|
INTERVIEW
Do
No Harm is of a piece with Minutes to Burn and your first novel,
The Tower—but they are also all quite different books. What
went into the making of Do No Harm that differed from the other
two?
"Write
what you know” is the advice that gets handed out to young
writers, so I quite willfully do the opposite. Because writing
for me is an excuse for continuing education, I often pick
fields to research that have always fascinated me, but about
which I don’t know much when I start out -- psychological
profiling in The Tower, Navy SEALs and evolutionary biology in Minutes
to Burn.
Do
No Harm
is a much more personal book for me, though. And I am, in fact,
writing to a certain extent about what I know. I grew up in this
intensely medical household. Everyone’s a doctor -- my
grandfather, great uncle, my father, my sister. For Minutes
I spent the better part of two years trying to really understand
the mindset of, say, a demolitions expert. But for Do
No Harm the character stuff—how doctors think and
speak—came quite easily, in part thanks to the family
connection. At dinner, my dad would discuss various cases
he’d seen, and how he was able to assess the symptoms and make
diagnoses. It was apparent to me at a young age (as an avid
reader of The Hardy Boys
and The Three Investigators) that there is an aspect to medicine much
like investigation. Doctors are detectives, in a way. As I grew
older, I noticed that most medical thrillers deal with intrigue around medicine—stolen organs, evil surgeons, etc. And so I wrote
a book in which the diagnostic process is actually
the investigative process. The closer my protagonist, Dr. David
Spier, comes to understanding his former patient’s condition,
the closer he is to tracking him down.
But
I still had to do a great deal of research to get all the
details right. Maybe more so, because I couldn't have my
character grabbing the wrong instrument during surgery, or I'd
never hear the end of it from my family
How
about the plot?
This
book addresses certain topics that I’ve been turning over in
my mind for a long time. Its themes
evolved directly from conversations, ethical codes, and
fascinating medical cases I was exposed to all through my
childhood. But more than that, I’ve written a book that’s
really about something close to me. The villain, Clyde C. Slade,
isn’t a drooling maniac or witty psychopath. He’s a terribly
disturbed, violent, pathetic individual, as most people who
perpetrate violent crimes are. And so the conclusion I strove
for wasn’t “We gotta find this guy and shoot him
dead!”—it was much more philosophical. What do we do to end
this type of violence? What does the system do with a man like
Clyde, who is psychologically insane but legally sane? No pat
answers work, nor do regurgitated liberal or conservative
viewpoints. Much of the inspiration for Clyde came from a
personal position of mine that I have trouble clarifying. I’m
opposed to the death penalty, but I also believe there are
people who cannot fundamentally be fixed, who will never be
anything but a burden to society. These are two seemingly
contradictory views, and this book was, for me, an attempt to
work them through.
The
Hippocratic Oath figures largely in the book, right down to the
title.
It’s
always fascinated me—having a code of ethics where you have to
heal people, and sometimes save their lives, whether you like
them or not. It's sort of like a cop hauling in an established
murderer, maybe someone who's beaten the rap a few times,
instead of administering street justice. Because the Law must
prevail. Ethics over emotion.
Here
we have a man throwing lye in the faces of nurses outside the
UCLA Medical Center. During a stakeout, he’s captured, but he
spills some lye on himself and is badly burned. He’s dragged
into the ER, where the furious staff refuses to treat him except
for ER chief Dr. David Spier who must uphold his code of ethics
and provide care. These sorts of dilemmas are ones my father
acquainted me with as a young boy—I remember one case in which
he had to treat a patient with a huge swastika tattoo. And it
fascinated me, because it taught me a lot about how ethics
function. Ethics are easy to uphold when there’s no sacrifice
to be made. But when you have to uphold your ethical code even
when you least want to, well, those are the only times your
ethics mean anything.
Back
to the research for a minute; let's not leave that. What was
required here?
Well,
I shadowed in the UCLA Emergency Room on and off for two months,
hanging around wherever I could, following doctors into exam
rooms and watching procedures. But also going to lunch with
them, grabbing a beer after shifts, hearing them bullshit and
complain about their cases. To follow up the continuing
care of our alkali-burn victims, I had to get to plastic
surgeons, ICU nurses, ophthalmologists, gastroenterologists and
more. To get Horace McCannister right I spent some time with a
true Lab Tech II. Visiting over segmented bodies and the whine
of a saw was a unique experience. By
the end, I’d observed some pretty harrowing stuff.
I
also made sure to spent a lot of time with LAPD guys
(talking, drinking, driving around) as well, making sure
I was acquainted with the lingo, the procedures, the beefs that
they have and the bullshit politics that come into play as a
case evolves.
The
most fun aspect of my research for DNH was dealing with a former
spy, who helped me extensively with Ed Pinkerton’s character,
and who taught me a lot about investigative technology. For
the stunts Ed pulls in the book, I had to learn how guys get
things done off the record, out of the system. My contact
was really fun to work with, and took the time to show me
precisely how, say, a digital transmitter looks and works, so by
the time I needed to plant it in the story for one character to
eavesdrop on another, I knew just how to make it authentic. Guys
like that don’t like to talk, and you have to spend time
earning their trust and respect. So by the time they talk—if
they talk—they usually like you pretty well. And this contact
really developed into a good friendship. So I could call him up
and say, "Let’s take a ride over to the UCLA Medical
Center, stroll through the ambulance bay" -- where Clyde
hurls the alkali -- "and tell me what you see." And
just walking around town, this friend of mine would notice a
gardener wasn't sweaty enough. He’d say, “It’s ninety
degrees out. That guy’s not working. What is he doing? Casing
the place? Waiting for someone?” He just had an eye for
noticing things and people out of place. I started developing it
too, hanging around him. Now I’m tending more paranoid than
oblivious.
