May 18, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode we chat to thriller writing legend Jeffery Deaver about his new book, SOUTH OF NOWHERE, featuring Colter Shaw, a 'rewardist'.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to thriller writing legend mister Jeffrey Deva,
author of, among other things, the legendary Lincoln Rhymes and
Amelia Saxon series and now the latest in his culture
show novels, South of Nowhere. Jeffrey has sold fifty million
books at last count in one hundred and fifty countries,
in innumerable languages, and he hasn't even broken sweat. Jeffrey,
(00:26):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Seem thank you so much. What a lovely introduction, although
I have to say hearing all that I'm not sweating,
but I'm exhausted hearing that I've done so much. And
I'll tell you a very fast story. A few years ago,
I received three Lifetime Achievement Awards in one year, and
I thought, well, that's depressing. Are the presenters thinking it's
(00:50):
time for me to retire because I wasn't quite that
old yet. But I have kept at it so But anyway,
it's a you know, it's a fun job. I get
to make up things for a living, and I don't
work in Washington, d C. On Capitol Hill. And that's
the last of my political comments.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I have to say, so these lifetime Achievements Achievement awards,
were they given solely to you? Or was your co
author who you've just introduced me to, who is currently
sitting on your lap, did acknowledge?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
See, maybe maybe we should add add quickly that the
person we're speaking of is not like a cheerleader or
pom pom girl or you know, I'm sure you have
the comparable, uh, you know, the the cheerleaders sort of.
It's a dog, just for the record, and her name
is Blush, and she sits at my feet when I
(01:42):
when I write, and you know, I I think she
I would like her to enjoy the books too. When
I write, I write for the broadest audience I possibly can,
which does include people with canines. Although her English is
not not quite so good. But so I have to
read the book to her. She doesn't pick up the
volume itself. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
As I said earlier on, you've been translated into innumerable languages.
Have you just have to get a translator who can
translate into dog. But now you may not remember this,
but we've actually met a couple of times before, and
I think the first time we met it was a
crime Fest, which is going on this week in the UK,
probably its last edition unfortunately, and we were sat next
(02:24):
to each other at the Saturday night dinner and we
ended up waxing lyrical about our joint love of the Sopranos,
one of the.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Oh yes, of course, yes, yes, I do recall that now,
yes that was And sadly I've been in touch with
Adrian and it does look like this is the last
year for Crimefest. I think I'm going to do a
bit of a video for them. But well that was
great fun because who doesn't love hanging out in Bristol,
England talking about murderous Americans?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right well, one of the three greatest crime shows ever
made in my humble opinion, the Wire and Better Call
Saul being the other two. You may have your own
top three.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I was simply had Breaking Bad to that, but still.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
You know Breaking Bad, Better Call Soal, It's a toss up.
But for me, I just liked the slow burned characterization
in Better Call Salt slightly slightly better, just edged it
for me. Okay, so let's start, because it's the first
time for you on this podcast, Let's start with an origin,
a superhero origin story. So where were you born. Tell
us a little bit about growing up and the early careers.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Sure, I grew up in the midwest of America, a
town called Glennell and Illinois. At the time it was
a it had been a farming community, but even in
the early days of the twentieth century, it was a
commuter town. People would jump on a train and go
into the city. So it had that kind of, you know,
(03:49):
bifurcated personality. I grew up in a household where, since
we're talking about writing in books, where that subject was
very much appreciated. My sister, who was a young adult author,
Julie Reese Deaver, she writes the serious stuff. I write
the nonsensical, shoot him up, violent things. The genre writing.
(04:14):
We were encouraged to read anything we could get our
hands on, and that was a bit ironic in a way,
because you know, our parents put the kabash on watching movies.
Some movies, but the movies at the time were nineteen
fifties and early nineteen sixties. They were very tame. They
were basically what we in America would call PG rated.
(04:38):
Children could go into them, and you know, the violence
was very understated. The cowboys were always shooting the Native Americans,
and then you know, the victim would clutch his chest
and fall over. There was no blood. All the intimate
scenes were off camera, so for some reason our parents
censored that. But we could read anything we could get
(04:59):
our hands on. I could have at eight years old,
I could have read The Tropic of Cancer. I could
have read Henry Miller. I could have read A Nias nine.
But my point is that reading was encouraged, and that
was probably the start of where I recognized that, you know,
books were important, and if I may not to monopolize
(05:19):
your time, but I do have to admit I was
a nerd when I was growing up, and I was
but a real nerd. You know, now, if you're a nerd,
you live in Silicon Valley and you've created an app
for doing deep deep fake cat videos. I was a clumsy,
socially inept ner, no talent for sports, and so I
was drawn to books and drawn to reading, and therefore
(05:43):
drawn to writing as well. Well.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So it's your time, not mine, so you can monopolize
it as much as you wish. And it's sad that
you tell me you have no talent for sports, because
I was looking for a replacement for myself for the
cricket match that I'm supposed to play later this week.
But I've injured my back playing last week.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Oh oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Well, I know how amazing you Americans are at cricket.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So well, well, I will say, I will if the
subject of your injury had not come up, which makes
this slightly inappropriate. But I mean, you know, I guess
my response would be, what do you mean a cricket
match in a day or two? What's going on for
the next month? The cricket match? Am i? Am I
(06:25):
not mistaken? Or am I? I mean? They do last
quite quite a while, don't they?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
They do, they do, But especially for the Americans, we've
created a very short version called a T twenty cricket match,
which only lasts three hours.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Oh is that right? Well, that I might be interested in,
although I will tell you I was in I think
I was in Glasgow with a on book tour and
with my friend from the publishing company, and I looked
up at the score and this is not exactly what
it was, but let's say it was. On one side
was a number and on the other side of the
slash age much huger number, and I thought, oh my god,
(07:01):
that poor team is losing by I don't know, nine
hundred points. He said, Jeff, that's not the way it works,
and I'm not going to bother to explain it.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So you so, you so your earliest attempts at writing. Now,
I understand you were a cub reporter on your as
I believe you Americans call it on your school paper.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yes, yes, indeed. And I was editor of our school
literary magazine.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I you know, I have to say I liked the
idea of stories, and it may have been something about
the the nerdiness of my youth.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Where I was a bit reclusive. I was the bully
e if that's a noun. But you know, bully now
takes on a whole different a different look. At the time,
you know, if you were a little pudgy, clumsy and
socially inept, as I was, you got made fun of
a bit, but nothing like the terrible things that go
on now online, mostly where the cowards are the bullies.
(08:04):
Back in the day, you know, I was bullied once
and I just said I kind of lost it and
hit him, hit the bully, And it's like, he turned
around and started crying, and I thought then I was thinking,
oh my god, I feel so bad for the guy,
but he was making fun of making fun of me. Well,
my point is that I was really drawn to the
(08:25):
stories of genre writing at the time. I read the
James Bond books, I read Dashall Hamlet, I read A
Lord of the Rings. I like fantasy as well Ray Bradbury,
and this concept of a story where you could get
lost among characters that the author had created was such
(08:45):
depth that they became real to you. And was it
because I kind of saw solace outside of the schoolyard
in books. I don't know. I have to say the
one thing I've learned over the years is that I
do have a very vivid imagination. My writing is quite pedestrian.
I'm not a great stylist, but I have the imagination
(09:10):
that can create pretty good plots. And I think even
then I appreciated the stories. I do remember getting together
my schoolmates who lived on the block. The school was
not far away, but we'd kind of come back after
school and I would rewrite the endings of movies we
had seen in the Saturday matinees because I didn't really
(09:32):
find them that satisfying, and we would kind of reenact them.
