The Lineup

Genres: Anthologies; Traditional Mysteries; Suspense

Synopsis

A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from?

What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Jack Reacher a drifter? How did a brief encounter in Botswana inspire Alexander McCall Smith to create Precious Ramotswe? In The Lineup, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters -- or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking.

Release date: November 10, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 416

Sample

BY OTTO PENZLER

It is an unhappy fact, though no less true for its sadness, that independent bookstores in America (and soon, I’ll wager, in
the rest of the world) are in jeopardy.


There are many reasons for this, of course, as no large and dramatic changes ever seem to be caused by a single sudden event,
except possibly the Big Bang.


It is easy, and necessary, to point to the proliferation of the big chains, like Barnes & Noble and Borders, which, in spite
of their denials, have malevolently established many of their superstores as close as possible to well-established independent
stores. They then offered astonishing discounts, advertised heavily, brought in comfortable easy chairs next to their coffee
bars, and welcomed authors for readings in order to capture local book buyers. Inevitably, the established stores saw their
customer base diminish and, ultimately unable to pay rents, salaries, insurance, utilities, and the myriad other bills shoved
through the mail slot with the regularity of tides, they were forced to close their doors. Without exception, this occurrence
is accompanied by the lamentations of many of the very same book buyers who abandoned these stores, seduced by the siren song
of discounts. These discounts, of course, not to mention those padded easy chairs, dramatically diminish or go the way of
the dodo bird as soon as the competition has had the last shovelful of dirt tossed on its grave.


The rise of
Amazon.com and other online sites has also contributed to the demise of “brick and mortar” stores. With no expensive urban rents to
slice away at profits, and fewer salaries and benefits to pay to employees,
Amazon.com and its relatives have been so successful that several chains have found themselves in their own expanse of quicksand.


We have all seen the depressing, even chilling, statistics about the reading habits of Americans. A survey titled Reading
at Risk, commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007, found that 57 percent of our countrymen had not read
a single book in a year. Just mull that over for a moment. Can you imagine going a full year and finding nothing—nothing!—that
you needed or wanted to read? As someone who makes his living as a bookseller, editor, publisher, and author, I feel that
maybe I didn’t make the smartest career choice. Actually, it wasn’t my first career choice, which was playing center field
for the New York Yankees, but that’s not really the point.


There’s more. The average American reads five books a year. When you factor in students who are assigned a fair number of
books, plus those of us who read many more than five, there are a lot of folks out there pulling the average down. It would
be enough to make you laugh, if you don’t weep, to learn that 27 percent of the pollsters admitted that they hadn’t read a single book in the year. A pertinent quote, often attributed to Mark Twain, is “The man who does not read good
books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” If you want to shudder, the question that leaps to mind is whether
those 57 percent of Americans don’t want to read or can’t read. Neither is an attractive option.


Not at all surprisingly, then, The Mysterious Bookshop, which I opened on Friday the 13th of April, 1979, found itself in
financial straits a few years ago. It had been struggling for a while, and the move from its first home in midtown Manhattan
to hip downtown Tribeca did nothing to improve its circumstances. Not being wealthy, partially by accident of birth and the
failure of my parents to leave me an obscene fortune, I was faced with the increasing difficulty of supporting a business
that was bleeding money—some months a mere trickle, others a rushing, roaring hemorrhage.


To illustrate the level of desperation to which I had fallen, I called for a staff meeting. There are many reasons to risk
the perils of going into business on your own, and one of the best is to avoid the meetings that seem to fill the days of
those who toil in the corporate world. At this unprecedented event, I told the people who work with me of our situation, holding
nothing back, and asked for ideas that might help us save the store (and, not to be blithely overlooked, their jobs).


A pertinent digression: Every year, I commission an original short story from one of the authors I know. The story has three
requirements: it must have an element of mystery, it must be set during the Christmas season, and at least some of the action
must transpire at The Mysterious Bookshop. We print the stories in handsome pamphlets and give them to our customers as a
small Christmas present to thank them for their patronage.


