True Crime Tuesday: Fallen Angel Bad Guys

JAN: When I was a health reporter, I regularly interviewed doctors and nurses, and I was so impressed by their integrity and sense of mission, that when I needed a no-good doctor to help falsify injuries for insurance fraud in Yesterday's Fatal, I had a hard time creating the character. While I could believe there were plenty of dirtbag lawyers for the scam, I couldn't come up with one scummy doctor. Finally, my friend, a Rhode Island prosecutor said, "Oh for God's sake, just him high alimony payments or a gambling problem - he'll do anything for the extra money."

So that's what I had to do in my head before I started writing. But this belief in the goodness in doctors persists. That's why I think I'm so intrigued by the Needham doctor and nurse practitioner charged as "croakers," that's a doctor who writes prescriptions for high test drugs for people who don't really need them. Besides the distribution of controlled substances charges, the doctor is accused of writing a script for methadone that killed six people. Prosecutors allege the pair ran a veritable mill, seeing forty to fifty people a day and writing scripts for plenty more who never even bothered to come in for an exam.

What fascinates me more than anything, is how this doctor and nurse got here. My guess is that these two started off with the same integrity and mission to heal that I saw in the doctors and nurses I interviewed, and that life events put them on a different path.

So what are those life events? The pressures? What did they start telling themselves? How much money did they need to make it worthwhile? To risk their careers? (not to mention their lives, both are facing life imprisonment). And assuming we started this story before they got caught and hauled into court, how far would they go to protect their secret?

Come on everyone -- we're making stuff up here. These are the ultimate bad guys, fallen angels.

True Crime/When Opportunity Strikes

JAN - I don't mean to be dumping on Wisconsin two blog weeks in a row, but this is just too good an opportunity for anyone contemplating writing a thriller.


In Madison, the electronic monitoring system tracking sex offenders, parolees and other bad guys went on the fritz. When some sort of computerized system in Boulder Colorado, unexpectedly hit its "data storage" capacity one Tuesday, authorities in 49 states were left in the dark about 16,000 of these bad guys whereabouts for twelve hours.


The tracking devices still tracked. But the good guys couldn't read the data. Why this affected Wisconsin more than the other states is unclear. The only thing I know is that in Wisconsin, most of these untracked bad guys were sexual offenders.


So there you go: You have your bad guy free at large, you have your ticking clock, twelve hours and you probably need some good guy who is the first to figure it out. Et VOILA. A thriller is born.


Or conversely, you could have a good guy, convicted unfairly, who now has twelve hours to go to the one place in the world he's not allowed to go -- by his parole rules - and find the proof that will get him a new trial.


Or you have the victim, the abused girlfriend/wife/gay lover who receives notice from her/his boyfriend at the data company in Boulder what just went down and knows her tormenter could be after her for the next twelve hours....


In real life, this appeared to be a technology snafu - but in YOUR novel, you also have the option of making it sabotage.


OKAY everyone, put on your thinking caps. I want to hear some great PLOT scenarios out of this one.


And come back tomorrow, when I interview Leslie Wheeler about Native Americans, seafarers, and New England Living History.


Thursday, I'll be interviewing our own Roberta Isleib about her new Key West mystery series featuring Food Critic Hayley Snow as sleuth.


And Friday, we have a special guest, debut author Allison Leotta. Her novel is "Law of Attraction."

On Guilt

“Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway.”
Isabelle Holland

JAN: I'm fascinated by guilt, in part because it is so destructive, but also because I've known and profiled a few sociopaths. The complete absence of guilt is startling. You can actually see the ability to feel guilt missing from someone's eyes.I used to think I always felt guilty because I was Irish-Catholic, but I'm starting to think it's just an inborn trait. A tendency to self-criticism. Too much of that tendency is self-destructive. Too little and you can destroy others with abandon.Anyway, murder mysteries are all about guilt, right? Only I find that I use guilt more in the creation of my protagonist, Hallie Ahern, than in the creation of my bad guys.

In past books, Hallie has wrestled with the lines she crosses in journalism to complete her investigation. In this book, she is wrestling with the lines of humanity she crosses to do her job as a journalist.I know Hallie Ephron wrote an entire mystery entitled Guilt, and will have a lot to offer on this topic. But I'm also wondering how everyone else makes literary use of the incredible power of guilt.

RO: I've got the Catholic thing, too, so guilt is a part of my life. I feel guilty about something every day (I'm really revealing all of my neuroses in this blog, aren't I?)- even if it's something as small as not sending a thank you note fast enough. (Thank you Alice and Alison...the notes are coming.)Perhaps that's the reason my characters are remarkably guilt-free. Maybe that's my fantasy...the way nebbish-y guys write superheroes.Since I write cozies, I haven't dealt with hardened criminals yet. My bad guys seem to fall into the amoral greed-lust-revenge crowd, and - at least as I've created them - they have the ability to do what they think must be done unfettered by anything as annoying as guilt.

