Contributing editor Keith Raffel recently chatted with Rober Dugoni about his new thriller, Bodily Harm.
Come on, Robert, the toy industry as a suitable backdrop for a thriller? Tell us about Bodily Harm.
I think Kirkus put it best when they called it "a toy story for adults." Wherever you have money, you have the potential for greed, corruption, and skullduggery, and the toy industry is a 25 billion dollar a year industry. Companies can be made and broken by the success or failure of a single toy. Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmo were billion dollar ideas and Barbie and GI Joe have sustained the toy industry for decades.
David Sloane becomes an unwitting participant in this world. He's on the verge of a victory in a malpractice action against a doctor for the death of a young boy when toy designer Kyle Horgan claims responsibility not only for the child's death but also for the fate of a second boy. When Horgan vanishes, Sloane teams up with his longtime investigative partner Charles Jenkins to reexamine the deaths and dig deeper into Horgan's claims. This provokes a vicious response from powerful people and Sloane has to dodge a calculating killer charged by his employers to inflict maximum bodily harm, while overcoming a devastating personal loss that nearly destroys him--all keeping in check his overwhelming desire for revenge.
What kind of research did you do for the book?
I did go back to Washington, D.C. to visit all the locations in the book. I made it to the outside of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but didn't make it inside. I did, however, make it inside the CIA at Langley and that was an incredible experience. They were very open about talking to me about Charles Jenkins as a former CIA agent.
I also interviewed several lawyers who handled product liability cases, but I was familiar with those types of cases. Here in Seattle, I talked with an attorney who handled cases involving defective magnets. He had to be careful not to divulge certain information to me, however, due to confidentiality agreements with the companies and I respected that. But once I had the idea I was able to pull up binders full of articles on defective products, the inefficiency of the Consumer Product Safety Commission due to excessive deregulation, manufacturing in China, the use of powerful magnets, and, ultimately, on the toy industry, including several books on the subject. I felt like I was back in college doing a thesis. I probably read 10,000 pages of material. The trick is to then synthesize that material down for a 400 page book in a way that doesn't bore the reader.
This is your third David Sloane book. How much of David Sloane is Robert Dugoni?
All characters are a part of the writer, I think. How can they not be since they come from within? But honestly, Sloane is smarter and gutsier than I ever was as a lawyer or a person, and as he has developed through the novels. He actually has become less and less like me with each book.
You've done some acting which requires getting inside a character in a fictional world. How much is that like writing novels?
Acting is what got me back into writing novels because it required scene study, and theater is all about showing and not telling. It is all about what the audience can absorb with their senses: what they see and hear and smell on the stage. People tell me my novels would make great movies, but that's because I'm a visual person and I'm good with my eyes and my ears from taking hundreds of depositions and also playing many different types of characters on stage. Scene study also teaches you tension and suspense and how a writer should enter and leave a scene at high points of both. When I'm writing I often find myself speaking the parts out loud of each of the characters and acting out each roll. It's a lot of fun, but you don't want too many people to see you doing it!
Legal thrillers have a long and distinguished pedigree from Erle Stanley Gardner to John Grisham. What have you learned from those who came before you?
Hit the highs. Trials are actually very rule-oriented and detailed and can be incredibly boring. It's important to give the reader the interesting stuff and cut out the rest and that's what those writers were good at being able to do. I've also learned that you have to move the character out of the courtroom so that the book doesn't become claustrophobic and stationary.
You grew up in the Bay Area, went to Stanford and UCLA, practiced law in San Francisco, and now live in Seattle. Is there something distinctive about being a West Coast thriller writer as compared to your colleagues Harlan Coben, who's from New Jersey, or John Grisham, who's from Mississippi?
Good question. I've never been asked before. I think the distinction probably comes in the way we view the world and the way people in those parts of the country view the world. People criticize Grisham's writing a lot, but the guy is a good old-fashioned southern story teller. He can spin a yarn. Coben may move faster because the pace of life on the East Coast is faster and I think, to some degree, a little grittier. East Coast people have no problem telling you what they think and everyone understands that. They honk the horn and yell and scream and it's accepted. Do that on the West Coast and you're liable to get shot. All of that, I think reflects in the characters in the novels - how they relate to each other and to others.
How did you move from being a successful San Francisco lawyer to a bestselling Seattle novelist?
Slowly and painfully. It was a process. I was a writer before I became a lawyer. I was a journalist all through school. So what I was really doing was moving back to what I was passionate about. I had a great deal of help, especially from a very patient and understanding wife who never lost faith during the years of rejection letters. As I was doing theater, I began again to write. What I was writing wasn't very good, but the muse was back and more and more I began to realize this is what I wanted to do with my life.
Do you enjoy getting out and promoting your books or is it just a cost of doing business?
I love it. I really do. It is very tough being away from my family and it puts a lot of responsibility on my wife with all the kids' activities but I really love meeting people who like my work and like to talk about it and I enjoy teaching the craft.
Tell us about a typical day in your writing life.
I treat it like a job. I usually work out early. When I get back I help get the kids out the door to school. After that I pick up The Green Mile and I read for about 10 to 15 minutes from any part of the book. I do this because King is brilliant and that book, I think, is one of his masterpieces. I can't write like him, but I can aspire to greatness and that book motivates me to do better. Then I begin to write my scenes. I'm more creative in the morning so I try to create new scenes and I go for as long as I can - one or two in the afternoon. Then I'll take a break and come back and edit scenes I wrote the day before. When the kids get home we spend time doing homework and sports, but I usually find a couple more hours to promote, answering emails and checking Facebook and those kinds of things. It's a full-time job.
What's next?
David Sloane will be back. The book I'm working on now will find him in an incredibly vulnerable place in his life when he is asked to defend a high profile Seattle female lawyer, Barclay Reid, the attorney in Bodily Harm. Reid is accused of killing the drug dealer responsible for the overdose of her only daughter. Criminal law is a whole new world for Sloane and I've immersed myself in it for the past six months. It is going to be another experience for us both but I'm really excited about the project.
Keith Raffel has held a top secret clearance to watch over CIA activities and has founded an award-winning Internet software company. Steve Berry called Keith's latest book, Smasher: A Silicon Valley Thriller, "taut, tight, and suspenseful" and said it "skillfully carries the reader triumphantly from one climax to the next."