Back to the meeting and the discussion of the sinking ship. Someone said that our clients really love those Christmas stories;
maybe we could commission another story and give it away in the summertime. This seemed a nice idea, but counterproductive.
We needed to find a way to make some money, not another way in which to spend it. When we broke up the meeting, I threatened to have another one but, in the meantime, asked everyone to keep thinking.


In the dead of night, as I waited for sleep to rescue me from worrying about the store, the pamphlet idea popped up again,
and I came up with a twist. How would it be, I wondered with the optimism that three a.m. can induce, if I asked some of my
author friends to write a biography, or profile, of their series character? We could then print them in handsome little pamphlets
and give them to our customers—but only with a purchase. They would, naturally, love these profiles so much that they would
come back every month to get the next one, and our sales would soar. The next day I got the cost estimate from my printer,
and the idea suddenly seemed shaky. Let me rephrase that. The idea suddenly seemed stupid. Furthermore, I never ask writers
to write for free. Adding the authors’ fees to the printing cost made the whole thing prohibitive—until the mercenary niche
of my brain, incredibly, shook off years of rust and provided another suggestion. For the collector market, produce 100 copies
of each of the profiles in hardcover, ask the authors to sign them, and sell these very desirable limited-edition collector’s
items. And we did produce them, the authors signed them, and collectors bought them.


More than two years after initiating this series, we’re still in business, which, against all odds, has picked up nicely.
Many clients come in, call, or write each month to ask who will write the next profile, and then buy books in order to get
a copy. The limited editions frequently sell out, covering all costs and even a little more. Many of the authors, beyond the
reasonable call of friendship, have forgone their fees, generously calling it their contribution to the well-being of the
bookshop.


Regrettably, not every reader of mystery fiction is a customer of The Mysterious Bookshop, so it made sense to bring these
essays and stories to a wider readership by collecting them in a single volume with the broad distribution that Little, Brown
can provide. This handsome volume, The Lineup, is the result. As for the profiles themselves, you are in for a rare pleasure. You will find that these remarkably talented
and creative writers have taken many different and colorful approaches to telling readers previously unknown facts about their
creations. There are short stories tucked into the biographies, interviews of the characters, revealing looks into the authors’
lives and creative processes, and even frequent insights into the characters that came as revelations to their creators.


It is impossible for me to find words to express my gratitude to these wonderful writers, for their quick and positive response
to a humble call for help. Take a look at the names of the contributors, and you will see the truth of the old adage that
“the bigger they are, the nicer they are.” As a mystery reader, you will find many of your favorite authors in these pages,
and maybe you will also get a taste of someone you’ve not read before now, thereby gaining an opportunity to enjoy a whole
new series about a character to whom you have just been introduced.


I do not hope you enjoy these splendid character sketches; I know you will.


BY KEN BRUEN

I’m always asked in interviews where this odd, grizzled, grumpy PI Taylor came from.


He is the world’s worst detective. Cases get solved not because of him but despite him.

He’s

Alcoholic

Addict

Rude

Obnoxious

And in very bad shape

And yet… Forster’s famous words.

He gets the job done… somehow, and he so desperately wants to connect, even though he’d never admit it.

Only connect.

Jack does… usually when he least expects to.

His love of books has saved his sanity on so many occasions.

I said on a TV show recently, Jack hasn’t drunk for nigh on three books, and they laughed.

Uproariously.

They would.

Three books…

And not a drink.

For them a joke. For Jack, total hell.

And the reviews say Jack is mellowing.

Like fuck.

They ain’t seen Cross yet.


Or Benediction.


He’s only warming up.

He will bow out on the final book… titled… Amen.

And no one can utter those words with quite such conviction as Jack.

When the end comes, and come it will, no one will be happier than Jack.

Yet…

The Guards… his first outing, he was drinking but still a little in control, and then…


His best friend turns out to be the real psycho and Jack literally drowns him, off Nimmo’s Pier in the Claddagh.

In Galway, an almost mystical place for Irish people… Jack throws a bottle of really good booze in after his friend.

And heads for London.

New start.

The UK loves Micks so much.


Need I add it wasn’t a success?

The sequel,

The Killing of the Tinkers.