ROBERTA: I'm with Jan on this one though I was raised a white-bread Presbyterian. Even so, I generally feel guilty about everything and my protagonists do as well! It is a real motivator: Let something go long enough and the guilty feelings start to snowball until that item finally gets moved up the list. I think the kind of guilt we're talking about is related to feeling privileged too. Is is possible to feel lucky and happy without that underlying sense of guilt? The villains in my books tend to have some pressing need or grudge that feels strong enough to completely overwhelm any sense of guilt.

HANK: Guilt. On one end of the spectrum is feeling one "ought to be" doing something because of responsibility in a relationship, to society, to a job, to a loved one--but instead, they do something else.Something, probably, that's bound up with one of the other prime motivators, selfishness. But still, if I use frozen brown rice for dinner instead of making the 45-minute kind, or if I don't fold the fitted sheets perfectly because it's too much of a pain, or if I leave work the tiniest bit early because I want to work on my book--yeah, I feel twinges of guilt. But not GUILTY.

On the other hand..when the human foible selfishness twists and morphs into greed and vengeance and it outpaces responsibility and morality--then guilt turns to guilty. As in--the one who becomes the bad guy.And I think what makes the best bad guys so interesting is that they can all tell you a reason why they've decided whatever they're doing is okay. I love the moment in a mystery when you find out whodunnit--but whydunnit is more interesting and certainly more fun to write when you're creating a character. When the reader finds the 'why'--and suddenly all those clues that have been so carefully laid out in the 300 pages before click together like a Rubik's cube and you see the real picture--that's very satisfying. Because then you've got a real person.

HALLIE: Exactly! Guilt is what the villain in a mystery novel doesn't feel, because from his/her point of view, there were utterly compelling reasons for the and it HAD TO BE done. Whereas the rest of us feel overwhelming guilt for all sorts of things over which we, in fact, have absolutely no control (our children's unhappiness, the price of fish...) What I'm fascinated by, from a plotting point of view, is the difference between guilt and shame. Characters feel compelled to hide whatever it is that causes them guilt or shame, and secrets are the lifeblood of a mystery novel.

On Guilt Again

“Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway.” Isabelle Holland

JAN: I'm fascinated by guilt, in part because it is so destructive, but also because I've known and profiled a few sociopaths. The complete absence of guilt is startling. You can actually see the ability to feel guilt missing from someone's eyes.

I used to think I always felt guilty because I was Irish-Catholic, but I'm starting to think it's just an inborn trait. A tendency to self-criticism. Too much of that tendency is self-destructive. Too little and you can destroy others with abandon.

Anyway, murder mysteries are all about guilt, right? Only I find that I use guilt more in the creation of my protagonist, Hallie Ahern, than in the creation of my bad guys. In past books, Hallie has wrestled with the lines she crosses in journalism to complete her investigation. In this book, she is wrestling with the lines of humanity she crosses to do her job as a journalist.

I know Hallie Ephron wrote an entire mystery entitled Guilt, and will have a lot to offer on this topic. But I'm also wondering how everyone else makes literary use of the incredible power of guilt.

RO: I've got the Catholic thing, too, so guilt is a part of my life. I feel guilty about something every day (I'm really revealing all of my neuroses in this blog, aren't I?)- even if it's something as small as not sending a thank you note fast enough. (Thank you Alice and Alison...the notes are coming.)Perhaps that's the reason my characters are remarkably guilt-free. Maybe that's my fantasy...the way nebbish-y guys write superheroes.

Since I write cozies, I haven't dealt with hardened criminals yet. My bad guys seem to fall into the amoral greed-lust-revenge crowd, and - at least as I've created them - they have the ability to do what they think must be done unfettered by anything as annoying as guilt.

ROBERTA: I'm with Jan on this one though I was raised a white-bread Presbyterian. Even so, I generally feel guilty about everything and my protagonists do as well! It is a real motivator: Let something go long enough and the guilty feelings start to snowball until that item finally gets moved up the list. I think the kind of guilt we're talking about is related to feeling privileged too. Is is possible to feel lucky and happy without that underlying sense of guilt? The villains in my books tend to have some pressing need or grudge that feels strong enough to completely overwhelm any sense of guilt.

HANK: Guilt. One one end of the spectrum is feeling one "ought to be" doing something because of responsibility in a relationship, to society, to a job, to a loved one--but instead, they do something else.