And so there was something about this concept of story
that I just loved. And I was probably eleven or
twelve when I wrote my first I'd call it serious,
but serious for eleven or twelve novel. Now, it was
(09:54):
very short, it only had a few chapters, but it
was a you know, a spy sort of thing, a
James Bond tale. And yet I remember I did it,
I sat down, I did it, and there it was,
Thank goodness for my publisher's sake and for the sake
of my career. Presently it is no longer extant, it
has disappeared. But no, I just I found this idea
(10:18):
of telling story. It's just a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Well, there's a couple of things there. I mean, I
wrote my first novel, age seventeen, which was a massive, long,
rambling comic fantasy. It was terrible, obviously, but I did
send it into some agents and got my first crop
of rejection letters. But it was at a very satisfying
moment to realize that I had completed a novel and
I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
Although I subsequently did like you are the things. You
were a corporate lawyer and part time folk singer for
(10:44):
a while, which I know you don't do any But
I'm going to take you to task for suggesting that
The Bone Collector is or your writing is pedestrian, because
when I look at The Bone Collector, I've got a
nearly two decades old copy on my shelf because it's
one of the one of the novels that I keep
as a touchstone, and I still remember reading it, thank you.
(11:05):
I loved about it was the crispness of the writing,
you know, and the clarity of the plot, and also
the attention to forensic forensic detail. And then of course
you've got the the unforgettable characters of Lincoln Rhyme rhymes
and Amelia Sachs. So for me, it's an exemplar of
how to write a great thriller. So the fact that
you're very humble and say that your writing is pedestrian,
(11:25):
I don't think anything can be further from from the truth.
But The Bunk Collector is not. Was not your first
published book, was it.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Oh? It was probably number six or seven or eight.
I like to think I'm an overnight success after a decade.
I had published books that were nominated for Edgar Awards
and other awards before that. It you know, for me,
(11:53):
the task, which is a very welcome task and an
enjoyable one, is writing for the readers. Readers spend money.
That's not to belittle the expense of a book, but
they spend time, and they spend emotional engagement with a
story that we've created. And I have always been on
(12:17):
the lookout for ideas that kind of hw to the well.
It's sort of a joke they tell in Hollywood, but
there's some truth to it that when a producer wants
to make a movie, he or she is looking for
something that is wildly original, never been seen before, and
yet has been extremely successful in the past. And that
(12:39):
kind of sums up the contradiction of Hollywood and explains
the sequels I think we're up to. I don't watch
superhero movies. Your kind phrase about me earlier, but I
think we're up to like twenty seven sequels for certain
maybe the Marvel Avengers or whoever they are. So you know,
(13:00):
this idea that you write for yourself and throw something
out there and you hope the readers like it. That's
not acceptable. I mean, a pilot doesn't do that. When
she gets behind the controls of the airplane. You know
what you're doing. You think about the passengers, you think
about the readers, And so I was. When I was
(13:21):
writing my earlier books. They tended to be a bit
more how do I say, improvise now, they always have
twists and turns, and as you know and maybe your
listeners know as well, I'm known for my surprises, my
surprise endings and so forth, and they all had those,
but they were digressive. There were more murder mysteries. They
(13:43):
took place over a longer period of time, And although
there were awards nominated or won, they didn't when I
went back and looked at them, they didn't grab me
the way I thought a reader should be grabbed. Hence
the Bone Collector. What about a character who is physically
(14:04):
unable to fight back to the villain with the villain,
and who must use his thoughts, both his intellect and
his emotions to capture the bad guy. And I thought, well,
there's the idea. Now, when I refer to my little
funny thing about Hollywood, what I'm referring to is that
the books followed the structure that I love, and that's
(14:29):
the characters we certainly enjoyed. But then those big surprises, surprise,
one surprise after another and twists and turns. So The
Bone Collector represents one of my first outlined, extremely well
outlined books, or extremely diligently outlined books. And then I
threw in the new elements, so the readers were getting
(14:49):
what they were used to, a dever book, but something new,
a character that we had not seen before, hints of them,
you know, we had. I think it ironside, a paraplegic.
You may have been a lawyer. I can't recall Raymond Massey,
I think was the actor from some years ago. And
(15:12):
you know, there have been other characters with various disabilities,
but nobody quite liked Lincoln Rock, so I gave it
a shot. I hoped readers would like him. I spent
a lot of time working on that character, and he
seems to be popular because if I could figure out
technically how to do it and share my screen, I
know you and I are on video now you'd be
you'd look at the brand new Lincoln Rhyme book number
(15:34):
eighteen or nineteen. I think that I'm hard at work at.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
So many that you've actually forgotten that forgotten.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That I have for I have forgotten the number, and
if I were to remember it, it'd probably get it
wrong anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So did you have anything because you referenced the film that,
did you have anything to do with the Bone Collector film?
Obviously some of the world's biggest, biggest stars on that project.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
No, No, I didn't, And I've had several things. Made
a movie for HBO called Dead Silence with James Garner
and Marlee Mattlin. I had another TV movie for our
Lifetime network, The Devil's Tear Drop, based on a book
of mine. NBC ran a show a few years ago
(16:20):
called Lincoln Rhyme Hunt for the Bone Collector that was
on Prime Time. I didn't do well. I didn't really
care for it very much. And the new show that's
out now, the number one show in America is Tracker,
based on my Culture Shaw series. He's the character from
South of Nowhere, and my involvement has always been very tangential.
(16:41):
By my choice. Well, well, I guess I would say
it's mutual because the filmmakers and producers have been very
happy to have an initial conversation with me. And then
during the course of the production, maybe another conversation or
two where I provide some input. It's all optional, just
(17:01):
thoughts I have, and that seems to work out best.
I have no desire to be involved in the creation
of a movie or TV show that's a product by
a committee, and I don't play well with others. It's
just it's just a fact. I don't think I'm a
curmudgeon like Lincoln Rhyme. I just don't want to be
in the situation where I might have to, you know,
(17:24):
negotiate some creative elements. So I'm happy to sell the
rights to people I respect, Ken Olan, Justin Hartley for Tracker,
Denzel Washington, Angelina Joe Lee for The Bone Collector, James
Garner for Dead Silence, my other, my other show, and
and oh and then Michael Imperiole, who was, of course
(17:47):
from The Sopranos. We know Chris who was in Lincoln
Rhyme Hunt for the Bone Collector. That was a very
exciting thing for me because of our you know, and
you'd appreciate that too, for the Sopranos connection. But no,
I pretty much let the experts have their thing, and
then I get to sit back and write the book.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, you mentioned Culture Shore there, which is a perfect
segue into the book that we're talking about today, which
is the latest in the Cult show series South of Norway.
So why don't you give us the plot the thirty
second elevator pitch for that book, and then we can
talk a bit more about Shaw.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Sure. Sure. The story finds Culture Shaw in a small
town in northern California that sits at the foot of
a levee on the other side of which is a torrent.
The summer melt in the mountains has flooded the river
(18:41):
and is dangerously eroding the levee and the highway on top.
In fact, so badly that an suv with a family
of four tumbles into the river and is swept downstream.
So you can tell what kind of terrible, terrible catastrophe
this could for the family and also for the town
(19:03):
if the levey were to go completely. So Culture shows
up on the scene and he finds that he is
not alone among his family members because Dorian Shaw is there,
and she is a disaster excuse me, a disaster response individual.
That's a real phenomenon, a real profession. I was not
(19:26):
aware of but people who run those operations do things
like oil spill cleanups, and they prevent terrible tragedies like
floods if they can. They prepare for earthquakes to the
extent one can. And so she is trying to save
the town, and then Culture is trying to save the family.
And that's all in the first ten pages, and the
(19:48):
story goes from there. I tell you more, except I
guess the best I can say is there's a lot
more going on than it seems to be the case,
which is through of all my books. And the question arises, well,
is the Levey going to be the victim of a
natural disaster or is there something else behind it? And
if so, who might that be? But I will say
(20:10):
that for any of your listeners who are ever concerned
that they might be in a situation where they need
to identify what we call an IED that's an improvised
explosive device that is kind of a booby trap bomb,
they should read this book because they will know how
honey Bees will be able to help them out of
that situation. And if that doesn't sell a book by seven,
I don't know what does.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
That was a particularly fascinating part of the book something else.
That fact I mean this book is we talk a
lot about race against time in crime and thriller fiction,
but this book is genuinely a race against against time.