They told me I couldn’t write this.


My favorite caution.

This will kill your career.

My career has been killed so often, and I’m always told… Oh, my god, you

can’t

write

this

… and some damn stubborn place in my bedraggled psyche, thought

Can’t?

Then

Have to.

The Hackman Blues, the second crime novel I wrote (fourth published), I was dropped by my agent, my publisher,


because of it.

Said,

You let this be published, you’re gone.

I did.

They were right.

I was gone.

As Derek Raymond said,

“I had the down escalator all to meself.”

I continued to write, to teach, and to travel. Brief sojourn to learn Portuguese in a Brazilian jail, which helped the dark
vision forming in me head.


I take fierce grief in Ireland from the literati, as I always say my influences are American.

The hard-boiled

masters and they were and remain thus.

I wrote a series of novels about UK cops, out of more damn cheek than anything else… a Mick writing about UK cops.


Did a stand-alone based on Sunset Boulevard and it sold well, but still I hadn’t hit what it was that was fermenting in me mind, uncoiling like a snake. Did a doctorate
in metaphysics and still… the vision hadn’t clarified. I returned to Ireland in 2000 to find a new country.


We’d got rich.

The fook did that happen?

We went from Mass to Microsoft with no preparation, and suddenly, people were immigrating to Ireland!

What?

The village I grew up in had become a cool, trendy European city.

And bingo.

It all came together.

They said there were no Irish crime novels, as we’d no mean streets…. With the new prosperity, we’d also got… crack cocaine
and all its outriders.


I had me Irish novel; it all jelled.

I grew up fascinated by the Guards… solid, beefy guys who took no shite from anyone, and I’d got a library ticket when I was
ten years old, books being forbidden in our house.


My older beloved brother had died of alcoholism.

Write about the Guards.

Back in 2000, like the clergy, they were… forgive me, bulletproof, and still admired.

I figured, put it all in the blend, an alcoholic investigator, bounced from the Force, loves books and is totally conflicted
by the old values of the Ireland he grew up in and this new


greedy mini-American country.

And he had to have a mouth on him… like all of the country.

It makes me smile now. Back then, the first book, there were no PIs in Ireland.

Just last week, seven years on, I checked the Yellow Pages, and we have twenty in Galway alone!

Business is brisk.

At the same time, I planned a series. Jack would be caught up in all the secrets Ireland had.

The priests, the Magdalen laundries, teenage suicides, the way the whole fabric of the country was changing.

The Magdalen Martyrs came out, by coincidence, just after the marvelous movie


The Magdalene Sisters.

Priest came out when all the horrendous scandals of the clergy emerged.


Good timing?

Pure luck or just bad karma.

I dunno.

The Guards, they told me, was the biggest mistake in a career littered with bad moves…. It was nominated for the Edgar®, won the Shamus, and sold to countries I’d never even heard of.


The Killing of the Tinkers won the Macavity.


But storms on the horizon, naturally.

I have a child with Down syndrome, and in The Dramatist guess what…


Yup.

Jack is responsible for the death of a child with… fill in the blank.

I never got such hate-filled e-mail.

“How could I?”

I did what you do.

I told the truth.

Always a real bad idea.

Said I’d always intended to kill her… almost did in book three but felt she wasn’t involved enough yet in either Jack’s or
the readers’ emotions.


How cold is that?

I gave up explaining that I was experiencing a parent’s worst nightmare…

the loss of

a child.

Nope.

Didn’t wash.

The sixth Jack… Cross, I went for broke and already, we’ve had all the shite about writers going too far and I was mentioned as the prime perp….
The crucifixion, a year before, in Belfast, they had done exactly what I described.


Jack’s surname was a personal joke; Taylors Hill is the snotty area of Galway, a place

Jack would never have been allowed to visit.

I never expected Jack to go global…. In my view, he was too Irish, too parochial, too damn perverse to have a wide appeal.

But I wrote him as he was whispering in my ear, and the first book, it was like I knew him.

And I do.

Alas.

The alcoholism is based on my late brother, a man of true warm spirit, my best friend, and he died a vagrant in the Australian
outback, so I knew of what I wrote.