Something, probably, that's bound up with one of the other prime motivators, selfishness. But still, if I use frozen brown rice for dinner instead of making the 45-minute kind, or if I don't fold the fitted sheets perfectly because it's too much of a pain, or if I leave work the tiniest bit early because I want to work on my book--yeah, I feel twinges of guilt. But not GUILTY.

On the other hand..when the human foible selfishness twists and morphs into greed and vengeance and it outpaces responsibility and morality--then guilt turns to guilty. As in--the one who becomes the bad guy.

And I think what makes the best bad guys so interesting is that they can all tell you a reason why they've decided whatever they're doing is okay. I love the moment in a mystery when you find out whodunnit--but whydunnit is more interesting and certainly more fun to write when you're creating a character. When the reader finds the 'why'--and suddenly all those clues that have been so carefully laid out in the 300 pages before click together like a Rubik's cube and you see the real picture--that's very satisfying. Because then you've got a real person.

HALLIE: Exactly! Guilt is what the villain in a mystery novel doesn't feel, because from his/her point of view, there were utterly compelling reasons for the and it HAD TO BE done. Whereas the rest of us feel overwhelming guilt for all sorts of things over which we, in fact, have absolutely no control (our children's unhappiness, the price of fish...) What I'm fascinated by, from a plotting point of view, is the difference between guilt and shame. Characters feel compelled to hide whatever it is that causes them guilt or shame, and secrets are the lifeblood of a mystery novel.

On Bad Guys

"The women who inspired this play deserved to be smacked across the head with a meat ax, and that, I flatter myself, is exactly what I smacked them with."

*** Clare Boothe Luce on "The Women."

JAN:
You know when you listen to the sharp, catty dialogue of the women undermining each other in The Women that Luce had a good ear for women at their worst. Have any real, live a**holes in your lives inspired your fictional bad guys?

RO:
Funny you should ask. There is a real life a**hole who lives too close to me to identify beyond that, but I was so pissed at him - for unneighborly behaviour - that I made him a wife beater in my book. As it happens I had too many interwoven story lines and decided to pull that one out, but one false move and the guy makes it into book three.

HANK:
I'm sitting at my computer, staring at the screen. Wondering who inspired my bad guys, and why. And I realized it's not so much specific people, as it is the way some people treat others. My bad guys are self-centered, greedy, manipulative. They're only interested in themselves--and how others can help them get what they want. And if someone gets in the way or interferes, they mow them down. Physically, psychologically and emotionally. Their flaws stem from power, money, and control.

The good guys--listen, think, care about others as much as they do themselves. Their flaws stem from love.As for you, Ro, my darling husband is a lawyer, if you need him.

HALLIE:
Free associating on the lawyer front...it is interesting how mystery readers are far more partial to dead lawyers than they are to dead dogs. I know, off topic. I LOVE that quote, but I confess I hate asshole characters. The 'villain' in my work in progress is based loosely on a girl I barely knew in high school. She was very sweet and needy and clingy (and annoying) and I imagined what might have happened to her if she got twisted, seriously twisted. I like villains who are real, complex people who've convinced themselves that they HAVE to do bad things for all the 'right' reasons. As Hanks says, they're 'flawed.'

JAN:
I hung around with a guy in college who I knew was evil. Okay, no one believes in evil today, so maybe he wasn't evil, just a sociopath. But it was like the air changed in the room whenever he walked in. When asked about his plans after graduation, he announced that he was going to go to Las Vegas and make his "killing" gambling. He never went to Las Vegas, but in the back room in a bar in Boston, he won a couple grand in a backgammon game.

In lieu of the cash, he was offered the chance to make money driving car loads of marijuana up from Florida. He soon graduated from driver to investor, and after a stint in jail wound up distributing a synthetic heroin that killed something like 200 junkies up and down the east coast. The Herald did a story on it and quoted one of his associates as saying that Chris chuckled over this.

When I read the quote, I could actually hear the laugh Chris would have used. To make a long story short, Chris died, execution style, with two bullets in the back of his head, shortly after deciding to turn state's evidence. None of his college friends were shocked.

Anyway, I'm clearly fascinated by Chris. He was the inspiration for one of my earliest short stories, and the basis for my bad guy in Final Copy. Over and over, even when I was doing investigative journalism, I found myself drawn to the subject of charismatic con men (and women). Why is that the trait of utter selfishness is so often coupled with extraordinary charm?

Maybe it's that mystery that keeps us writing crime fiction!

BREAKING NEWS!
We're so thrilled to announce Jungle Red's own Hank Phillippi Ryan's debut novel Prime Time is now on the Boston Globe's bestseller list! Prime Time has been on sale for just twelve days..and now is the number 10 best-selling paper back as listed in New England's flagship newspaper.
(The second book in Hank's Charlotte McNally Mysteries, FACE TIME, will be published this October.)