But while I was reading this, you refer to Cultishaw
with a lovely turn of phrase. You call him a rewardist.
(20:52):
Do you want to explain to us who Cultishore is
and Choy is and why he's rewardist?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yes? And I will go back to my quasi derogatory
remarks about Hollywood a month ago, about looking for something
that's very original and yet has been tried and true
and successful. The I got the idea to write a
book about a parapatetic hero based largely on my love
(21:21):
when I was young, of the characters from the old
time the Westerns, and I would list among that Shane
of the George Stephens film based on a book by
Jack Schaeffer. And he's the you know, the gun slinger
who comes to town. You know he's a gunslinger, but
he has a heart of gold. He helps out the
townspeople and then he rides off into the sunset to
(21:43):
pursue another another crime. Clint Eastwood from the Man with
No Name series fistful of dollars, a few dollars more.
I just love that that hero. Don't ask me why,
but I do so. I always wanted to create that
as a a character, a prototype, a template for one
of my series. Well that's the tried and true thing.
(22:06):
We've seen that a lot. But what haven't we seen.
I have not seen anyone who pursues rewards professionally. And
I'm sure all your listeners are familiar with rewards. I
mean some are quite unfortunately, quite sad. On our milk cartons.
In America, we have a picture of a missing child.
It's a public service ad and with information about how
(22:29):
we can call the authorities if we happen to see
that child. It's only increased in American possibly in your
country too, because of the human trafficking and people have
gone missing. And then there are rewards for escaped convicts,
for killers whom the police have not been able to find,
(22:50):
and offered by civilians too. Families find their daughter has
run off and maybe been led astray by an abusive boyfriend.
Maybe she or he is just a run off, and
a reward is offered for that. So I did a
little research into it, and there are rewards ranging from
(23:11):
you can see them online, I mean, ranging from like
five thousand dollars up to thirty million. The US State
Department was offering a thirty million dollar reward for a
terrorist in the Middle East. Now they don't rewards like that.
They don't want you to strap on your assault rifle
and go over there and find him. They want information.
The police generally don't want a competitive gun slinger looking
(23:35):
for an individual, but they certainly do offer rewards. And
I thought, well, there's my story, the old and the new,
And as with everything, even with Lincoln Ryme, I thought
I'd give it a try and see see if it works.
And yes, Culture Shaw has become very popular. The TV
show again is extremely popular, and that's where he came from.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I'm I think we share very similar love of off
screen because I remember watching the Fistful of Dollars trilogy
when I was young, and it gave me a lifelong
love of Westerns. I always there you go. I've just
finished watching five series of Yellowstone, which are modern Western,
(24:17):
Isn't it?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Isn't it well done?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Utterly brilliant, And I still consider the good, the bad,
and the ugly to be the best Western I've ever seen,
just pipping, just pipping unforgiven, with maybe the outlaw Josie
Wales in third place. All Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Very yeah, very very well, said, yeah, I go with that.
Unforgiven falls a little, Laura, I mean only because of ploting.
You know, I'm a real plot person and I but
but for acting, I think that's that rises to the top.
The performances that were from all of those, all of
the characters Gene Hackman included, and then I can't remember
(24:54):
the young the young gunslinger who who played him, but
he was absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Absolutely wonderful. I mean, I mean, Gene Hackman's recent death
is probably worthy of a of a Jeffrey Deva plot,
given conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, what a sad story that was.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Indeed, now you've talked a little bit about your plot,
and I know that we've got lots of listeners who
are prime writers or prime writers in the making. You
you're meticulous, you say you plot in great details, so
you're not a panzer. Is there anything else that you
that you think is worthy of passing on to people?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Oh? Sure, I teach a lengthy course, and I know
we have limited time here. My whole course would take
about six hours, and I suspect that you have other
things to do. And besides, I'd probably have to charge
all the all the listeners for the full course. I
wouldn't want to do I wouldn't want to do that,
But I'm happy to give a you know, maybe the
(25:56):
top four or five things. I would recommend. First of all,
write in the genre that you love reading for several reasons. One,
writing is a tough business, as you well know, and
we need something to kind of emotionally energize us. And
(26:17):
if we read in a particular genre, it's because we
love it. Whether it's fantasy, science fiction, crime, cozy crime, thrillers,
whatever it is, we enjoy that we enjoy reading it,
we'll enjoy writing it more and the pain will be
a little bit less when we come to those difficult times.
(26:38):
And the second reason to read in the genre that
you have enjoyed is that you already are conscious of
the conventions of that genre. You will understand the shifting
points of view, you'll understand the advantages of writing in
past tense versus present tense. You and and you'll also
(27:01):
understand you know, how, the how the tricks and the
surprises and twists work so right in the genre that
you enjoy reading. But if during the outline process you
realize I don't know where this is going to go, well,
you know that's something to look at. It's like, we
have a pain somewhere. You know. Maybe you've mentioned you're
(27:23):
you have a bit of a pain from an injury
of some sort. I have a so I have seen
the doctor about a pain in my shoulder. Well, there's
an indication that there may be something wrong there that
we have to look at and we have to have
it taken care of. That's that's all writer's block is.
And so don't be afraid of writer's block. When it appears.
It may be telling you one of several things. One
(27:46):
that this is a book that should not be written
because they happen. And what do you do? Then you
do the morally courageous, upright thing, intellectually honest, and throw
out what you're working on and start something new. If
you have determined that there's really no way to turn
that into a good book, it may be that you've
(28:07):
kind of hit a speed bump. Well, what does that mean?
We'll put it aside. Maybe you're doing post it notes
to create your outline. Maybe you're working on a big whiteboard.
We'll move on to something else. You say, I can't
figure out how to kill this person in the middle
of the book. We'll go kill somebody in five chapters later.
That may inform how you're going to kill this person
in the middle of the book. So writer's block will
(28:28):
tell you that you've just got to think about it
a little more. And then finally there's writer's block that
is just goes with the territory. And this happens to
me all the time. I wake up, I look at
the outline, I think, oh, you know what, I just
don't feel like killing somebody today, don't We all have
those feelings. And it's like, you know, a neurosurgeon wakes
(28:51):
up and she looks at her schedule, Oh, I got
to repair that aneurysm today. Oh, I just don't feel
like it. Well, then she thinks, I'm getting paid a
lot of money to fix an aneurysm. So get my
ass out of bed and go over there and fix
the aneurysm at the hospital. I get my ass out
of bed, go to the book, and kill the person
I'm supposed to kill or write. One of the worst
(29:12):
things that you're probably familiar with this too, the dreaded
explanatory chapter where the I hate doing those where the
detective at the end explains how all the clues came together.
Another thing I'll say is rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, Ernest
heming Away, no great writers, only great rewriters. And rewrite
on the screen, rewrite on a printed page. And then
(29:35):
most important of all, listen to the book after it's
all done. I use word Microsoft word. They have a
read aloud function, and I listened to the book word
by word. Last thing I want to do. Sick and
tired of the book, but you'd be amazed what you'd
find and amazed at how much better the book is
after you've done that. So my mini course in writing,
(29:55):
and I'm not going to charge anybody for it. How's that?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
That was amazing? That really was amazing. I mean that's sound.
