There is a wonderful grace period between the moment I finish the very last copy edit of my latest novel and the day it appears on shelves in libraries and bookstores. I can’t do another thing to change the story or to correct words, down to the last typo, and no one has yet had a chance to post a snarky review or unpleasant comment. I’m in that wonderful time warp right now, until SILENT MERCY bursts out of its boxes on March 8th, so I am delighted to be back with Kaye and friends to reflect on one of my favorite aspects of the series I write.
There was never any doubt when I started to create characters that my protagonist would mirror the work that I did in New York City, where I was a sex crimes prosecutor for thirty years. And I knew that I had a phalanx of great partners from the office and the NYPD with whom to surround her. The other thing of which I was certain, as a lifelong devotee of crime novels and mysteries, is that I never liked stories that were simply shoot-outs or car chases. I love closing a book after time well spent with interesting people having learned something as well – from Agatha Christie’s intense research into poisons or places to Michael Connelly’s dead-on depictions of police procedure.
I was well aware that one of the gifts of my long prosecutorial experience was the opportunity it provided to me to get beyond the façade of some of the most interesting places in the city. The job often took me behind the scenes, helping me understand that even the most glittering and glamorous venues had some dark doings behind the fancy fronts, if one only scratched the surface.
My eyes were opened wide when a young woman doctor was murdered while working late one night in her office in a large city hospital, and I realized that the population of patients, staff, visitors, and vendors (food, laundry, supplies, florists and so) passing through Bellevue on a single day was larger than the populations of most towns in America. That became the impetus for LIKELY TO DIE. When one of the most upscale art gallery owners in the world was implicated in two gruesome murders – and his gallery was on the same floor of a building as my hair salon (!) – the grittier side of the art world became my learning curve for COLD HIT. The most beautiful landmarked ruins in the city stand at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, and I drove past them on the way home from my office every night, where they were so elegantly back-lit against the dark sky. Designed by the same architect who created the soaring St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue – James Renwick – most of us assumed they had been the palatial home of a wealthy baron a century ago. A bit of research under my belt, I learned the stunning building had been a smallpox hospital, to which many New Yorkers were shipped across the river, never to return. Instead, they wound up in THE DEADHOUSE, as the small morgue behind the grand structure was known. And when I learned that there were 50 million human bones collecting dust on shelves in the fabulous Museum of Natural History – the first place almost every child in the city is taken to see dinosaurs and animal dioramas – I couldn’t understand why those people hadn’t been buried in their homelands, with their families. The terrible history of our 19th century obsession to collect and study the remains of ‘other’ cultures is what gave birth to such museums, originally called cabinets of curiosity. And getting to tour four stories below the street, where there are endless shelves of jars full of insects and reptiles I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, the idea for THE BONE VAULT came to life. When a violinist was killed between acts during a performance of the Berlin Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House, it seemed hard to believe that she could disappear with four thousand people sitting in their seats in front of the curtain. Beverly Sills allowed me to come backstage to learn the ins and outs of Lincoln Center, which became the centerpiece of Coop’s sixth adventure in DEATH DANCE.
One of the questions I’m always asked in bookstores on tours is whether I worry about running out of material. I’m quick to say that I can’t imagine that’s the case, in this city that is so rich with history, even in the few short centuries of its existence as a metropolis. The more I write, the more someone points me in the direction of some other treasure with roots to the past, and a bit of evil I can probably uncover.
I have always been fascinated with – and respectful of – the great religious institutions of New York. There are hundreds of them here, of every denomination, and it’s hard to walk a block or two without passing something – whether a very grand structure or a tiny neighborhood church. I decided to explore some of those in SILENT MERCY. The book opens on the steps of Mount Neboh Baptist Church, which is a well-established congregation in the heart of Harlem. Once, when I was investigating a crime on a nearby street, I paused to walk inside the church. I was startled to see a Star of David in the stained glass windows high above me, and inscriptions in Hebrew. It didn’t take much to find out that like many other churches in Harlem, Mount Neboh was originally constructed as a synagogue, at a period in time when Harlem –before the 1920’s was a Jewish neighborhood.
So I’m back to scratching beneath the surface to find out more about New York’s buried treasures. Wherever I go, I can’t stop plotting ways for Coop and Chapman to get the real story, above or below ground, and weave some interesting history into a lively tale. I hope Kaye invites me back to tell you what I find. Happy reading to all in 2011.
