. A bullet smashed through the windshield and hit him in the armpit, ruining his brachial plexus—a complicated series of nerves that serves the entire arm. He almost bled to death in the ride to the hospital, and he was crippled for the rest of his life. The depression, the PTSD, the pain he felt in his right arm—the pins and needles and tingling—was directly related to the psychic impact of that half-second of impact.

Then there is the man I call Nathan, found ranting on Delancy Street that he was the king of the Puerto Ricans. He was a carpenter, born in Hungary, and that skill saved his life at Auschwitz. He watched people disappear into the gas chambers—his family, his entire village. He was the sole survivor. But his PTSD didn’t develop until 40 years later, when he was in America and fell off the ladder while working on a roof, breaking some vertebrae in his back. He could no longer work and began having horrifying nightmares. It’s called delayed onset PTSD. So these two men came by totally different pathways to the same condition.

Q: In both your preface and conclusion, you talk about how mental illness has always been stigmatized throughout history. Is it really any different today?

Rubinstein: Well, today we don’t torture people. As recently as the 1950s, they were lobotomizing psychotic patients. They removed a good portion of the white matter of the frontal lobes of the cortex, and turned those people into—for lack of a better term—the walking dead. They became blunted and unresponsive to most emotional stimuli. It was done to try to improve their lot in life, but it shows how primitive things used to be.

When I was in resident psychiatry, the cops would drag a guy in and tell me, “This guy belongs in the loony bin, doc.” Even if the person was just drunk, they wanted to dump these people off in the psychiatric emergency room rather than take them to the precinct. They didn’t want to be bothered with an agitated, fulminating individual who was obviously disturbed.

What’s really changed is there is a much more scientific and compassionate approach. The popular conception of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) still exists from a famous scene in the 1974 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Jack Nicholson with the bulging eyes and convulsions and coming out of it like a vegetable.

But they now use unipolar leads, and very low, slow pulse electricity. They administer muscle relaxants, so there is no convulsion. There is hardly any retrograde amnesia and what little there is resolves with a matter of days. It doesn’t take 12 to 18 sessions anymore, it only takes between four and six.

Q: You end on a somewhat surprising note of optimism, given that these are such very sad stories. I am curious about why you see hope for the future.

Rubinstein: No matter what kind of progress we make, there will always be people slipping through the cracks. There will always be people who either don’t want to be helped, or can’t be helped for some reason. But transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive new treatment that, so far at least, according to preliminary findings, has tremendously good effects—with no side effects or ingestion of chemicals.

Then there is the promise of gene therapy. At some point in the not too distant future, neuroscience will advance to the point where blood can be taken from a newborn child, and based on that baby’s genome, scientists will be able to predict what mental dysfunctions or illnesses that individual will have a predisposition for. Imagine if you could do that for people with a high risk of schizophrenia or severe bipolar disorder, based on the genome analysis of a two-day-old baby? It would put every psychiatrist out of business.

So in the long run, if the human race survives as a species, I think the prognosis medically [for mental illness] is very good. I am not sure that I am optimistic about the survivability of the human species, but I am optimistic in that limited way.

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‘The One Man,’ A Conversation with Andrew Gross

August 23, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Andrew Gross is known to millions of readers as an internationally bestselling author of thrillers.

But, The One Man is a riveting historical thriller unlike anything else Andrew Goss has ever written. Behind the barbed wire of Auschwitz, Professor Alfred Mendl seems just like an old man who writes gibberish on scraps of paper, but the U.S. government knows Mendl’s knowledge could very well change the course of history.

U.S. Army Lieutenant Nathan Blum, an escapee from the Krakow ghetto, whose family died at the hands of the Nazis, is asked to sneak into Auschwitz on a mission to find Mendl and get him out alive.

You’re very well known for writing ‘suburban’ thrillers. What made you undertake this departure into historical fiction with The One Man?

I wanted to write stories with bigger bones. Publishing, and to some degree your own readers, typecast you into a familiar role. While I was comfortable writing stories in which you can look at a character and hold up a lens and see yourself, I felt constrained by that genre. I felt it was holding me back as a writer, and I wanted to write books more in line with what I would like to read. I wanted to expand my horizons.

The One Man is richly evocative with descriptions of military intelligence, Auschwitz, and many other World War II details. It reminds me of some of Leon Uris’s books. Tell us a bit about your research for this novel.