And when they come back at me about Jack being so angry?

Gee, wonder where that comes from.

The Irish, we laugh and drink our merry way, fueled by Guinness and Jameson and

never a worry in the world.

What a load of bollocks!

I fucking hate that.

Alcoholism has destroyed the best and the finest of our race, as Jack is fond of quoting.

Most of our literature applauds the culture of drinking.

Jesus Wept.

I thought,

“What if there were a series of books showing the sheer havoc and misery that drink causes?”

Whoops.

Wouldn’t play well if you wanted Irish Awards or the Irish Tourist Board to endorse you.

And they having serious Euros to invest in the appropriate Irish writer.


And you know, I said, like I’ve said to me cost so many times,

The fook with that.

Here’s the irony…. Seven books in, the tourist board calls me, would I be open to showing Japanese tourists Jack’s Galway?

If that isn’t irony?

I was thinking, maybe have them beaten up with a hurly, get a real taste of Jack’s city.

Our national sport is hurling, a cross between hockey and homicide, and it’s fast, brutal, skillful, and I grew up with it.

A perfect hurly is made from ash, honed by an artisan, and sometimes has metal bands on the end.

It’s a little like a Louisville slugger. I have two of those, sent to me by two of the best writers in mystery today.

A hurly has a swoosh like the slugger and that same lethal intent.

When I was in Texas last year and got to hit a few, they asked,

“Where did you learn to play ball?”

I didn’t.

I played hurling.

I’m asked,

“How much of me is in Jack?’

The rage and reading.

Absolutely.

And… sure… some of the beatings.

The booze?

’Tis a sad tale, but I don’t drink Guinness or, god forgive me, even Jameson.

… Horror, I drink Bud….

Jack would indeed take a hurly to me.

The ordinary people of Galway, so beloved to Jack’s heart, they shout at me from cars…. Jack has been a teetotaler for three
books.


“Give the poor bastard a drink.”

Writing Jack has been all I know of heaven and hell. It drains me to write him, and I hope to Christ he’ll stop talking to
me.


It’s too personal, too harrowing.

I write another series on UK cops…. The main character is Brant, and writing those books is a vacation, a breeze… pure fun…
or a short story… more time in the sun, but Jack…


Otto Penzler once said to me,

“Bruen, what is it with you, you get us to love characters and then you kill them?”

Indeed.

I read on one of those blog discussions, the big no-no is… don’t kill a child.

Gotcha.

Let me go classical here a moment, a little learned, or pseudo, if you prefer, or as our Irish teenagers in their new American
tones say,


“Like, whatever.”

There is a quote from Aeschylus that is the real motivation behind Jack Taylor, at least for me. It best helps me write him.

Pain that cannot forget

Falls drop by drop

Upon the heart

And in our own despair,

Against our will,

There comes wisdom

Through the awful

Grace of God

The key word for me there is always… awful.

With Jack, I wanted to see just how much suffering you can inflict on one human being

Till he finally breaks.

Alcohol

Cocaine

Despair

Depression

Betrayal

Suicide

Murder

Jack’s been there.

Did quit smoking, though.

Not that he’s happy with it.

And those lists?

I’ve been asked so often,

“What’s with the bloody lists?”

I’ve studied chaos, damn, lived it most of me life, and one response to it is to make lists.

Try to impose order on a world spinning more and more out of control.

The later books, the lists got dropped, editorial decision more than anything else.

And quoting other mystery writers.

Because I love to. Not just my favorites, but also ones less known that maybe readers might pick up.

In Priest, I changed direction, went with simply Pascal’s Pensées. Jack steals it from a library in a mental hospital. Nothing else quite seemed to fit the mood of the book.


While I was planning the series, a couple of things were crystal clear in my head.

Jack would always go down the dark streets of the history we’d kept under wraps, like the Magdalen laundries. I grew up right
beside them and knew firsthand of the horrors therein.


It was an Irish series, so there had to be a priest, a recurring character, but I didn’t want your lovable Barry Fitzgerald
gombeen of The Quiet Man. I wanted a flawed human version to whom priesthood was simply a job, and one he didn’t especially care for.