Let's
talk about the opening of the book, and two that really affected
me as I read them, are Clyde's Chapter 12 and Chapter 13.
Ghastly stuff, but well and honestly told. What was required of
the writer to produce pressurized, violent scenes like those and
others that follow?
I
strove to make this book as gritty as possible. It’s a medical
novel, and so I felt a responsibility to make the injuries and
the violence progress with scientific precision. And that holds
true for Clyde’s chapters as well. He’s not a drooling,
scheming madman petting a white cat—he’s a real, unhinged,
pathetic man, as are most people who perpetrate violent crimes.
One thing I learned in the writing of this book was: the more
real the violence, the less over-the-top it is, the greater the
impact. And so I kept pulling back the violence, making it less
emotional, and it kept ratcheting up the tension of the read.
Another
thing I found with Clyde is that I had a real intuitive handle
on him and how his mind worked. When I was talking to
psychiatrists at the NPI [UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute] I
was describing Clyde and trying to find some neat DSM-IV
classification to fit him into [Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition]. Is he
schizophrenic? Is he this? Is he that? And an NPI doctor kept
gamely trying to help me with this, but then I’d argue with
him. “Well, that sounds good, but Clyde’s really more like
this.” And finally, the doc looked at me and said, “Listen,
most of our patients don’t fit neat classifications,
anyway—the classifications are just there for guidelines. It
sounds like you have a real handle on this guy in a way that
makes him seem much more like a real patient.” And I realized
he was right—my view of Clyde was already intact, and it made
it better than picking a classification and working backward to
invent character traits.
Chapter
55 amply demonstrates the kinds of heroic tests a doctor can be
put through. The "cold, vengeful rage" that David
feels for Clyde late in the book, I've got to tell you, I would
have felt a lot sooner in his circumstances. But maybe that's
why David's a doctor and I'm not.
David,
as a doc, is much more inclined to view Clyde as a man with a
sickness than to meditate on whether he’s evil. Who cares if
he’s evil? He’s clearly disturbed, clearly ill. Why spend
time cultivating a hatred of him? However, at the point in the
text when David feels a “cold, vengeful rage” is when
Clyde’s violations become extremely personal. At that point,
David’s reaction is more universal, because Clyde’s actions
have jarred him out of a physician’s mindset.
Is
Clyde's end inevitable?
Tough
question. No character’s fate is inevitable when you begin
writing a book, because then all you’ll do is railroad that
character to said fate. But if you draw realistic characters,
and if you allow them free reign within your prescribed plot,
the choices at their disposal narrow until one ending can be
said to be more or less organic than another.
Do
you see thrillers as today's morality play?
I
absolutely do. I think thriller protagonists have a lot to teach
us. They strive for truth, they make mistakes but always learn
from them, they get beat up but keep coming back, and they have
to evolve constantly and grow as humans. My books are largely
about the ways that the human personality can shift when
horrible events occur. Often my characters find out that what
they believed of themselves isn’t always true.
I
think it’s immensely gratifying to see a character confront
the ultimate reality—death, mayhem, destruction, take your
pick—and either triumph over it, or learn from it, and take
something away in victory. In that regard, I think thrillers are
contemporary morality plays.
If
you could invite five fictional characters to dinner, whom would
you chose and why?
Will
Graham in Red Dragon—my
favorite protagonist in my favorite thriller. Graham fascinates
me not just because of his ability to apply his knowledge to
criminals being sought, but for his willingness to examine his
own dark nature and motives.
Quentin
Compson in The Sound and the Fury. He is so brilliant and so disturbed
and—like Will Graham—not afraid to shine the light of
perception inward. He has a lot of clarity on his own
psychopathy, much of it revolving around his dysfunctional
family. He’s too sensitive and quite willing to examine harsh
realities—a volatile combination which leads to his suicide.
Justin
Quayle in Le Carre’s The
Constant Gardener. This book is an absolute gem. Justin is
so witty, so shrewdly intelligent, so courageous, and so
insightful that by the end of the book, I found I had taken on
his quest to discover his wife’s killers as my own. I can’t
remember another book I’ve read where I so much wanted to be
the main character. I just loved this guy. For me, he defines
what it means to be a man.
Shakespeare’s
Coriolanus. Okay, so I’m sneaking in someone from the theatrical
tradition. I’ve never read a character with such shattering
egotism who I still couldn’t help but love. T.S. Eliot thought
Coriolanus was the
most perfect of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and I’d have to
agree. In many ways, it’s because Coriolanus’s tragic flaw
is the most compelling.
Hannibal
Lecter. To cook the meal, of course.
Ever
toy with the idea of becoming a doctor yourself?
Not
recently, much to the chagrin of my Jewish parents. When I was
younger it was something I contemplated, in part because severe
injuries and blood don’t faze me tremendously. I suppose that
quirk of mine aids in my career as a novelist as well --
flipping through crime scene photos or standing in on a gory
procedure aren’t pleasant tasks, but I can handle them. But I
think the primary obstacle to a career in medicine is that I
like writing novels too damn much.
h
Back to Top
|
|