That's a proper, proper, proper Jeffrey Deaver boot Camp on writing.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Five minutes now, I did mention before we wind up,
I did mention that we do have another point of
connection which has come up in the in the years
since I met you. So you're a huge Bond fan
and you ended up writing a Bond novel. I'm currently
writing for the in Flaming State, the first in a
series featuring Q, which comes out later this year.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
In Fantastic, Amazing, Wonderful.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It's called Quantum of Menace, which is a riff on
on the content it fantastic Ques booted out of I
six and then he has to go and solve the
murder of his childhood friend with a quantum computer signed.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
With with with or with all his cleverness, his brilliance.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yes, but without the caricature that he slightly became on
on screen.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I don't know if this was the same experience for you,
but there's a scene in there where where Bond and
Q are chatting to each other and doing something because
Bond makes a cameo in this book, and I actually
had to pause because I'd grown up watching these films,
and I had to pause and just sit back and
think to myself, I'm writing these iconic characters, and it
(31:13):
just made me quite I was slightly overwhelmed by the
whole thing. What was your experience, I mean you they
were already massively world famous before they asked you to.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Do well, I will say there are. And for your
listeners who may or may not know this. When an
author has a following and then sadly he or she passes,
you know, readers they want more of the character. I
(31:43):
was in that that state when Ian Fleming died in
the mid nineteen sixties, and I had read every book
at least once, and I was devastated. And then I
was encouraged to hear that the estate had, you know,
brought bond back. Amos wrote the first one following Fleming's
death a friend of Fleming, as I understand it. And
(32:06):
so when the estates such as the Ian Fleming estate
or the Robert Ludlam estate, or estate the states of
other people who have passed away, go out and look
for authors. I don't know what the criteria are, but
in my case I was very fortunate because I could
not possibly write the in the style of another author.
(32:32):
I mentioned Ludlam, and that'll be that'll be an example.
I read Ludlam. I liked the books, to be honest,
I thought some of them were a bit over long,
but nonetheless I didn't I did enjoy them. But I
was not a student of Ludlam. You know, I didn't
know like Len Diighton's books, The Spy with No Name,
(32:54):
I believe. I don't think he was named in the books.
He may have had the Michael Caine did the film.
I've believe the Impress File he may have had a name.
But you know, I didn't know that character well enough.
I couldn't write dashall Hammett, you know, Sam Spain, I
couldn't do that. But Fleming I knew Cole and so
I have to say when they called me up, I
was not that concerned about it because I was very,
(33:17):
very first in the Bond myth. Now I frankly, aside
from Goldfinger and from Russia with Love, I have not
been a fan of the movies because I feel they
were a bit a bit glitzy and gimmicky and uh
(33:38):
and I'm sure you're you're finding this with with Q.
These are these are gritty, real people. You know. Bond
his he had a double O that was a license
to kill, which it was it wasn't technically m I six.
That's the British Secret Service, like the UH, the equivalent
of the American CIA. They they say they have said,
(33:59):
and they say, no, they don't assassinate people. But the
fictional secret service that Bond worked for did and he
would go out and shoot somebody as a sniper, or
walk up behind them and shoot them in the back
of the head. And uh, you know, that's a that's
a really a gritty, dark character. And by the way,
he went into a funk a depression for months afterwards
(34:21):
for taking a life. But he did it for a
king and or queen and country. And that was the
kind of character that I wanted to, you know, be
a part of. So I wasn't really that intimidated, but
I sure wanted to get it right. And I went
back and reread some of the some of the books
and but but I'm sure you you know, you're very
(34:42):
versed in the literature as well as the as the film.
I can't wait to I'll tell you, I cannot wait
to read that.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Oh well, that's very very nice of you anyway, I
mean your Bond project. You clearly enjoyed it, and it
clearly brought out some of your boyhood idealism the right
word of the Bond cannon.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Oh, I think so, yeah, I think that's good. Well,
he's you know, he's a hero. In Moonraker the book,
it was the of course of the missile that Hugo
Drax was he adjusted the uh the navigation system to
hit London, I believe, and Bond learned that, and he
was in the the bunker or the silo, and he said, well,
(35:25):
time for a last cigarette and as soon as they
start fueling, I'm going to blow it and myself up.
You know, that's a that's a hero. And uh oh,
by the way, he didn't. If anyone's concerned, and if
and if your listeners say, oh no it ended with
the Moonraker, no it didn't. Don't worry. That was a
bit of a spoiler, But oh no, I thought he
(35:45):
was just just the best hero that that ever lived.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Absolutely, and I the main thing that I found while
writing this book was because I said, when they when
the estate asked me to do it, I said, look,
I'll do it under the condition that I can turn
these into real character characters. So Q in the films,
as much as we love him, he did become slightly
a bit of exploding toys in the lab. And I said, no,
(36:14):
he's going to be a real scientist who takes his
work seriously and now he's a drift once he's been
booted out of six, but he still is a serious man.
And I think they were very very good to work
with for me personally, because they accepted that and they
allowed me to create a character which I thought would
stand will stand Q up as someone who is a
(36:36):
person of integrity and models the kind of values that
I think Bond Q and the rest of the Bond
canon seek to seek to promote. Wonderful. So we'll finish
by me asking you what you are working on next.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yes, I am presently write in the new Lincoln Rhyme
novel that will be published a year from now, probably
may the spring of twenty twenty six, which makes me
sit down to even think that, but I'm sitting down anyway,
so it doesn't matter. It just is I just turned
(37:12):
seventy five this year, so that'll be seventy six, and
that will be just kind of astonishing to me to
get the I think it again, it'll be the eighteenth
or nineteenth Lincoln Rhyme out there. But the other thing
is that I love short fiction, and there is not
(37:34):
a huge market now for short fiction, but I've managed
to an Earth one via Amazon, and I publish short
fiction with them through Amazon Original Stories, and that is
a just a delight for me. I'll tell you a
very fast story, and I will make it fast. You know,
(37:54):
we all get a lot of things from Amazon. I
certainly do. And I got a box the other month,
about a month ago, and I opened it up, and
you know we often forget what we ordered. Well, it's
a big looseight cube and I thought, okay, it had
a few glasses of wine. And I went to the
lusite cube section of Amazon and I bought a looseight
(38:18):
cube for some reason, I don't know why. Well, then
I turned it over. Oh no, it's an award I
received from Amazon Publishing that there had just been two
hundred and fifty thousand downloads of my recent short story.
And that is for your listeners who may not be aware.
That's a lot for a short story. And so that
(38:39):
kind of validates my love of writing short fiction. So
I have several of those now coming out now, and
I would simply recommend if your listeners want to know,
go to Diver or look at Amazon. These are at
the moment Kindle Original so you do have to have
a kindle to read them, but the rights revert to
(38:59):
me pretty quickly, and so after a year or so
they'll be coming out in a book. Of course. HarperCollins
has just published My dead Ends, my recent collection of
short stories, and I think there may be one or
two of those the Amazon stories in there. But not
to belabor the point, but since you asked for shameless
(39:19):
self promotion, I will. I also co write with a
woman named Isabella Meldonado, and we are writing a series
featuring a federal agent and her associate who's a what
we have called an intrusionist, and he's someone who is
I guess you call him a computer security expert, and
(39:42):
he's concerned about the you know, the overreach of government
and corporation, governments and corporations into our personal lives. And
so they, for various reasons, get involved in solving serial
killing crimes that involves usually involved computer security or something
like that. The first one was Fatal Intrusion. The second one,
(40:03):
coming out this year, is called The Grave Artist, and
so that's kind of what I'm up to now.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Well, shameless promotion is the name of the game, Jeffrey.
I mean, that's wonderful I am actually a huge fan
of short stories. I write half a dozen every year
for various anatlogy excellent for verious anthologies. I find it
a refreshing break from writing novels, absolutely and also the form.
(40:32):
It really stretches you as a writer because you've got,
you know, three to six thousand words to play with
as opposed to eighty to one hundred thousand, and it
really makes you think about every single word that you
set down.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I think the analogy is Napoleon was under a surprise
attack and he said to his dresser, I'm in a
terrible hurry. Dressed me slowly. And with the short fiction,
less is more. You have to really take your time.
(41:05):
And I think Mark Twain said, speaking of novels, but
it would apply to a short story too, the best
novels are made up of what is not in them,
and that's about short fiction. Absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Jeffrey, it has been absolutely wonderful talking to you. It's
just been an absolute delight catching up with one of
my writing heroes. And I'm not ashamed to say that.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Yeah, well, you're very kind, and their kind words about
the well my writing in general, and the bone Collector
I do appreciate it. I seem so here.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So that brings us to the close of another episode
once again. If you've liked it, do review, sign up
for regular episodes using your favorite podcast app, and do
spread the word and we will see you, or at
least you will hear us next time on Murder Junction.
