Jungle Red will never forget. September 11, 2001.
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HANK ON TOUR! The Wrong Girl is in Milwaukee today! Come say hello at Mystery One Bookshop at 7pm. Hope to see you there..
And the winner of Sue Grafton's W is for Wasted is: Mary Martinez! I'll email you directly!
So--speaking of unforgettable characters! Sue Grafton herself is amazing..and her creation, Kinsey Millhone, is one of a kind. (I can't help but think of the Reader's Digests I devoured at my grandmother's house. Remember that feature? My Most Unforgettable Character? Why do I remember that--but not where my phone is?)
ANYWAY--speaking of unforgettable characters--how about Jon Land? We always love having him visit--he's a whirlwind, nonstop best-selling author and reviewer and ITW big shot, and and and...He's--a character. And that's why it's so perfect that he's here to day to talk about, what else? Characters!
Jon Land: When I
began writing the Caitlin Strong series, the latest of which STRONG RAIN FALLING
has just been released, it was with the idea of doing something new and
different in the thriller genre. That
started with creating a female protagonist who was every bit as strong and
capable as more traditional male heroes, a kind of female Jack Reacher (Lee
Child’s wonderful hero) you might say.
But that
wasn’t enough. I also wanted to add
layers of emotion along with personal growth and angst seldom seen in
thrillers. So I came up with the idea
that Caitlin would have a love affair with Cort Wesley Masters, the most
notorious outlaw in modern Texas history who she once put in prison after he
was framed. The conflict inside each of
and between them is there right from the start of the first book in the series,
STRONG ENOUGH TO DIE, since it appears a recently exonerated Cort Wesley is
going to come gunning for Caitlin.
The fact
that he doesn’t and, quite the opposite, opts to save her life in a wild
gunfight instead, is due in large part to the fact that Cort Wesley has two
sons he’s never met. He sees his release
from prison as a second chance he’s not quite sure how to exploit and the last
thing he wants to do is risk getting jailed again, likely for good this time. It isn’t too much later when the mother of
his boys is murdered because of him, leaving Cort Wesley no choice but to
become a father and take responsibility for raising the two boys who’ve never
even laid eyes on him.
See what
I’m getting at here? In traditional
tales, it’s the woman who tries to get the male gunfighter to give up his guns
and settle down. But I decided in the
Caitlin Strong series to reverse that paradigm and define the relationship
between Caitlin and Cort Wesley based on his struggles as a single father and
her gradually acceding to her maternal instincts to become a surrogate mother
for Cort Wesley’s sons.
Thrillers
especially, you see, normally have loads of action and plot, but what’s the
difference if we as readers are not emotionally vested in what happens to the
characters? We need to root for them,
care about them, worry that their next gunfight might be their last. Emotional vesting derives from building
characters through the relationships they form, and I personally have not
encountered a stronger relationship in this kind of book than the one between
Caitlin and Cort Wesley. The struggle to
get past their own natures is constant.
Caitlin wants to have things both ways, but Cort Wesley wishes she was
around more. This as he acknowledges
that the times that they’re the closest, when their relationship feels the
strongest, is when their lives are threatened and they need to go back to their
guns.
But STRONG
RAIN FALLING brings that emotion to a whole new level. The book opens with Caitlin taking Cort
Wesley’s eighteen-year-old son Dylan to visit Brown University in my own
hometown of Providence, Rhode Island—about as parental, and maternal, a thing
as you can do. But this is a thriller,
of course, and before you know it both Dylan’s and his younger brother Luke’s lives
are in jeopardy, and Caitlin and Cort Wesley are both gunning down bad guys to
save them. The stakes are higher and
more personal here than in any of my previous books, as Caitlin comes to
realize even more how much these boys mean to her. And that, in turn, continues to showcase the
wonderful push-pull that defines her character as she struggles with the
conflicting impulses driving her.
So in my visit to Jungle Red today,
let’s explore what makes you care about a character and root for them to
triumph over adversity and bad guys alike.
I think it was P.T. Barnum who said “Always leave them wanting more.” What
do you think?
Hank: And Reds, who's your current favorite character? Not of all time, because, well, we want to hear about someone new!
Hank: And Reds, who's your current favorite character? Not of all time, because, well, we want to hear about someone new!
