Article: One of the questions readers...
One of the questions readers always ask a writer is “Where do you get your ideas?” If you write suspense, like I do, the query is often accompanied by a narrow-eyed but expectant look, as though the questioner is hoping I’ll lean over and whisper, “From my former life in the CIA,” or “Back when I was undercover for the NYPD,” or “I'd tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” So I quickly change the subject before I have to confess that I get my ideas from newspapers, the latest Radiohead song, or a dream I once had.
My current book, Tell Me No Lies, is no exception. I’ve never been a cop in a small city in the Hudson Valley, or an international business wheeler dealer. I’ve never been to Russia or met Donald Trump.
But I did read a book of firsthand accounts by cops on the job. One guy talked about being afraid. That underneath the uniform, cops always wear a thin layer of fear. I got to wondering: What happens when someone’s job puts him in life-and-death situations of which he’s secretly terrified? And so homicide detective Hank Bonner was born.
And how did I get to my heroine, the wealthy, mysterious, and bent-on-revenge Alexandra Jane Baker? Through research for my previous suspense novel, Dead Ringer. In a book about the new Russian robber barons, I read a small tidbit about a couple of suicides and some missing Russian millions. Sasha Baker and Tell Me No Lies sprouted from there.
And if you’re wondering about that Hudson Valley city, it’s called Sokanan. To save myself more research, I just made it up. It’s my own twisted version of someplace like Poughkeepsie, where my daughter went to college. (And it’s one of the worst-run cities on the planet. Why else do so many people keep dying there?) The name, by the way, is Algonquin and means “rain.”
Well, I’ve said all I can. There’s more—but if I told you everything, my editor would kill me.
Annie Solomon
Copyright © 2004 by Annie Solomon