Thank you so much for listening.
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to thriller writing legend mister Jeffrey Deva,
author of, among other things, the legendary Lincoln Rhymes and
Amelia Saxon series and now the latest in his culture
show novels, South of Nowhere. Jeffrey has sold fifty million
books at last count in one hundred and fifty countries,
in innumerable languages, and he hasn't even broken sweat. Jeffrey,
(00:26):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Seem thank you so much. What a lovely introduction, although
I have to say hearing all that I'm not sweating,
but I'm exhausted hearing that I've done so much. And
I'll tell you a very fast story. A few years ago,
I received three Lifetime Achievement Awards in one year, and
I thought, well, that's depressing. Are the presenters thinking it's
(00:50):
time for me to retire because I wasn't quite that
old yet. But I have kept at it so But anyway,
it's a you know, it's a fun job. I get
to make up things for a living, and I don't
work in Washington, d C. On Capitol Hill. And that's
the last of my political comments.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I have to say, so these lifetime Achievements Achievement awards,
were they given solely to you? Or was your co
author who you've just introduced me to, who is currently
sitting on your lap, did acknowledge?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
See, maybe maybe we should add add quickly that the
person we're speaking of is not like a cheerleader or
pom pom girl or you know, I'm sure you have
the comparable, uh, you know, the the cheerleaders sort of.
It's a dog, just for the record, and her name
is Blush, and she sits at my feet when I
(01:42):
when I write, and you know, I I think she
I would like her to enjoy the books too. When
I write, I write for the broadest audience I possibly can,
which does include people with canines. Although her English is
not not quite so good. But so I have to
read the book to her. She doesn't pick up the
volume itself. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
As I said earlier on, you've been translated into innumerable languages.
Have you just have to get a translator who can
translate into dog. But now you may not remember this,
but we've actually met a couple of times before, and
I think the first time we met it was a
crime Fest, which is going on this week in the UK,
probably its last edition unfortunately, and we were sat next
(02:24):
to each other at the Saturday night dinner and we
ended up waxing lyrical about our joint love of the Sopranos,
one of the.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Oh yes, of course, yes, yes, I do recall that now,
yes that was And sadly I've been in touch with
Adrian and it does look like this is the last
year for Crimefest. I think I'm going to do a
bit of a video for them. But well that was
great fun because who doesn't love hanging out in Bristol,
England talking about murderous Americans?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right well, one of the three greatest crime shows ever
made in my humble opinion, the Wire and Better Call
Saul being the other two. You may have your own
top three.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I was simply had Breaking Bad to that, but still.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
You know Breaking Bad, Better Call Soal, It's a toss up.
But for me, I just liked the slow burned characterization
in Better Call Salt slightly slightly better, just edged it
for me. Okay, so let's start, because it's the first
time for you on this podcast, Let's start with an origin,
a superhero origin story. So where were you born. Tell
us a little bit about growing up and the early careers.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Sure, I grew up in the midwest of America, a
town called Glennell and Illinois. At the time it was
a it had been a farming community, but even in
the early days of the twentieth century, it was a
commuter town. People would jump on a train and go
into the city. So it had that kind of, you know,
(03:49):
bifurcated personality. I grew up in a household where, since
we're talking about writing in books, where that subject was
very much appreciated. My sister, who was a young adult author,
Julie Reese Deaver, she writes the serious stuff. I write
the nonsensical, shoot him up, violent things. The genre writing.
(04:14):
We were encouraged to read anything we could get our
hands on, and that was a bit ironic in a way,
because you know, our parents put the kabash on watching movies.
Some movies, but the movies at the time were nineteen
fifties and early nineteen sixties. They were very tame. They
were basically what we in America would call PG rated.
(04:38):
Children could go into them, and you know, the violence
was very understated. The cowboys were always shooting the Native Americans,
and then you know, the victim would clutch his chest
and fall over. There was no blood. All the intimate
scenes were off camera, so for some reason our parents
censored that. But we could read anything we could get
(04:59):
our hands on. I could have at eight years old,
I could have read The Tropic of Cancer. I could
have read Henry Miller. I could have read A Nias nine.
But my point is that reading was encouraged, and that
was probably the start of where I recognized that, you know,
books were important, and if I may not to monopolize
(05:19):
your time, but I do have to admit I was
a nerd when I was growing up, and I was
but a real nerd. You know, now, if you're a nerd,
you live in Silicon Valley and you've created an app
for doing deep deep fake cat videos. I was a clumsy,
socially inept ner, no talent for sports, and so I
was drawn to books and drawn to reading, and therefore
(05:43):
drawn to writing as well. Well.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So it's your time, not mine, so you can monopolize
it as much as you wish. And it's sad that
you tell me you have no talent for sports, because
I was looking for a replacement for myself for the
cricket match that I'm supposed to play later this week.
But I've injured my back playing last week.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Oh oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Well, I know how amazing you Americans are at cricket.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So well, well, I will say, I will if the
subject of your injury had not come up, which makes
this slightly inappropriate. But I mean, you know, I guess
my response would be, what do you mean a cricket
match in a day or two? What's going on for
the next month? The cricket match? Am i? Am I
(06:25):
not mistaken? Or am I? I mean? They do last
quite quite a while, don't they?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
They do, they do, But especially for the Americans, we've
created a very short version called a T twenty cricket match,
which only lasts three hours.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Oh is that right? Well, that I might be interested in,
although I will tell you I was in I think
I was in Glasgow with a on book tour and
with my friend from the publishing company, and I looked
up at the score and this is not exactly what
it was, but let's say it was. On one side
was a number and on the other side of the
slash age much huger number, and I thought, oh my god,
(07:01):
that poor team is losing by I don't know, nine
hundred points. He said, Jeff, that's not the way it works,
and I'm not going to bother to explain it.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So you so, you so your earliest attempts at writing. Now,
I understand you were a cub reporter on your as
I believe you Americans call it on your school paper.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yes, yes, indeed. And I was editor of our school
literary magazine.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I you know, I have to say I liked the
idea of stories, and it may have been something about
the the nerdiness of my youth.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Where I was a bit reclusive. I was the bully
e if that's a noun. But you know, bully now
takes on a whole different a different look. At the time,
you know, if you were a little pudgy, clumsy and
socially inept, as I was, you got made fun of
a bit, but nothing like the terrible things that go
on now online, mostly where the cowards are the bullies.
(08:04):
Back in the day, you know, I was bullied once
and I just said I kind of lost it and
hit him, hit the bully, And it's like, he turned
around and started crying, and I thought then I was thinking,
oh my god, I feel so bad for the guy,
but he was making fun of making fun of me. Well,
my point is that I was really drawn to the
(08:25):
stories of genre writing at the time. I read the
James Bond books, I read Dashall Hamlet, I read A
Lord of the Rings. I like fantasy as well Ray Bradbury,
and this concept of a story where you could get
lost among characters that the author had created was such
(08:45):
depth that they became real to you. And was it
because I kind of saw solace outside of the schoolyard
in books. I don't know. I have to say the
one thing I've learned over the years is that I
do have a very vivid imagination. My writing is quite pedestrian.
I'm not a great stylist, but I have the imagination
(09:10):
that can create pretty good plots. And I think even
then I appreciated the stories. I do remember getting together
my schoolmates who lived on the block. The school was
not far away, but we'd kind of come back after
school and I would rewrite the endings of movies we
had seen in the Saturday matinees because I didn't really
(09:32):
find them that satisfying, and we would kind of reenact them.