When you’re writing ‘suburban fiction,’ you can always wing it. In that kind of fiction, very few elements of reality are sacrosanct. When writing about the Holocaust, you can’t just make stuff up. As a Jew writing about the Holocaust, it’s sacred territory…it’s ‘Ground Zero.’ I felt an obligation to represent things not only accurately, but compellingly. I’ve been to several concentration camps. Over the years, I’ve read the litany of Holocaust books, including Night by Elie Weisel, Sophie’s Choice and many others. I had to immerse myself in many different aspects of those events: from the American attitude toward Jews during World War II, Franklin Roosevelt’s thinking, and to atomic physics, which is an important component of the book. But it was my goal to write a story about heroism, not about atrocity—so, while I wanted the landscape of the death camps to be real, I wanted to write about one man in an extraordinary situation who stood up and demonstrated heroism. I didn’t just want to add my name to the canon of Holocaust literature describing atrocity or the will to survive. But the setting was important to portray accurately.

I know from what you have said that The One Man has some very personal meanings for you. Will you tell us about that?

My father-in-law who recently died at ninety-six, came to this country six months before Poland was invaded in World War II. He never knew what happened to his entire family. He was the only one to survive the war. Because of that, he carried a mantle of guilt and loss that no one really understood. He would never talk about any of that and never wanted to go back to Warsaw because it conjured up such sad memories for him.

I wanted to understand what was behind this burden of guilt and shame that followed him here for his entire life. He was never happy and never free of his memories. His ‘Survivor’s Guilt’ intrigued me. In composing this book, I wanted to write a story that was almost the story he would have told if he could have opened up enough to tell it.

He joined the U.S. Army and was put into the OSS. He never talked about what he did there, either. While the rest of the novel is fiction, it’s really my putting into his mouth what I think he might have said had he ever opened up about things.

Do you feel you’ve taken a personal risk in writing this historical thriller as opposed to continuing with ‘suburban’ thrillers?

Absolutely. The risk began when I ended one contract with my previous publisher and began trying to sell the outline of The One Man. Various publishers wanted to take me on provided I continued to write conventional thrillers. Some didn’t want to take the risk to find out whether or not I had the chops to write an historical novel. And there was the chance some of my readers wouldn’t follow me along. But really, people always crave a great story.

So, I’m exploring a new territory and hoping I can establish myself in this genre. The business of writing commercial fiction involves a great deal of risk.

This brings me to my next question. As a successful author of thrillers, what thoughts do you have about writers being relegated to certain genres?

It’s a tough industry. From a business perspective, everyone talks about branding an author. It’s hard to sell books and especially more difficult if you’re trying to convey a new image or present a different brand. Name recognition and salability are really the defining parameters, and most authors find themselves locked into a specific genre.

The bottom line is I have to write what’s in my heart. When you do that, the best stories emerge. I’ll make this analogy: when I go to funerals, people speaking are often filled with an innate eloquence coming from the heart. Even those who aren’t storytellers can convey compellingly things about a person because their words are heartfelt.

Looking back at your career, have your writing process and style changed?

My process hasn’t changed. I learned a great deal from working with James Patterson. I outline my stories and keep the chapters relatively short. My work regimen is still the same.

My style has evolved. In the beginning, I started out writing sixty percent for pacing and forty percent for character; I now spend more time on developing people and settings than formerly. I want to deal with larger themes, and that requires a different style and more richness in my prose.

What has surprised you about the writing life?

On the positive side, I feel blessed to be able to do this. I’m so lucky I don’t have to be on a train going into Manhattan for a day’s work. I still manage to get paid for what I do during the course of a year. So, the flexibility of the writing life has changed me. It’s made me a much easier person to be around.

Negatively, it can be a frustrating life. The business is often irksome because it’s very difficult to market one’s self these days. On any given week, the bestseller list resembles the one from ten years ago.

Unless you enjoy that fully-branded status, it’s challenging to market yourself successfully in today’s publishing world.

If you could re-read any one novel as though you’re reading it for the first time, which one would it be?

I recently re-read All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.

I’ve picked that one because it might be the most beautifully written book ever written by an American. We’re all taught it’s a book about a Huey Long figure, Willie Stark, and it’s a political novel; but my take on it is now through completely different eyes. To me, it’s the Telemachus myth about a son’s search for his own father. And that made this book incredibly beautiful for me.

What’s coming next from Andrew Gross?