When I was a child, the country was so poor, for many the only hope of education was by joining the priesthood. Callow youths,
like cannon fodder, they went, as it was their mothers’ wish.

What an awful burden to lay on any child. No wonder they went nuts.

Fr. Malachy would always be Jack’s nemesis and, like the best of enemies, they even joined uneasy forces for Priest.


I knew from the off that this series was going to get me into all sorts of shite in Ireland and so went completely for broke.

Jack’s mother.

Like Italians and the other Europeans, we love our mothers…. Never no mind she might be the biggest bitch who ever walked
the planet, Irish boys love their mammy.

Fook that.

Jack loathed his mother and never tried to hide it. She was everything that is worst about our country.

Pious

Sanctimonious

A hypocrite

And a mouth on her

And worst of all… long-suffering, though she instigated most of the suffering.

Jack was having none of it, took her on from the get-go, and it seemed natural her staunchest ally would be Fr. Malachy… a
match made only in the malice of Ireland.


Naturally, readers presumed Jack’s mother was based on my own, as if even I have that kind of cojones.

My mother was once asked what she thought of the series, said,

“I never read him.”

Nor did she.

Ever.

Bitter?

Not really.

I grew up in a house where books and reading were regarded as not only a waste of time but a waste of money.

God forbid you ever waste money.

My mother, Lord rest her, said,

“Ken lives in a separate room from the rest of us.”

She was right.

By one of those odd coincidences, when Jack’s mother had a stroke, so did mine, so all that Jack experienced then is based
on what I was going through.


It’s been eerie with the series like that.

The Killing of the Tinkers, I had a young psycho beheading swans. The swans are to Galway what the apes are to Gibraltar, though a little more attractive
to look at.


My publisher was horrified, said,

“You can’t do that!”

Notice how often that crops up in my career.

You can’t.

You daren’t.

You shouldn’t.

I refused to back down, and just before the book was published, some lunatic began disemboweling the swans.

I sent my publisher the article, and he said,

“Okay… long as it’s not you doing it.”

I confuse people, not deliberately, but they read the books, thank god! (How Irish is that?) with the darkness, ferocity,
brutality, and then they meet me and I’m mellow, easy to be with, and they’re a tad bewildered.


A tad

is my nod to my UK readers, the two of them.

I reserve my murderous intent for my work.

Which brings me along to the violence I’ve been crucified for.

I never dwell on it, but it’s there, explicit, and no doubt about what happens. It’s ugly, fast, and very intense.

As all violence is.

Last November, I was at a book launch. A guy walked up and broke my jaw with a hurly.

Now, that is one very bad book review.

Will Jack do similar?

Already has.

Many times.

And that led me to the accusations of being pro-vigilante, a fascist, a supporter of all kinds of violent organizations.

You live in Galway, as I do, every single day, our latest horror, some thug walks free after raping an old lady, a seventy-nine-year-old
nun, and the perp walks free, is given therapy, and in one ludicrous case, sent to Spain for a holiday.


I would love to say this is Irish exaggeration, but even in the past two years, my own personal history, a drunk driver who
killed someone dear to my heart walked free because of personal problems.


The old people in Ireland used to say,

“Me blood boils.”

Jesus.

Mine wept… freaking buckets.

So, I put it on Jack.

Let him deal with it.

And he does.

Usually with a hurly.

Jack believes as I do.

“Law is for the courts; justice is administered in alleys.”

Controversial?

Of course.

In a society where there are no longer consequences, a hurly is a good edge.

One of me best friends, a doctor, has fretted for years about my views on so-called justice and the tone of my books.

He was, he said, my friend,

“Despite your, um… odd ideas.”

Three weeks ago, his daughter was very seriously mugged and he came round, not looking for solace, but for my hurly.

When I put Jack out there, I figured maybe three books, and lo and behold, I’m on number seven….

The bastard won’t go away.

Cross, the sixth, went another direction, had to if the series was to stay fresh and challenging.


