by Otto Penzler
Dick and John and I all got good reviews, and people went out looking for When the Bough Breaks. Some people even managed to find it. Reorders poured in. The book became a word-of-mouth bestseller.
The rest, as they say, is history. But by no means linear history. It took two more bestsellers, including one that stayed on the New York Times list for three months, and switching to a new publisher to get me working with people who understood what I was about.
None of this is intended as a gripe-fest. I didn't deserve to get published one second sooner than I did, because until then I simply wasn't good enough. And one vital component of getting good enough was embracing an old saw: Write what you know.
Yeah, in retrospect that's a great big duh. But prior to 1981, I simply wasn't ready for self-revelation--for what sportscaster Red Smith described as "sitting down every morning at your typewriter and opening a vein." (I paraphrase, but you get the gist.) Nor had I experienced quite enough of life's dark side to have something important to say.
In 1981, my thick skull finally cracked open just wide enough to absorb the obvious epiphany: It was time to create a protagonist who shared my background as a child clinical psychologist.
Like me, Alex Delaware earned a PhD in psychology at age twenty-four.
Like me, he'd worked in a pediatric hospital, including long hours on the cancer ward, and had burned out.
Like me, he'd treated kids who'd experienced severe trauma, including as crime victims. Like me, he'd learned more than he believed possible about the darkest side of life.
Like me, he had dark hair and blue eyes, though his locks were curly and mine are wavy.
He's right-handed; I'm a southpaw. He's Midwestern to the core (more on that later), and I was born in New York City and raised in LA.
He sees twenty-twenty; I'm myopic.
He's taller and thinner than I am. And, of course, he's younger, because one of the nicest things about writing fiction is playing God, and the benevolent deity that I pretend to be has chosen not to age his characters in real time.
Overall, I think of Alex as a down-to-earth yet dashing fellow. Energetic, confidently masculine, analytical, insightful, hopelessly compassionate, and, most important, addicted to the truth. In a perfect world, these are all virtues I'd choose for myself.
Right from the beginning, I set out to create a true hero, not an antihero, because in 1981, the antihero was the default cliche.
Unlike me, Alex lives in an idiosyncratic house up in the hills of Bel Air and is single. That last detail is most important, because a married guy with kids wouldn't--shouldn't--get into the kind of fixes Alex finds himself in. I, on the other hand, have been married since the age of twenty-two, and I am the father of four and, to date, the grandfather of one.
Truth be told, I am a thoroughly domestic guy who has suppressed a natural tendency toward recklessness and risk taking in order to let my loved ones maintain a sense of security. Exceptions do arise: a few years ago I was zipping around the Laguna Seca racetrack at 130 mph in a Formula 1 car. I've owned an Alfa Romeo, an Aston Martin, and a supercharged Porsche, so you can see where my heart lies, automotively. And sure, there have been dark moments. Years ago, I was nearly stabbed to death in San Francisco. I've played guitar for a room full of homicidal maniacs at a state hospital for the criminally insane. Have been the only Jew on a bus full of Arabs during a jaunt to the West Bank town of Hebron. Walked the old city of Jerusalem at three a.m. Survived cancer. But no more motorcycles, no flying lessons, no bungee jumping, no carving tools or power saws because, enough scars.
The most dangerous tool I wield nowadays is a '65 Fender Stratocaster.
Delaware, on the other hand, throws caution to the Santa Anas. Therefore, he will forever remain single and just a bit alienated from the loyalties and routines of domestic life.
For some reason, there is a cadre of readers that really want him to get hitched. Sometimes they write me requesting nuptials in an upcoming book. I appreciate their loyalty, but my response is consistent: when wedding bells chime for Alex, you can be sure the series is over. Unlike a police officer, whose involvement in crime is part of his routine, Dr. D's entree to murder necessitates a deft suspension of caution. He simply must be maritally untrammeled in order to take the kinds of risks that contribute to a gripping story.
When, after thirteen years of failure, I began writing When the Bough Breaks, I believed the process to be my final attempt at breaking in as a novelist. Maybe it would've been. Who knows? Thank God that hypothesis was never put to the test. The point is, because I saw the book as my final audition, I obsessed about coming up with something fresh and different. If I wasn't able to come up with something new, I didn't deserve to break in. As part of that scheme, I set out consciously to sidestep as many of the conventions of the hard-boiled-detective novel as I could while preserving the guts and soul of the genre.
Write what you know meant there was no other kind of book I could've written.
My day job as a psychologist was nothing but sleuthing--hour by hour (forty-five-minute segment by forty-five-minute segment) I conducted investigations that traversed the back alleys of the unconscious. Every time a new patient arrived in my office, the process unfolded: solving a psychosocial whodunit in order to ameliorate suffering. A lot of nasty stuff got unearthed along the way.
