Black Jack
Page 25
When writing this kind of thriller/mystery/suspense fiction, there’s no substitute for getting the details to feel as real as possible—even if I have to take some dramatic license now and then to create the best story. If I haven’t been there, I find people who help me get the details right.
In this case, most of Black Jack is set in New York, for reasons you’ll understand when you read the first few pages of the book. Running Blind/The Visitor began and ended in New York, too, but included scenes set in Virginia, Oregon and other locations.
Running Blind/The Visitor is a story about a serial killer who targets women Reacher knew while he served thirteen years as a military policeman in the Army. Serial killer fiction is always exciting because catching a serial killer is difficult and the story’s pace can be either measured or lightning fast.
Most experts agree that a serial killer is an individual who kills more than two people with a cooling-off period in between. While some serial murders contain a sexual element, not all do. Rather, the common thread is that the killer’s motives are based on the killer’s psychological gratification. The FBI’s list of motives include anger, thrill, financial gain, and personal missions, among others.
These definitions give us a strong clue as to why the prime suspect at the beginning of Running Blind/The Visitor is Reacher himself. Funny how law enforcement officers often assume Reacher’s the bad guy, isn’t it? Which, of course, fits right into my series and sparked the idea for the opening of Black Jack.
In the end, though, the main reason I settled on Running Blind/The Visitor was because it’s so different from other Reacher books that came before and after.
How so, you might wonder? Here are the main reasons, the ones that made Running Blind/The Visitor a perfect starting place for Black Jack.
Right from the start, Running Blind/The Visitor has a different feel from other Jack Reacher thrillers. Reacher is more cerebral in this one. He’s an investigator who solves several complicated puzzles in clever ways, demonstrating his brains in addition to the brawn we usually see on display.
Because Reacher is supremely confident that he will prevail in every situation he faces, he has no need for courage. He relies on skill and brute force to win, and Reacher always wins. It’s one of the things we depend upon, isn’t it? Running Blind/The Visitor shows us a few of Reacher’s blind spots.
Kim Otto, on the other hand, must rely on different traits. Raw courage is the only thing that keeps her going when another person would simply turn and run. Otto knows she’s no match for Reacher in hand-to-hand combat. She’s petite, only four-feet-eleven-inches and, as she jokingly puts it, ninety-seven pounds of absolutely terrifying power. She compensates with superior marksmanship and solid planning, among other traits. But due to her diminutive size, necessity dictates that Otto must be much, much braver than Reacher and every villain she faces.
Otto knows her best weapon is brains, not brawn. Pitting her against a clever serial killer in Black Jack gives us a chance to see what she can do.
Running Blind/The Visitor has other interesting angles, too. The famously nomadic Reacher eschews entanglements and possessions of all kinds. But three years out of the Army, he seems to have settled down. He owns a house and a car and pays property taxes, just like the rest of us.
When I first read the book, I thought, How can that be?
Even more curiously, the love ’em and leave ’em guy is deeply in love at that time. He has a steady girlfriend. Her name is Jodie Jacob and he’s loved her for a good, long while. When the Running Blind/The Visitor story opens, he’s waiting patiently for her to get off work.
[Insert double take here.] Say what?
You see, Reacher is suffering an identity crisis of sorts in Running Blind/The Visitor. He feels his new everyman lifestyle is all wrong for him. He’s itching to get back on the road. But he doesn’t want to leave Jodie. How’s the big guy gonna solve this?
Indecisiveness rarely afflicts Reacher. He’s the man who always knows what to do (and how to do it). We love that about him, too. But in Running Blind/The Visitor, he has as much trouble dealing with the hard choices as the rest of us.
Putting all of these elements together helped me to create Black Jack. My books don’t contain any spoilers for Lee’s books, so if you haven’t read Running Blind/The Visitor, don’t worry. I haven’t told you anything you wouldn’t get from reading the book description on the back of the book. As promised, you can read his books and mine separately, or together, and in any order you like.
So that’s where I started and why I chose Running Blind/The Visitor. Next steps?
Once the source book is selected, we need a plausible story for Otto and Gaspar that ties into the source book, but has plenty of room to grow into an exciting thrill ride that can stand on its own. Finding that story usually requires quite a bit of thinking, followed by research, and more thinking, maybe a little brainstorming with my editor or Lee, and more research, and…well, you get the idea.
All in good time, the book begins to take shape. How did that play out here?
When Black Jack opens, the original serial killer from Running Blind/The Visitor had stopped killing long ago. Only Reacher and a few others know why and how the case ended. Which makes the cold case a perfect jumping off place for Black Jack.
What made sense, from a story perspective, was to have the serial killer start up again. But could that happen in real life?
Turns out, it’s a myth that serial killers don’t stop killing. They do stop, and for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the killer was caught. Charles Manson stopped killing because he went to prison. Ted Bundy (eventually) stopped killing because he was executed in prison.
Sometimes the killer stops because he’s been removed from the field for other reasons. He could have relocated for his job, for example. John Eric Armstrong killed prostitutes in his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan. Those killings stopped when Armstrong was deployed around the world by the Navy, although he continued killing prostitutes elsewhere.