And so there was something about this concept of story
that I just loved. And I was probably eleven or
twelve when I wrote my first I'd call it serious,
but serious for eleven or twelve novel. Now, it was
(09:54):
very short, it only had a few chapters, but it
was a you know, a spy sort of thing, a
James Bond tale. And yet I remember I did it,
I sat down, I did it, and there it was,
Thank goodness for my publisher's sake and for the sake
of my career. Presently it is no longer extant, it
has disappeared. But no, I just I found this idea
(10:18):
of telling story. It's just a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Well, there's a couple of things there. I mean, I
wrote my first novel, age seventeen, which was a massive, long,
rambling comic fantasy. It was terrible, obviously, but I did
send it into some agents and got my first crop
of rejection letters. But it was at a very satisfying
moment to realize that I had completed a novel and
I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
Although I subsequently did like you are the things. You
were a corporate lawyer and part time folk singer for
(10:44):
a while, which I know you don't do any But
I'm going to take you to task for suggesting that
The Bone Collector is or your writing is pedestrian, because
when I look at The Bone Collector, I've got a
nearly two decades old copy on my shelf because it's
one of the one of the novels that I keep
as a touchstone, and I still remember reading it, thank you.
(11:05):
I loved about it was the crispness of the writing,
you know, and the clarity of the plot, and also
the attention to forensic forensic detail. And then of course
you've got the the unforgettable characters of Lincoln Rhyme rhymes
and Amelia Sachs. So for me, it's an exemplar of
how to write a great thriller. So the fact that
you're very humble and say that your writing is pedestrian,
(11:25):
I don't think anything can be further from from the truth.
But The Bunk Collector is not. Was not your first
published book, was it.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Oh? It was probably number six or seven or eight.
I like to think I'm an overnight success after a decade.
I had published books that were nominated for Edgar Awards
and other awards before that. It you know, for me,
(11:53):
the task, which is a very welcome task and an
enjoyable one, is writing for the readers. Readers spend money.
That's not to belittle the expense of a book, but
they spend time, and they spend emotional engagement with a
story that we've created. And I have always been on
(12:17):
the lookout for ideas that kind of hw to the well.
It's sort of a joke they tell in Hollywood, but
there's some truth to it that when a producer wants
to make a movie, he or she is looking for
something that is wildly original, never been seen before, and
yet has been extremely successful in the past. And that
(12:39):
kind of sums up the contradiction of Hollywood and explains
the sequels I think we're up to. I don't watch
superhero movies. Your kind phrase about me earlier, but I
think we're up to like twenty seven sequels for certain
maybe the Marvel Avengers or whoever they are. So you know,
(13:00):
this idea that you write for yourself and throw something
out there and you hope the readers like it. That's
not acceptable. I mean, a pilot doesn't do that. When
she gets behind the controls of the airplane. You know
what you're doing. You think about the passengers, you think
about the readers, And so I was. When I was
(13:21):
writing my earlier books. They tended to be a bit
more how do I say, improvise now, they always have
twists and turns, and as you know and maybe your
listeners know as well, I'm known for my surprises, my
surprise endings and so forth, and they all had those,
but they were digressive. There were more murder mysteries. They
(13:43):
took place over a longer period of time, And although
there were awards nominated or won, they didn't when I
went back and looked at them, they didn't grab me
the way I thought a reader should be grabbed. Hence
the Bone Collector. What about a character who is physically
(14:04):
unable to fight back to the villain with the villain,
and who must use his thoughts, both his intellect and
his emotions to capture the bad guy. And I thought, well,
there's the idea. Now, when I refer to my little
funny thing about Hollywood, what I'm referring to is that
the books followed the structure that I love, and that's
(14:29):
the characters we certainly enjoyed. But then those big surprises, surprise,
one surprise after another and twists and turns. So The
Bone Collector represents one of my first outlined, extremely well
outlined books, or extremely diligently outlined books. And then I
threw in the new elements, so the readers were getting
(14:49):
what they were used to, a dever book, but something new,
a character that we had not seen before, hints of them,
you know, we had. I think it ironside, a paraplegic.
You may have been a lawyer. I can't recall Raymond Massey,
I think was the actor from some years ago. And
(15:12):
you know, there have been other characters with various disabilities,
but nobody quite liked Lincoln Rock, so I gave it
a shot. I hoped readers would like him. I spent
a lot of time working on that character, and he
seems to be popular because if I could figure out
technically how to do it and share my screen, I
know you and I are on video now you'd be
you'd look at the brand new Lincoln Rhyme book number
(15:34):
eighteen or nineteen. I think that I'm hard at work at.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
So many that you've actually forgotten that forgotten.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That I have for I have forgotten the number, and
if I were to remember it, it'd probably get it
wrong anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So did you have anything because you referenced the film that,
did you have anything to do with the Bone Collector film?
Obviously some of the world's biggest, biggest stars on that project.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
No, No, I didn't, And I've had several things. Made
a movie for HBO called Dead Silence with James Garner
and Marlee Mattlin. I had another TV movie for our
Lifetime network, The Devil's Tear Drop, based on a book
of mine. NBC ran a show a few years ago
(16:20):
called Lincoln Rhyme Hunt for the Bone Collector that was
on Prime Time. I didn't do well. I didn't really
care for it very much. And the new show that's
out now, the number one show in America is Tracker,
based on my Culture Shaw series. He's the character from
South of Nowhere, and my involvement has always been very tangential.
(16:41):
By my choice. Well, well, I guess I would say
it's mutual because the filmmakers and producers have been very
happy to have an initial conversation with me. And then
during the course of the production, maybe another conversation or
two where I provide some input. It's all optional, just
(17:01):
thoughts I have, and that seems to work out best.
I have no desire to be involved in the creation
of a movie or TV show that's a product by
a committee, and I don't play well with others. It's
just it's just a fact. I don't think I'm a
curmudgeon like Lincoln Rhyme. I just don't want to be
in the situation where I might have to, you know,
(17:24):
negotiate some creative elements. So I'm happy to sell the
rights to people I respect, Ken Olan, Justin Hartley for Tracker,
Denzel Washington, Angelina Joe Lee for The Bone Collector, James
Garner for Dead Silence, my other, my other show, and
and oh and then Michael Imperiole, who was, of course
(17:47):
from The Sopranos. We know Chris who was in Lincoln
Rhyme Hunt for the Bone Collector. That was a very
exciting thing for me because of our you know, and
you'd appreciate that too, for the Sopranos connection. But no,
I pretty much let the experts have their thing, and
then I get to sit back and write the book.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, you mentioned Culture Shore there, which is a perfect
segue into the book that we're talking about today, which
is the latest in the Cult show series South of Norway.
So why don't you give us the plot the thirty
second elevator pitch for that book, and then we can
talk a bit more about Shaw.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Sure. Sure. The story finds Culture Shaw in a small
town in northern California that sits at the foot of
a levee on the other side of which is a torrent.
The summer melt in the mountains has flooded the river
(18:41):
and is dangerously eroding the levee and the highway on top.
In fact, so badly that an suv with a family
of four tumbles into the river and is swept downstream.
So you can tell what kind of terrible, terrible catastrophe
this could for the family and also for the town
(19:03):
if the levey were to go completely. So Culture shows
up on the scene and he finds that he is
not alone among his family members because Dorian Shaw is there,
and she is a disaster excuse me, a disaster response individual.
That's a real phenomenon, a real profession. I was not
(19:26):
aware of but people who run those operations do things
like oil spill cleanups, and they prevent terrible tragedies like
floods if they can. They prepare for earthquakes to the
extent one can. And so she is trying to save
the town, and then Culture is trying to save the family.
And that's all in the first ten pages, and the
(19:48):
story goes from there. I tell you more, except I
guess the best I can say is there's a lot
more going on than it seems to be the case,
which is through of all my books. And the question arises, well,
is the Levey going to be the victim of a
natural disaster or is there something else behind it? And
if so, who might that be? But I will say
(20:10):
that for any of your listeners who are ever concerned
that they might be in a situation where they need
to identify what we call an IED that's an improvised
explosive device that is kind of a booby trap bomb,
they should read this book because they will know how
honey Bees will be able to help them out of
that situation. And if that doesn't sell a book by seven,
I don't know what does.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
That was a particularly fascinating part of the book something else.
That fact I mean this book is we talk a
lot about race against time in crime and thriller fiction,
but this book is genuinely a race against against time.
