The Secrets to BLUFFing

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, my gosh. Poker. I am TERRIBLE at poker.  Don't get me wrong, I am very enthusiastic, and go into every game so optimistic, and cannot wait to play, and swoop up all those lovely chips (pennies?) after I slam down my straight flush (or whatever.) 

But that never happens. Fold fold fold. I vacillate between being a chicken and being a huge bluffer, which rarely works.

That's just one of the reasons I am in awe of the amazing New York Times best-selling author  Jane Stanton Hitchcock.  

Her first novel was nominated for the Edgar and the Hammett prize. Her newest, BLUFF--with its cleverly wonderful poker structure and bitingly wonderful wit--is fast-paced, smart, clever and oh-so-knowing. (And look at that amazing cover!)

HANK:  BLUFF grew out of your own mastery of poker. How did that work?

JANE: First of all, I would never say I had “mastered” poker. If anything, the game is my master. It’s taught me a lot about life and how to deal with adversity – namely, there’s no point in dwelling on bad luck or one’s mistakes. 

 Hard as it is, you sometimes have to say “Next Hand” and get on with it. I also realized that at the poker table I was being underestimated just as I had been in life. Players never expect an older woman to play anything but Old Lady Poker—just as the guy who swindled my mother out of millions of dollars never expected me to find out about his larceny and ultimately help put him in jail.

When I made this connection I found a way into the book: Combine being underestimated in life as well as in poker and then write a twisty tale of murder, revenge, and bluffing. Hopefully the reader will be intrigued by the characters and swept up in the twists and turns of the story. The book is one long poker hand with a Flop, a Turn, and the River. As readers play the hand with me, I want them to be thinking: “How the hell does she get out of this?” Only one way: Bluff!

HANK:  “Mad Maud” Warner--amazing-- is a complex character. And a timely one. Do you see Maud as an everywoman? How?

JANE: As I say in the book, “Older women are invisible and we don’t even have to disappear.” Power derived from supposed weakness is the primary theme of BLUFF. In the very first scene, Maud is able to escape because no one can fathom that a woman like her – an older, well-dressed socialite – could have had the balls to commit such a shocking crime in a posh and crowded restaurant.

The book is told in two voices: Maud’s own, as she recounts what lead her to commit murder; and the third person, which details the crime and its aftermath on all the people involved. My hope is that the reader will be rooting for Maud as she explains what has led her to such violence and why she thinks she can possibly get away with it if she literally plays her cards right! I guess she’s a #MeToo murderer!

Hank: High society certainly takes a hit in BLUFF. Do you view humor as a tool for enlightenment?

JANE: I like what Abba Eban said: “The upper crust is a bunch of crumbs held together by dough.” I grew up in so-called “High Society” and, as I say in the book “money is a matter of luck and class is a matter of character.” Maud knows she can trust some of her dicey poker playing pals much more than the “social” friends she’s known her entire life. I also say: “Money exaggerates who people are. If you’re good you’ll be better, if you’re bad you’ll jump right down on the devil’s trampoline.” A lot of people think having money makes them better than other people. I like to aim my pen at such pretension and there’s no better way to do it than with humor.

I’d have to be Dostoevsky to write my own family’s story without humor. As the book shows, money doesn’t save anyone from addiction, swindling, and death. In fact, money often makes things worse. But there’s nothing more exasperating than self-pity. So telling my family’s story was a challenge. It took me nineteen drafts! But the poker theme eventually helped me harness the humor in all the darkness.

HANK: You have a wonderful article in this month's Mystery Scene blog--and you mention your mother taught you the joy of reading out loud--and about Shakespeare. 

JANE: My mother was a wonderful actress. She is chiefly remembered as the voice of the very first Lois Lane on the radio, but she had an amazing stage and television career as well. She was a famous beauty and she had a lovely, melodic voice. She was always quoting Shakespeare to me from the time I was little. I was too young to understand it at the age of four, but the way she read it made me love it.

She kept a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets by her bed. Near the end of her life, she found out she had been swindled out of most of her money by her accountant, whom she had adored and trusted above anyone in the world for over 30 years. The betrayal nearly killed her. 

When she got over the initial shock, I asked her if Shakespeare had ever written about an accountant who swindled a trusting old woman out of millions. It was a cheeky question, meant to elicit a laugh. Without hesitation, she opened the sonnets and told me to read the one she pointed at aloud.

The last lines of that Sonnet are: “For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

HANK: Oh, that brings tears to my eyes.  So--In addition to being a novelist, you're also a playwright and screenwriter. Does one teach you about the other?