More of a thriller element than any of the previous. It also showed the dying of the Celtic Tiger. We were plunging into recession
after eight years of living it on the hog, and hog is the perfect term. It made us, indeed, greedy at the trough, and suddenly, they were taking it away. The sheen was off
the tiger and we were… fook, in maybe financial trouble.


We reacted like any child that you spoil and then take away the toys. We reacted very, very badly.

Still do.

And Jack, no longer shopping in charity shops, might have to return to them.

And,

He’s getting old.

Losing his hearing.

Has the limp.

You ask,

Jesus, how much longer can he go on?

Indeed.

Would the only woman in his life, Ridge… and of course, the only constant female in Jack’s life, who’s gay…

take over the series?

No.

She doesn’t even read that much.

When should a series end?

Simple.

When it’s stale.

When you are no longer all that bothered by what happens to the main character. Jack is way past his sell-by date and if he
gets through one more book, no one will be more surprised—or relieved—than me.


I’ve been truly amazed by the response to Jack.

The New York Times said he was as likely to give you a slap in the mouth as give five Euros to a homeless person.


I kind of liked that.

Brian Widenmouth, a fine online reviewer, suggested that Jack was already dead!… and this was all in look-back. Long as he
didn’t think I was dead too.


An Irish reviewer said I must have been a cop… had to be.

And you have to mention the movie.

In limbo hell.

Fookit.

The first serious offer wanted a happy ending….

And I said,

“Happy?”

I don’t do fooking happy.

Shite, I don’t even do nice anymore!

Then the casting… Now, that was fun.

My mate of over twenty years David Soul was keen but couldn’t quite get that Galway accent.

My only suggestion, and you know how much they take notice of the writer’s idea.

Yeah.

Right in the bin.

But I always saw it being shot in black-and-white.

Color… in Jack’s life?

Naw, he’d reach for the hurly.

The first offer to film The Guards was from a UK company, and they wanted it to be shot in Brighton, with Brighton Pier substituting for Nimmo’s Pier, a recurrent
landmark in the series. Not only is it in the Claddagh, but it’s literally the last outpost before America and also the scene
of Jack’s first real murderous act, the drowning of his erstwhile friend.


I couldn’t agree. The number of actors, etc., in Galway who could sure use the work would never forgive me. And The Guards is such a Galway novel.


The bookstores:

Kennys,

Charlie Byrne’s,

Dubray’s.

All pivotal to Jack’s daily life.

And the pubs, like McSwiggan’s, where a tree literally grows in the center of the pub, the question arising, Which came first,
the tree or the pub?


As negotiations went back and forth, a ferocious storm hit Brighton and washed away the pier.

God spoke, if not last, at least loudest.

Jack would have loved the irony.

Next serious offer, they wanted a happy ending.

What?

And sink the whole series on the very first book?

I don’t do happy, as I’ve said, and neither, by Christ, does Jack.

Research?

I was assured by the son of a retired top Guard that I must have been a cop, and this has frequently come up. I take it as
a compliment and I think, too, the fact that I was a security guard at the Twin Towers has muddied the truth.


The title of my new stand-alone, Once Were Cops, will only cloud it further.


I’m very good friends with a Ban Garda, a female Guard, and all of Ridge, her attitudes, comes from this source.

A nice sidebar, I decided to have the Ban Garda in my books wear tiny pearl earrings, and I’m not saying it’s a direct result,
but recently, I notice they are indeed wearing said items.


In the beginning with Ridge, even I wasn’t entirely sure why she was so hostile and combative, and I woke one morning and
knew.


She was gay.

Not that I’m saying being gay means the above, but being gay in a strict, traditional, macho organization like the Guards
will certainly embitter you.


In the new Jack, Benediction, he comes up against gay bashing, and yet again I had to battle to keep one particular scene, against the cry of it not being
realistic.


You guessed it, not one hundred yards from my home, a young gay man was beaten into a coma by gay haters and no, I wasn’t
involved.


Superintendent Clancy, Jack’s former partner in the Guards and great friend, is now his bitter enemy, and they regularly collide,
with Jack taking the worst of it.


The final showdown, if such it is,