HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s “what we’re
writing” week! And I am deeply in the
midst of (you heard it here first) WHAT YOU SEE, the next Jake and Jane novel.
I
am also deeply into author-crazy. TRUTH BE TOLD comes out October 7 (you may hear a bit more about that around these
parts), and the author-crazy comes from knowing the reviews are about to start. And I’ve just received advance notice of two
of them…and I’ll reveal (!!!) below.
But
first. There’s a question that some authors
loathe...but I love. And that is: where do your stories come from? Some authors
answer with caustic throw-aways—Schenectady,
says one very famous guy. The grocery, says another.
But
I think “where do your stories come from” is fascinating. I recently heard Jacqueline
Winspear talk about her new book, and she has an amazing book-birth story. Hallie, too. And Susan.
And
as for TRUTH BE TOLD, (And oh, did I tell you it it’s a Library Journal Editor's Pick? Whoo hoo!) I can tell you exactly where it came from.
It’s
a puzzle of four parts.
The
first time Jonathan represented the man, the case ended in a hung jury. The
state brought the charges again, and again Jonathan represented him, and again,
a hung jury.
The
state brought the charges again, and the
defendant—well, let’s just say he decided he wanted to handle the case his own
way this time. Jonathan disagreed. The
man got a different lawyer. He was convicted, and is still in prison.
Jonathan
told me he still, to this day, thinks the man is innocent.
Hmmm. Idea.
Another
puzzle piece? Another of Jonathan’s cases. A man in prison, incarcerated with a
life sentence for shaking a baby to death, recently confessed to a cold-case
murder. It’s very unlikely that he actually did it—so why would he
confess?
Hmmm.
Idea.
Another
puzzle piece. We recently did a big story
on abandoned homes in Boston. They are all places the banks have foreclosed on,
where the owners have been evicted, and the houses are now empty. All are for
sale. Many of them are neglected, with
broken windows and overgrown lawns. But some are in good shape. While I was interviewing the head of Boston’s
Inspectional Services Department about this, I began to wonder. What could be
going on inside those forgotten empty houses?
Hmmmm.
Idea.
I
also thought about the people who had been evicted from those homes. People
who’d gotten mortgages from banks with lots of money, but who through some
failure of their lives, some catastrophe or disaster, some wrong decision or
bad luck had not been able to keep up the payments. Wouldn’t there be something that could have ben done to prevent that? If a
banker-type really cared about their customers, wouldn’t there be something
that could be done to keep people out of foreclosure?
Hmmmm. Idea.
And finally, I was sitting at the computer in my TV station office, writing a story, and thinking about why I do what I do as a reporter. It’s making history, I decided. It’s creating the record of what happened in our lives, the comings and goings, that issues and the solutions, the documentation of how we live. And people believe it, right? What’s on TV and in the newspapers becomes a resource by which all is remembered and relied on.
And
then I thought—what if some reporter decided not to tell the truth? Not big
discoverable lie, but simply—little things. A sound bite, a reaction, a quote. Who would know? What difference might that
make? And what would happen when the
truth was finally told?
Hmmm. Idea.
And
in the way we all do as authors, by spinning and polishing and twisting and
turning, and shooting it full of a lot of adrenaline and a little romance, I
got the key elements of TRUTH BE TOLD:
A mortgage banker turned Robin Hood decides to manipulate bank records to keep people out of foreclosure, a murder victim is found in a foreclosed home, a man confesses to the unsolved Lilac Sunday murder, and a reporter makes stuff up.
And
now you know exactly where it came from.
Reviews?
So far—so fabulous. Publisher’s Weekly
says:
"Smart,
well-paced…Ryan cleverly ties the plot together, offers surprising but
believable plot twists, and skillfully characterizes the supporting cast."
And
whew, Kirkus says:
"Foreclosure fraud
entwines with a 20-year-old murder case in the latest knotty, engrossing mystery-thriller by
an award-winning Boston journalist... Ryan
seasons her mix with vivid Boston local color and caustic observations on new
media—which one would expect from a journalist who's won even more awards for
her TV reporting than she has for her mysteries. Ryland and Brogan are such a
cute couple that you wonder how long it'll be before somebody makes a TV series
out of them."
And
here’s a tiny bit from Chapter 2.
Chapter 2
“Why would he confess if he didn’t do
it?” Detective Jake Brogan peered through the smoky one-way glass at the guy slumped
in the folding chair of Boston Police Department’s interrogation room E. What Jane
would probably call “skeevy,” too-long hair scraggling over one ear; ratty
jacket; black T-shirt; tired tan pants. Thin. Late thirties, at least, more
like forty. How old would Gordon Thorley have been in 1994, when Carley Marie
Schaefer was killed? Late teens, at most. Around the same age as Carley. “This
guy Thorley just shows up here at HQ and insists he’s guilty? You ever seen
that? Heard of that?”
“Let’s get some lunch. Ask questions later.”
DeLuca jammed his empty paper coffee cup into the overflowing metal trash bin
in the hall outside the interrogation room. “Sherrey will get all we need, give
us his intake notes after. Could be a bird in the hand.”
“Not exactly ‘in the hand,’”
Jake said. “If he’s a whack job. There’s also that old ‘innocent till proven
guilty’ thing.”
HANK:
So, Reds and readers, do you like to know where a story came from? Or would you
rather believe it’s all a product of the author’s imagination?
And
pssst. I have an ARC of TRUTH BE TOLD for one commenter!
