To mark the anniversary, we're taking occasional looks back at the ten novels in the Hector Lassiter series; revisiting old essays, interviews and the like...
***
This time out, there are no substantial cameos by historical
figures.
There is the
return, however, of a particular “heroine.” No woman makes back-to-back
appearances of significant stint in the Hector Lassiter series except this one
particular female novelist.
Brinke Devlin: What’s her true story and why two consecutive
books?
Some of that I’m
prepared to share.
Few years back, I was in New York City chatting with the
person who casts voices and selects readers for Recorded Books’ unabridged
audio treatments, including the Lassiter novels.
We’d finished touring the Recorded Books studios and settled
in to discuss Hector Lassiter and how he and all those real, now-gone people
who populate the Lassiter series of historical literary thrillers might best be
transitioned to audio.
Tom Stechschulte was already a virtual lock to be Hector.
When I mentioned there would be shifts in point of view from book to book in
the latter going—some presented in third-person, others narrated by Hector—it
raised the issue of whether a second reader might be in order. Say, an actress.
“If Hector was to have a recurring love interest,” she said, “well, then…”
I assured the Recorded Books studio director that was not
the case, that each novel would likely have a different female character
playing against Hector.
That was true up to a point. But across the various novels
in the series, there are two women in Hector’s life who endure for more than a
single book, or even two.
There was this one formidable woman, in particular, whom I’d
already committed to paper.
So far as original publication sequence goes, One True Sentence, the prequel to Forever’s Just Pretend, was the fourth
novel about Hector Lassiter, but in this cycle of novels that was never
envisioned to take the direct or wholly chronological route that ninety-nine
percent of other mystery series hew to, it seemed right that around book four
there should be several change ups.
While previous Lassiter novels sprawled across continents
and decades, One True Sentence spans
a single week in Paris, circa February 1924.
It introduces the
woman in Hector Lassiter’s crowded life, the fetching and bewitching mystery
writer Brinke Devlin.
Despite the various personal creative challenges I set for
myself as its creator, there’s one element that’s remained consistent across
the Lassiter series. Hector is, from book to book, confronted by formidable
women who leave sometimes dark but lasting marks on his psyche and soul. Simply
put, women rule this man’s life.
After entangling Hector with three lovers ranging the
spectrum from light to very dark, it seemed appropriate in the middle range of
Hector’s saga to present the woman who truly made Hector into Hector. The time seemed ripe, in other
words, to reveal Hector’s first and perhaps greatest love.
My central aim in One
True Sentence was to depict the
romantic figure in Hector’s storied saga. I aimed to portray the woman who most
profoundly shaped Hector Lassiter as lover, writer and the shades-of-gray
heroic figure readers had come to know in the previous three novels.
Brinke was already name-checked in Print the Legend, but she’d always been lurking in the background. I always knew she was there, waiting to
reveal herself. Hell, I’d fully written her story before my debut, Head Games, even saw print.
It is Brinke who at base “creates” the Hector Lassiter his
readers come to know. Brinke is a darkly creative woman who pushes Hector from
the path of a struggling, often-blocked would-be literary writer to the
pulp-frenzied, dark-end-of-the-street crime fiction novelist Hector is fated to
be.
 |
| AN EARLY COVER CONCEPT FOR FOREVER IS JUST PRETEND |
Years before Hector is tagged with his designation as an
author who lives what he writes and then commits his turbulent life to the
page, slightly older and much worldlier Brinke was already pioneering the scary
art of living one’s life to feed one’s noir
fiction.
From conception, Brinke was formulated to be très formidable.
I put at least as much effort into shaping Brinke and her
back-story as I did Hector’s. Though I never envisioned writing a series about
her, I approached the task with the notion I actually intended Brinke to stand
as her own series character.
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