But while I was reading this, you refer to Cultishaw
with a lovely turn of phrase. You call him a rewardist.
(20:52):
Do you want to explain to us who Cultishore is
and Choy is and why he's rewardist?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yes? And I will go back to my quasi derogatory
remarks about Hollywood a month ago, about looking for something
that's very original and yet has been tried and true
and successful. The I got the idea to write a
book about a parapatetic hero based largely on my love
(21:21):
when I was young, of the characters from the old
time the Westerns, and I would list among that Shane
of the George Stephens film based on a book by
Jack Schaeffer. And he's the you know, the gun slinger
who comes to town. You know he's a gunslinger, but
he has a heart of gold. He helps out the
townspeople and then he rides off into the sunset to
(21:43):
pursue another another crime. Clint Eastwood from the Man with
No Name series fistful of dollars, a few dollars more.
I just love that that hero. Don't ask me why,
but I do so. I always wanted to create that
as a a character, a prototype, a template for one
of my series. Well that's the tried and true thing.
(22:06):
We've seen that a lot. But what haven't we seen.
I have not seen anyone who pursues rewards professionally. And
I'm sure all your listeners are familiar with rewards. I
mean some are quite unfortunately, quite sad. On our milk cartons.
In America, we have a picture of a missing child.
It's a public service ad and with information about how
(22:29):
we can call the authorities if we happen to see
that child. It's only increased in American possibly in your
country too, because of the human trafficking and people have
gone missing. And then there are rewards for escaped convicts,
for killers whom the police have not been able to find,
(22:50):
and offered by civilians too. Families find their daughter has
run off and maybe been led astray by an abusive boyfriend.
Maybe she or he is just a run off, and
a reward is offered for that. So I did a
little research into it, and there are rewards ranging from
(23:11):
you can see them online, I mean, ranging from like
five thousand dollars up to thirty million. The US State
Department was offering a thirty million dollar reward for a
terrorist in the Middle East. Now they don't rewards like that.
They don't want you to strap on your assault rifle
and go over there and find him. They want information.
The police generally don't want a competitive gun slinger looking
(23:35):
for an individual, but they certainly do offer rewards. And
I thought, well, there's my story, the old and the new,
And as with everything, even with Lincoln Ryme, I thought
I'd give it a try and see see if it works.
And yes, Culture Shaw has become very popular. The TV
show again is extremely popular, and that's where he came from.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I'm I think we share very similar love of off
screen because I remember watching the Fistful of Dollars trilogy
when I was young, and it gave me a lifelong
love of Westerns. I always there you go. I've just
finished watching five series of Yellowstone, which are modern Western,
(24:17):
Isn't it?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Isn't it well done?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Utterly brilliant, And I still consider the good, the bad,
and the ugly to be the best Western I've ever seen,
just pipping, just pipping unforgiven, with maybe the outlaw Josie
Wales in third place. All Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Very yeah, very very well, said, yeah, I go with that.
Unforgiven falls a little, Laura, I mean only because of ploting.
You know, I'm a real plot person and I but
but for acting, I think that's that rises to the top.
The performances that were from all of those, all of
the characters Gene Hackman included, and then I can't remember
(24:54):
the young the young gunslinger who who played him, but
he was absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Absolutely wonderful. I mean, I mean, Gene Hackman's recent death
is probably worthy of a of a Jeffrey Deva plot,
given conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, what a sad story that was.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Indeed, now you've talked a little bit about your plot,
and I know that we've got lots of listeners who
are prime writers or prime writers in the making. You
you're meticulous, you say you plot in great details, so
you're not a panzer. Is there anything else that you
that you think is worthy of passing on to people?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Oh? Sure, I teach a lengthy course, and I know
we have limited time here. My whole course would take
about six hours, and I suspect that you have other
things to do. And besides, I'd probably have to charge
all the all the listeners for the full course. I
wouldn't want to do I wouldn't want to do that,
But I'm happy to give a you know, maybe the
(25:56):
top four or five things. I would recommend. First of all,
write in the genre that you love reading for several reasons. One,
writing is a tough business, as you well know, and
we need something to kind of emotionally energize us. And
(26:17):
if we read in a particular genre, it's because we
love it. Whether it's fantasy, science fiction, crime, cozy crime, thrillers,
whatever it is, we enjoy that we enjoy reading it,
we'll enjoy writing it more and the pain will be
a little bit less when we come to those difficult times.
(26:38):
And the second reason to read in the genre that
you have enjoyed is that you already are conscious of
the conventions of that genre. You will understand the shifting
points of view, you'll understand the advantages of writing in
past tense versus present tense. You and and you'll also
(27:01):
understand you know, how, the how the tricks and the
surprises and twists work so right in the genre that
you enjoy reading. But if during the outline process you
realize I don't know where this is going to go, well,
you know that's something to look at. It's like, we
have a pain somewhere. You know. Maybe you've mentioned you're
(27:23):
you have a bit of a pain from an injury
of some sort. I have a so I have seen
the doctor about a pain in my shoulder. Well, there's
an indication that there may be something wrong there that
we have to look at and we have to have
it taken care of. That's that's all writer's block is.
And so don't be afraid of writer's block. When it appears.
It may be telling you one of several things. One
(27:46):
that this is a book that should not be written
because they happen. And what do you do? Then you
do the morally courageous, upright thing, intellectually honest, and throw
out what you're working on and start something new. If
you have determined that there's really no way to turn
that into a good book, it may be that you've
(28:07):
kind of hit a speed bump. Well, what does that mean?
We'll put it aside. Maybe you're doing post it notes
to create your outline. Maybe you're working on a big whiteboard.
We'll move on to something else. You say, I can't
figure out how to kill this person in the middle
of the book. We'll go kill somebody in five chapters later.
That may inform how you're going to kill this person
in the middle of the book. So writer's block will
(28:28):
tell you that you've just got to think about it
a little more. And then finally there's writer's block that
is just goes with the territory. And this happens to
me all the time. I wake up, I look at
the outline, I think, oh, you know what, I just
don't feel like killing somebody today, don't We all have
those feelings. And it's like, you know, a neurosurgeon wakes
(28:51):
up and she looks at her schedule, Oh, I got
to repair that aneurysm today. Oh, I just don't feel
like it. Well, then she thinks, I'm getting paid a
lot of money to fix an aneurysm. So get my
ass out of bed and go over there and fix
the aneurysm at the hospital. I get my ass out
of bed, go to the book, and kill the person
I'm supposed to kill or write. One of the worst
(29:12):
things that you're probably familiar with this too, the dreaded
explanatory chapter where the I hate doing those where the
detective at the end explains how all the clues came together.
Another thing I'll say is rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, Ernest
heming Away, no great writers, only great rewriters. And rewrite
on the screen, rewrite on a printed page. And then
(29:35):
most important of all, listen to the book after it's
all done. I use word Microsoft word. They have a
read aloud function, and I listened to the book word
by word. Last thing I want to do. Sick and
tired of the book, but you'd be amazed what you'd
find and amazed at how much better the book is
after you've done that. So my mini course in writing,
(29:55):
and I'm not going to charge anybody for it. How's that?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
That was amazing? That really was amazing. I mean that's sound.
