Bestselling author William Bernhardt has published his twenty-third novel CAPITAL THREAT. In it, his long-running series character, defense attorney Ben Kincaid, has a new job-he's a senator, embroiled in politics very much not-as-usual. The Republican President has nominated Thaddeus Roush to the Supreme Court. Roush seems appropriately conservative and he's passed his apparently lame background checks. During a White House rose garden press conference presenting his nomination, Roush announces he's gay on live TV. Suddenly the President isn't very interested in Roush as a judge. Although he can't very well back out now, he can try to kill the nomination via his party. The Democrats, on the other hand, find themselves in the unusual situation of wanting to sponsor and support a Republican Supreme Court nominee. The case, already rather sticky, gets even stickier--or weirder--when during a press conference a dead body shows up in Roush's backyard.

In steps Senator Ben Kincaid from Oklahoma, appointed by the Governor of Oklahoma after the death of the sitting senator. Since he has the least to lose out of all of the Democratic senators, he is chosen by the Democratic leadership to be Roush's consultant/lawyer/representative during the Senate hearings. The book then alternates between the hearings and Kincaid's investigator’s search for the identity of the dead woman.

William Bernhardt, who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, talks to ITW contributing editor, Mark Terry, about his latest books and writing.

Terry: You used to be a practicing attorney, right?

Bernhardt: I practiced for not quite ten years as a trial lawyer in the litigation department of a big firm. Somewhere in the middle of that, about 1991, my first novel, PRIMARY JUSTICE was published, and did a lot better than expected—better than I expected, I can tell you that. But who knew what would happen? I didn’t want to move precipitously, I had children to support. It kept working out quite well and then in about January ’96 I resigned from the firm and started writing fulltime.

Terry: You moved Ben from Oklahoma to Washington, DC. Why?

Bernhardt: Well, I moved him to DC in the previous book, CAPITOL MURDER. I do try to keep it fresh. The problem with series that go on for a while is that sometimes they start to look all the same, the plots start to look interchangeable, only the themes change. So I do try to make each new Ben Kincaid installment change--fundamentally and structurally different--and try to tell different stories. And one way to do that is to move him out of town now and then, which sounds like a superficial sort of change, but it really isn’t. It fundamentally changes the whole equation, like when Ben goes to Chicago or to Washington, DC.{mospagebreak}

Terry: But CAPITOL THREAT isn’t even that much of a murder mystery. I would call it a political thriller.

Bernhardt: CAPITOL THREAT is not even a courtroom drama, although there are hearings-- instead of courtroom machinations there are political machinations. I think the people who like the other will like this, but it keeps me fresh and engaged, too.

I didn’t expect the “Capitol” thing to run for two or three books, but CAPITOL MURDER sold really well, we got a nice step up in sales and I’d already turned in the next book. A month or two after CAPITOL MURDER was released I got a call from my editor—you know, they never want to tell you anything about sales numbers or how your book’s coming—but when the editor called and said, “You know the end of this book where Ben comes home from Washington? You might want to rethink that.” Hmmm, something good must be happening. I’m glad it worked.

I’ve done 23 books now and I’ve tried different things and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. And as you know, in CAPITOL THREAT the murder mystery aspect is almost a subplot. It’s got to be there, people expect it, but it’s almost a subplot, it’s not really the main event. And even less so in the next book, which is probably going to be titled CAPITOL CONSPIRACY, which is pretty much a straight-ahead political thriller. And I think the best of the three.

Terry: Are you a visit-the-place researcher or an Internet-National Geographic-Fodor’s kind of researcher?

Bernhardt: I like to visit the place, but the truth is, you can spend an hour on the Internet and get about as much as you could get in a week on in-place research. The one thing you can’t get, and I don’t mean this to sound too mystical, but you can’t get a feel for the place, if you know what I mean. You can’t see the people and how they talk to each other and what they wear.

Terry: You’ve got a new standalone novel coming out in August, right?

Bernhardt: Yes, it’s quite classy, going to be called STRIP SEARCH, which is a sequel to a book I did a few years ago called DARK EYE, which is outside the series. I thought DARK EYE was a standalone, but now it’s got a sequel. It’s set in Vegas, which is why it’s titled STRIP SEARCH because it’s set on the Vegas strip and they’re “searching” for the bad guy. I don’t know what you were thinking when I said STRIP SEARCH, but it might work in the airport for the guy who has 20 seconds to pick a book--that title might help. It’s a much more psychological and complex characterization than what I’ve been doing with the Kincaid books, and I think it’s the best book I’ve ever done.

Mark Terry is an ITW contributing editor and the author of the Derek Stillwater thriller series. His newest thriller, The Serpent’s Kiss, is available in stores and online.