JANE: Movies are really a directors’ medium so a writer is blessed if he/she has a good director. Enough said. 

 Playwriting taught me about creating scenes and developing characters through dialogue. In the theatre time on the stage grows more expensive with each minute. You have to engage the audience. Therefore, you always have to ask yourself: What’s at stake? Why should people care about these characters, this situation? You have a captive audience sitting there waiting for things to develop in a finite amount of time. 

 The novel has no such constraints. But I confess, I love a good, twisty plot. I like every scene to further the story but I also think it’s important for the reader not to be one jump ahead of me. It’s when surprise meets inevitability that I feel I’ve done my job. I want my readers to say: Wow I didn’t see that coming, but now it all makes sense!

HANK: You're so terrific at dialogue--

JANE: Thank you! I try to give the reader a sense of place without overloading the description. Action is character and I really like writing dialogue, putting myself into all the characters – the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s fun to create a good villain and more fun to see the villain get his/her comeuppance. But in my books, there is usually an anti-heroine who is, herself, operating in an amoral sphere. In Bluff, I want my audience to be complicit in Maud’s revenge and root for her to earn it.

HANK: Gotta ask about your influences --whose books most influenced you at the time you decided to enter the field yourself?

JANE: To be honest, I didn’t know I was entering the field when I wrote Trick of the Eye. I thought of the book as literally a trompe l’oeil canvas for the readers who are led to believe they are looking at a simple whodunit when, in fact, the real picture is about a dark acquisition. I was thrilled when mystery lovers liked it and it was nominated for both the Edgar and the Hammett Prize. I think those fans made me realize I had a mind for murder!

The writers who most influenced me at that time were Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, Edgar Allan Poe, and Daphne du Maurier.

HANK Great list! You were on hiatus for nineyears--are things..different in the crimefiction world now?

JANE: A writer never really stops writing. During this nine-year hiatus, I was working on three three books while trying to sort out a difficult family situation. As a writer, I was always used to being an observer of social life. Writing took me away from my problems.

However, with Bluff, I’m not only an observer but a real participant in the story, which is what made it so difficult for me to write. It was painful to look back on the ruins of our family. So I would work on it, then put it away and work on the other books. I knew if I ever published Bluff I’d have to get the tone just right because I hate self-pity.

In writing Bluff, I came to realize how blessed I’ve been. I remembered the words of my stepfather who always said: “Anything you can buy with money is cheap.” That lightened things up for me and made me think: Okay—humor and murder is the only way to go!
I often wish I did have a “technique” because then I might have a road map of some sort. As it is, I write until my characters take over the story. Of the three books I was working on, Maud in Bluff took over the story in a singular way. It took me nineteen drafts to get her story just right. I just hope I succeeded. 

HANK: And I have one bet I know I will win--I'll bet two of you lucky commenters are gonig to be very happy--because you will WIN a copy of BLUFF! 
So tell us, Reds and readers--are you good at poker?
Jane's on book tour now, but she'll still be here to answer all your questions---like: how do you make sure you win at poker? What's the best way to bluff? And is it true that everyone has a "tell"?

Barbara Peters, Jane, and Linda Fairstein at The Poisoned Pen 

Jane Stanton Hitchcock was born and raised in New York City, where she led a seemingly privileged life. Early on, she learned the trappings of wealth and fame are not nearly all they are cracked up to be, themes she has since explored in screenplays, stage plays, and novels dealing with murder and mayhem in high places. She is married to Jim Hoagland, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist  ed note: who Hank had a huge crush on in 1972 in Washington,DC, just saying. They live in Washington, DC, and New York City.

BLUFF is a stunning social noir that begins with an audacious murder in broad daylight which sets off the biggest scandal to hit New York society in years. The unlikely shooter uses her knowledge of poker to play the game of her life with no cards. A bluff to frame her nemesis and exact revenge. Inspired by real-life events, the novel takes the structure of poker at which the author has become adept.

“Jane Stanton Hitchcock pulls off another stunning tour de force in her newest crime novel. Nobody writes high society and its down-low denizens better than Hitchcock – and this book is her best yet. It’s all in the cards – and it’s masterful.”

— Linda Fairstein, New York Times bestselling author

“With the heart-pounding suspense of a high-stakes poker game, Bluff is a vivid, compelling novel about deceit, seduction, and delicious revenge that will have you spellbound and cheering as you turn the last page.“

— Susan Cheever, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author

For more information:

Jane Stanton Hitchcock

www.janestantonhitchcock.com