What I was attempting to achieve as a psychologist were daily triumphs of psychic archaeology: digging up long-buried shards of experience in an attempt to build a coherent picture of a troubled human being, in order to help that human being. If that's not detective work, I don't know what is. I'm anything but a Freudian, but I do believe that we ignore the past at our peril. That belief has informed every novel I've written.
Still, detective story or not, When the Bough Breaks might very well have turned out as the gravestone marking the death of my literary aspirations. This was do or die, dude; cliches needed to be shunned.
Hence, a troubled psychologist in a nice home office, instead of a wisecracking PI with a seedy inner-city office, a chronic drinking problem, and a buxom secretary whose barely secret love for the boss inexplicably evades the boss's notice.
Hence, a detailed, accurate, compelling investigation that didn't test the limits of reality more than it had to.
Most important: my book would feature no effete amateur prancing about as he shows up the pros. Because I detest books that treat murder like a parlor game. You know the type: plummy-voiced, tuxedoed twits with all the character depth of a sandwich sign huff-huffing in the parlor as a body molders yards away.
What could be more dehumanizing than viewing homicide as just another fatuous riddle, easily solved by applying the flimsiest approximation of logic?
Having witnessed the effects of violence as a psychologist and court consultant, I was determined to communicate the nightmare that is homicide and its repercussions. That proved easy, because Alex Delaware, like me, turned out to be a driven perfectionist whose persistence often draws him into some rather extreme territory. (Several years ago, I delivered the keynote address at the national convention of the American Psychological Association. Facing an audience of a couple thousand shrinks, I felt like the ultimate clinical demonstration. Maybe that's why I began my speech, "I stand before you as living proof of the positive aspects of the obsessive-compulsive personality.")
Driven, yes. Able to leap tall buildings by himself, no.
My hero would eschew a tortured relationship with the cops. Not only was that the most hackneyed of plot devices, but experiences working with the courts and the criminal-justice system had taught me that detectives from the private and public sectors often meshed quite well and that experts were well received.
This was going to be a crime novel. I needed a cop.
The problem was, yet another gruff, world-weary homicide dick was the woolliest cliche of all.
On the other hand, a gruff, world-weary gay homicide detective... interesting.
&n
bsp; Enter Milo Sturgis.
One of the questions I'm asked most frequently is what led me to make Milo homosexual. The answer is simple: the quest for something new and interesting and original. And what could be more compelling than a man, newly open about his sexuality, whose very presence in the Los Angeles Police Department would engender tension.
The timing was right. Long gone were the days when LA cops routinely busted gay bars--and gay heads. (Though I was able to plumb that brutal territory for flashback scenes in The Murder Book--a novel about which I will have more to say.) Which doesn't mean that the Los Angeles Police Department during the early eighties was in any way gay friendly. Quite the contrary. Even nowadays, when a handful of gay cops have gone public, I'm doubtful that homosexuality will ever be totally accepted in the paramilitary organization that is the LAPD.
In 1981, there were... ahem... no gay cops in the LAPD. If you believed the official account. I knew from my contacts that there were several gay cops in the LAPD. And that, for the most part, they went about their jobs without much fuss--neither running from nor flaunting their sexuality.
Just cops, like any others, doing the job.
In 1981, "gay but so what" seemed to me a revolutionary concept.
The more I thought about it, the fresher and more innovative became the notion of a homosexual homicide detective operating within a homophobic organization that tolerated him, barely, because he did the job better than anyone else.
But Milo couldn't be gay--the feather boa, lisping, limp-wristed gay of camp theater and episodic TV and West Hollywood Halloween parades. Because, apart from being the worst sort of cliche, a guy like that wouldn't survive a single shift in the LAPD. No matter how high his solve rate.
No, the cop I conceptualized would be different: tough, grumpy, sloppy, and also altogether professional and highly intelligent. A homicide veteran with a precarious foothold in the world of law enforcement based on nothing other than raw talent.
Milo's homosexuality is right out in the open in When the Bough Breaks, as he announces it to Alex because he doesn't want Alex to find out some other way and freak out. Alex reacts with surprise, then acceptance. The two of them become friends.
After the book was published, I received a ton of nice mail from gay people along the lines of "I've always loved mystery novels, but they're so homophobic. Thanks so much for Milo."
Bear in mind that in 1985, gay characters in mainstream fiction were just about nonexistent. No Will & Grace, no Brokeback Mountain. No Project Runway.
Was I out to create a social revolution? Hell, no. With thirteen years of abject failure behind me, I never even expected to publish the darn thing, let alone write a series or build the foundation of a durable career. Looking back, I realize that low expectations fed my courage: with nothing to lose, I had the fortitude to create a novel that, at first glance, had absolutely no commercial potential.
Shrink, gay cop. Scores of molested kids.
Once my editor left, the drones at my publisher opined that the book was weird, hard to characterize, and, y'know, kind of yucky.
The reading public thought otherwise, which is why I answer all my fan mail. But for the graciousness of ordinary folk who took the time to traipse to the bookstore and plunk down their hard-earned dough for that first novel--and all the novels that have followed--I wouldn't be able to avoid honest labor and work the greatest job in the world.