Another option, which is strange but true, serial killers can and do stop killing completely. Like Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, who killed from 1974 to 1991 and then stopped until he was caught in 2005.
All of which meant that the original serial killer could plausibly strike again. I didn’t want to write a sequel to the Running Blind/The Visitor case, though. Remember, I write spin-offs. And no spoilers. Hmmmm.
Because of the years that elapsed between Running Blind/The Visitor and Black Jack, my story idea would only work with a plausible reason for the long break in the serial killer’s activities. Research came to the rescue again here.
Turns out, serial killers who stop and then start up again years later are not common. But we can find examples.
Jeffrey Gorton killed three people, in 1986, 1991, and 2002. He was caught for the last murder, which was eleven years after the previous one. It’s believed that Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., the so called “sleeper killer,” took a fourteen-year break from 1988 to 2002, when he began killing again.
From that kernel of an idea, Black Jack eventually revealed itself to me. The entire book took months from conception to finished manuscript, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. I hope you will be, too.
What’s the story about? Here’s the brief description:
A serial killer returns after years of inactivity in this gripping new suspense thriller. The New York FBI team says Reacher was the original serial killer back then and is the same killer now. When Otto and Gaspar suspect a copycat, they’re forced to battle an avenger with a grudge against Reacher and nothing to lose.
Four powerful players are determined to win at all costs. The fifth wants to stay alive.
Kim Otto may be tiny, but she’s fierce. She believes in real justice, the legal kind, and she puts her life on the line to prove it. That’s her job. She’s good at it. Maybe too good.
Her partner, Carlos Gaspar, is damaged and hurting. He on
ly wants to survive long enough to put his kids through college.
The FBI can’t officially condone vigilantes, but the Boss wants Reacher because he believes his ends justify his means; the President’s right hand man disagrees.
Jack Reacher plays by his own rules. When Reacher is judge, jury, and executioner, collateral damage is inevitable.
Not all can win. None plan to fail.
Now you know a little bit about how I write these books. If you’re new to the Hunt For Jack Reacher Series, Black Jack is a good place to begin. If you’re already a Hunt for Jack Reacher Series fan, advance readers say Black Jack will, once again, keep you on the edge of your seat through to the very last line.
“Diane Capri’s Hunt for Jack Reacher Series masterfully satisfies with an exciting thrill ride that always leaves you wanting more.”
Or, as Lee Child, world-wide bestselling author of the Jack Reacher thrillers, says, “Make some coffee. You’ll read all night. Kim Otto is a great, great character. I love her.”
I hope you’ll feel the same!
Caffeinate and Carry On!
FROM LEE CHILD
THE REACHER REPORT:
March 2nd, 2012
The other big news is Diane Capri—a friend of mine—wrote a book revisiting the events of KILLING FLOOR in Margrave, Georgia. She imagines an FBI team tasked to trace Reacher’s current-day whereabouts. They begin by interviewing people who knew him—starting out with Roscoe and Finlay. Check out this review: “Oh heck yes! I am in love with this book. I’m a huge Jack Reacher fan. If you don’t know Jack (pun intended!) then get thee to the bookstore/wherever you buy your fix and pick up one of the many Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. Heck, pick up all of them. In particular, read Killing Floor. Then come back and read Don’t Know Jack. This story picks up the other from the point of view of Kim and Gaspar, FBI agents assigned to build a file on Jack Reacher. The problem is, as anyone who knows Reacher can attest, he lives completely off the grid. No cell phone, no house, no car…he’s not tied down. A pretty daunting task, then, wouldn’t you say?
First lines: “Just the facts. And not many of them, either. Jack Reacher’s file was too stale and too thin to be credible. No human could be as invisible as Reacher appeared to be, whether he was currently above the ground or under it. Either the file had been sanitized, or Reacher was the most off-the-grid paranoid Kim Otto had ever heard of.” Right away, I’m sensing who Kim Otto is and I’m delighted that I know something she doesn’t. You see, I DO know Jack. And I know he’s not paranoid. Not really. I know why he lives as he does, and I know what kind of man he is. I loved having that over Kim and Gaspar. If you haven’t read any Reacher novels, then this will feel like a good, solid story in its own right. If you have…oh if you have, then you, too, will feel like you have a one-up on the FBI. It’s a fun feeling!
“Kim and Gaspar are sent to Margrave by a mysterious boss who reminds me of Charlie, in Charlie’s Angels. You never see him…you hear him. He never gives them all the facts. So they are left with a big pile of nothing. They end up embroiled in a murder case that seems connected to Reacher somehow, but they can’t see how. Suffice to say the efforts to find the murderer and Reacher, and not lose their own heads in the process, makes for an entertaining read.
“I love the way the author handled the entire story. The pacing is dead on (ok another pun intended), the story is full of twists and turns like a Reacher novel would be, but it’s another viewpoint of a Reacher story. It’s an outside-in approach to Reacher.
“You might be asking, do they find him? Do they finally meet the infamous Jack Reacher?
“Go…read…now…find out!”
Sounds great, right? You can get it HERE. Check out “Don’t Know Jack,” and let me know what you think.
So that’s it for now…again, thanks for reading THE AFFAIR, and I hope you’ll like A WANTED MAN just as much in September.
~ Lee Child