Another World War II novel. It’s based on an unknown incident that’s been unearthed: the story of a British-Norwegian raid on the heavy water facilities in Norway that ended the Nazis’ attempts to create an atomic bomb. It’s an incredible David and Goliath story. I’m taking some liberties with it and doing it as a novel.

Congratulations on writing The One Man, an historical novel David Morrell called, ‘suspenseful, taut, terrific” and about which Steve Berry said, ‘The characters are intriguing, richly drawn, and wrestle with the unforgivable triangle of evil, guilt and the choices they must make.’

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‘The Wolf road,’ A Conversation with Beth Lewis

August 15, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Beth Lewis has travelled extensively and while pursuing her many interests has had close encounters with black bears, killer whales, and great white sharks. She works as a managing editor at a leading London publisher.

The Wolf Road, her debut novel, introduces the reader to Elka, a 17-year-old girl who ten years earlier, was found wandering, lost and hungry by a solitary hunter who took her in. Over the intervening decade, he taught her how to survive in a desolate post-apocalyptic land. Now, Elka is on a quest to locate her parents, but the man she thought she knew has been harboring a secret: he’s a killer and is tracking her. And she may be his next victim.

Elka is a fascinating character. How did you conceive of her?

I came up with the idea for the book from a television show, Hannibal. There was a particular scene where a girl is with her father who is a hunter. It turns out, not all is quite as it seems. There’s a question of whether or not she’s complicit in his crime or if she’s a victim. I thought that scene was very powerful, and felt it was an interesting kind of psychology to explore. Elka derived from that show fully formed, including her voice.

Speaking of voice, Elka’s narrative voice is authentic and unique. I was impressed by the fact that someone from the UK captured a Southern/wilderness speech pattern. Tell us a bit about that.

I’ve always loved the Southern storytelling tradition. I also watched so many television shows about Alaska, Canada, and the Yukon. That Southern rhythm and twang coupled with the wilderness inflections melded together into the voice of Elka. I suppose her voice is not truly authentic to any of those places, but it works quite well in a post-apocalyptic tale.

The Wolf Road is filled with beautiful details of a vast and unforgiving wilderness. How do you know so much about the wild?

I travelled through Canada when I was twenty years old and spent a good amount of time in British Colombia and on Vancouver Island. I also watched a great deal of television about those areas as well as nature shows and documentaries. I’ve read many books—especially Jack London’s novels. It’s an area of the world I absolutely love. I wish I lived there, so in a way, the novel is sort of a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

The Wolf Road deals with many things, among them is Elka’s struggle to distinguish between fact and fiction in her own recollections of her past. Will you talk about that?

I wanted to write a book about a character who had done awful things, but by the end of the novel, the reader would still want Elka to win out. Maybe there’s a sense of discomfort in the reader, but I wanted very much for the reader to remain sympathetic to her. I think Elka coming to the realization of her own past at the same time the reader does, helps maintain sympathy for her. In a sense, almost anyone is capable of forgetting the evil he or she has done, or at least, blocking it from consciousness. It was great fun revealing the extremes of Elka’s experiences to the reader.

Talk about her relationship to her parents.

All she has from her parents is a letter they wrote saying they left her with her grandmother. Though she can’t read, she memorized the letter from her grandmother having read it to her. All she remembers of her parents is a feeling she was loved. That’s what sustains her. She maintains the naïve belief they left her to find a fortune. When she actually locates them, she receives quite a shock. Realizing one’s parents are not always what they seem is quite an important part of this coming of age story.

Who are your literary influences?

My biggest influence is Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. That novel really cemented for me the importance of setting and emotion, and the raw brutality of the wild. Apart from Bronte, David Mitchell has had the biggest influence on my writing. He kick-started my wanting to become a writer. When I read Cloud Atlas, a light bulb went off in my head.

Tell us about your road to publication as a novelist.

It feels like it all happened very quickly, but it didn’t. I wrote four novels before The Wolf Road, none of which has been published. I wrote the first draft of The Wolf Road in about three months, and got an agent who was successful in finding a publisher. It’s taken two years from when I started the first draft to publication.

What’s coming next from Beth Lewis?

I’m rewriting my next book which is about four friends who discover a body. The live in a small mid-Western town which is filled with secrets, and they begin unearthing certain things with nasty consequences.

Congratulations on penning The Wolf Road, a brutal and poignant literary journey into the truth of a young woman’s origins and her path to redemption.

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