That's a proper, proper, proper Jeffrey Deaver boot Camp on writing.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Five minutes now, I did mention before we wind up,
I did mention that we do have another point of
connection which has come up in the in the years
since I met you. So you're a huge Bond fan
and you ended up writing a Bond novel. I'm currently
writing for the in Flaming State, the first in a
series featuring Q, which comes out later this year.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
In Fantastic, Amazing, Wonderful.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It's called Quantum of Menace, which is a riff on
on the content it fantastic Ques booted out of I
six and then he has to go and solve the
murder of his childhood friend with a quantum computer signed.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
With with with or with all his cleverness, his brilliance.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yes, but without the caricature that he slightly became on
on screen.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I don't know if this was the same experience for you,
but there's a scene in there where where Bond and
Q are chatting to each other and doing something because
Bond makes a cameo in this book, and I actually
had to pause because I'd grown up watching these films,
and I had to pause and just sit back and
think to myself, I'm writing these iconic characters, and it
(31:13):
just made me quite I was slightly overwhelmed by the
whole thing. What was your experience, I mean you they
were already massively world famous before they asked you to.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Do well, I will say there are. And for your
listeners who may or may not know this. When an
author has a following and then sadly he or she passes,
you know, readers they want more of the character. I
(31:43):
was in that that state when Ian Fleming died in
the mid nineteen sixties, and I had read every book
at least once, and I was devastated. And then I
was encouraged to hear that the estate had, you know,
brought bond back. Amos wrote the first one following Fleming's
death a friend of Fleming, as I understand it. And
(32:06):
so when the estates such as the Ian Fleming estate
or the Robert Ludlam estate, or estate the states of
other people who have passed away, go out and look
for authors. I don't know what the criteria are, but
in my case I was very fortunate because I could
not possibly write the in the style of another author.
(32:32):
I mentioned Ludlam, and that'll be that'll be an example.
I read Ludlam. I liked the books, to be honest,
I thought some of them were a bit over long,
but nonetheless I didn't I did enjoy them. But I
was not a student of Ludlam. You know, I didn't
know like Len Diighton's books, The Spy with No Name,
(32:54):
I believe. I don't think he was named in the books.
He may have had the Michael Caine did the film.
I've believe the Impress File he may have had a name.
But you know, I didn't know that character well enough.
I couldn't write dashall Hammett, you know, Sam Spain, I
couldn't do that. But Fleming I knew Cole and so
I have to say when they called me up, I
was not that concerned about it because I was very,
(33:17):
very first in the Bond myth. Now I frankly, aside
from Goldfinger and from Russia with Love, I have not
been a fan of the movies because I feel they
were a bit a bit glitzy and gimmicky and uh
(33:38):
and I'm sure you're you're finding this with with Q.
These are these are gritty, real people. You know. Bond
his he had a double O that was a license
to kill, which it was it wasn't technically m I six.
That's the British Secret Service, like the UH, the equivalent
of the American CIA. They they say they have said,
(33:59):
and they say, no, they don't assassinate people. But the
fictional secret service that Bond worked for did and he
would go out and shoot somebody as a sniper, or
walk up behind them and shoot them in the back
of the head. And uh, you know, that's a that's
a really a gritty, dark character. And by the way,
he went into a funk a depression for months afterwards
(34:21):
for taking a life. But he did it for a
king and or queen and country. And that was the
kind of character that I wanted to, you know, be
a part of. So I wasn't really that intimidated, but
I sure wanted to get it right. And I went
back and reread some of the some of the books
and but but I'm sure you you know, you're very
(34:42):
versed in the literature as well as the as the film.
I can't wait to I'll tell you, I cannot wait
to read that.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Oh well, that's very very nice of you anyway, I
mean your Bond project. You clearly enjoyed it, and it
clearly brought out some of your boyhood idealism the right
word of the Bond cannon.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Oh, I think so, yeah, I think that's good. Well,
he's you know, he's a hero. In Moonraker the book,
it was the of course of the missile that Hugo
Drax was he adjusted the uh the navigation system to
hit London, I believe, and Bond learned that, and he
was in the the bunker or the silo, and he said, well,
(35:25):
time for a last cigarette and as soon as they
start fueling, I'm going to blow it and myself up.
You know, that's a that's a hero. And uh oh,
by the way, he didn't. If anyone's concerned, and if
and if your listeners say, oh no it ended with
the Moonraker, no it didn't. Don't worry. That was a
bit of a spoiler, But oh no, I thought he
(35:45):
was just just the best hero that that ever lived.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Absolutely, and I the main thing that I found while
writing this book was because I said, when they when
the estate asked me to do it, I said, look,
I'll do it under the condition that I can turn
these into real character characters. So Q in the films,
as much as we love him, he did become slightly
a bit of exploding toys in the lab. And I said, no,
(36:14):
he's going to be a real scientist who takes his
work seriously and now he's a drift once he's been
booted out of six, but he still is a serious man.
And I think they were very very good to work
with for me personally, because they accepted that and they
allowed me to create a character which I thought would
stand will stand Q up as someone who is a
(36:36):
person of integrity and models the kind of values that
I think Bond Q and the rest of the Bond
canon seek to seek to promote. Wonderful. So we'll finish
by me asking you what you are working on next.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yes, I am presently write in the new Lincoln Rhyme
novel that will be published a year from now, probably
may the spring of twenty twenty six, which makes me
sit down to even think that, but I'm sitting down anyway,
so it doesn't matter. It just is I just turned
(37:12):
seventy five this year, so that'll be seventy six, and
that will be just kind of astonishing to me to
get the I think it again, it'll be the eighteenth
or nineteenth Lincoln Rhyme out there. But the other thing
is that I love short fiction, and there is not
(37:34):
a huge market now for short fiction, but I've managed
to an Earth one via Amazon, and I publish short
fiction with them through Amazon Original Stories, and that is
a just a delight for me. I'll tell you a
very fast story, and I will make it fast. You know,
(37:54):
we all get a lot of things from Amazon. I
certainly do. And I got a box the other month,
about a month ago, and I opened it up, and
you know we often forget what we ordered. Well, it's
a big looseight cube and I thought, okay, it had
a few glasses of wine. And I went to the
lusite cube section of Amazon and I bought a looseight
(38:18):
cube for some reason, I don't know why. Well, then
I turned it over. Oh no, it's an award I
received from Amazon Publishing that there had just been two
hundred and fifty thousand downloads of my recent short story.
And that is for your listeners who may not be aware.
That's a lot for a short story. And so that
(38:39):
kind of validates my love of writing short fiction. So
I have several of those now coming out now, and
I would simply recommend if your listeners want to know,
go to Diver or look at Amazon. These are at
the moment Kindle Original so you do have to have
a kindle to read them, but the rights revert to
(38:59):
me pretty quickly, and so after a year or so
they'll be coming out in a book. Of course. HarperCollins
has just published My dead Ends, my recent collection of
short stories, and I think there may be one or
two of those the Amazon stories in there. But not
to belabor the point, but since you asked for shameless
(39:19):
self promotion, I will. I also co write with a
woman named Isabella Meldonado, and we are writing a series
featuring a federal agent and her associate who's a what
we have called an intrusionist, and he's someone who is
I guess you call him a computer security expert, and
(39:42):
he's concerned about the you know, the overreach of government
and corporation, governments and corporations into our personal lives. And
so they, for various reasons, get involved in solving serial
killing crimes that involves usually involved computer security or something
like that. The first one was Fatal Intrusion. The second one,
(40:03):
coming out this year, is called The Grave Artist, and
so that's kind of what I'm up to now.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Well, shameless promotion is the name of the game, Jeffrey.
I mean, that's wonderful I am actually a huge fan
of short stories. I write half a dozen every year
for various anatlogy excellent for verious anthologies. I find it
a refreshing break from writing novels, absolutely and also the form.
(40:32):
It really stretches you as a writer because you've got,
you know, three to six thousand words to play with
as opposed to eighty to one hundred thousand, and it
really makes you think about every single word that you
set down.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I think the analogy is Napoleon was under a surprise
attack and he said to his dresser, I'm in a
terrible hurry. Dressed me slowly. And with the short fiction,
less is more. You have to really take your time.
(41:05):
And I think Mark Twain said, speaking of novels, but
it would apply to a short story too, the best
novels are made up of what is not in them,
and that's about short fiction. Absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Jeffrey, it has been absolutely wonderful talking to you. It's
just been an absolute delight catching up with one of
my writing heroes. And I'm not ashamed to say that.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Yeah, well, you're very kind, and their kind words about
the well my writing in general, and the bone Collector
I do appreciate it. I seem so here.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So that brings us to the close of another episode
once again. If you've liked it, do review, sign up
for regular episodes using your favorite podcast app, and do
spread the word and we will see you, or at
least you will hear us next time on Murder Junction.
Thank you so much for listening.
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