But back to Milo and the reception he's received from the reading public over a two-decade tenure.
Straight people rarely complain; in fact, I've only received a handful of letters complaining about the "gay agenda" and such. Apparently, most individuals--at least those who read my novels--are tolerant. They buy into "gay but so what" because they understand that whom we sleep with has nothing to do with how effective we are in doing our jobs.
Americans--and people all around the world--believe in live and let live. How nice.
More interesting--and, to me, more amusing--has been the evolution of the response from gay readers.
Shortly after its publication, When the Bough Breaks received an award from an advocacy group aimed at promoting positive images of gay people.
But as gay people gradually began receiving greater focus in books, in films, and on TV, I occasionally became the recipient of snarkiness in the gay press. E.g., "How can Kellerman, as a straight man, presume to write about the gay experience?"
Which is not only narrow-minded and stupid, it betrays an utter lack of understanding about what writing fiction is all about. If I had to limit myself to the confines of my own direct experience, I could never write about women, anyone older than I am, anyone from a different ethnic or religious background. Yes, that sounds obvious, but you'd be amazed at the limited thinking of those who choose to incarcerate themselves in sociopolitical cell blocks.
The apex of reverse discrimination arrived several years ago, in the form of a review in a British gay magazine opining that if Alex Delaware were really a great shrink, he'd realize he was in love with Milo.
I laughed. What else can you do?
Since I consider writing fiction a profoundly narcissistic exercise--I shut out the world and aim at pleasing myself--I pay no heed to any of that blather and continue to engage in the same routine that has been part of my life for decades: entering a quiet room, sitting down, typing until fatigue rules. And over the two decades since they first dropped in and introduced themselves to me, Dr. D and Lieutenant S have continued to explore the darker side of the human experience as friends and cocompulsives.
One point of commonality between Alex and Milo is their Midwestern origin. Milo hails from Indiana, and Alex, like my wife, is Missouri born. This is no accident; to me, the Midwest represents much of what is praiseworthy about America, with its emphasis on humility, hard work, and loyalty, rather than the LA-New York ethos, with its emphasis on cosmetics, self-invention, and spin masquerading as truth.
But LA's so much fun to write about. And what better eye to cast upon the city formed by Hollyweird than that of a Midwestern boy who drove cross-country at age sixteen. In order to... well, Alex really wasn't sure about his goals, but he did know it was time to escape his alcoholic father and his chronically depressed mother and the older sister who never stuck up for him.
And Milo... gay, Catholic, one of a gaggle of six macho brothers. Need I say more?
Like so many other loners, both men migrated to California in order to escape their personal histories, but they will never be able shed those early, formative years in the flatlands of the Midwest. Though they've never really discussed their childhoods with each other, surprisingly similar backgrounds have imbued both of them with a burning desire to learn the truth. To obsessively churn forward until the truth shows its sometimes ugly little face.
These are not guys who have any patience for situational ethics. In the world that Alex and Milo inhabit, the distinction between good and evil is clear. That is not to say they are simpleminded, naive, or blithely unaware of life's nuances. Quite the contrary; they are complex, intelligent, thinking men who, precisely because they weigh the moral consequences of every situation, are guided by a firm sense of right and wrong.
Alex and Milo are unabashed good guys who are out to get the unabashed bad guys, and they will always be that way because I've created them and hell if I don't think that's the right way to be.
Alex and Milo admire the same people I admire and they despise the chumps who bring my blood to a boil and who seem to populate the Third World nation that is Los Angeles: smarmy psychopaths, petty politicians, backbiting weenies, faceless bureaucrats, citizen-fascists pretending they can't smell the stink of the concentration camp a block away. Not to mention pig-headed bigots, manic poseurs, downright frauds, smooth and not-so-smooth cons, ass kissers, buck passers, small-minded wimps, shiftless shirkers. And just plain mopes who evade responsibility.
Working as a psychologist is all about refraining from imposing one's v
alues on others.
Writing fiction is such a lovely vacation from that. I judge. Oh, boy, do I judge.
I like real heroes. And, unlike the television network executive cretin who opined that Alex Delaware would be more appealing if he had a limp or some other physical defect, I have no problem working with a good-looking, good-thinking good guy.
You want antiheroes who are just as unredeemable as their quarry, go somewhere else. But close the door lightly and don't wake me up. Nothing is more yawn inducing to me than the conspicuously flawed antihero.
None of that should imply that either Alex or Milo is devoid of problems. In When the Bough Breaks, Alex debuts as a tormented, disillusioned, insomniac burnout unable to maintain a steady relationship or to function professionally. And one recurrent motif of the Delaware novels is the therapist getting through the rough spots of his own life by putting them aside and concentrating on solving the problems of others.
Then there's Milo. Slovenly, constitutionally grouchy, compulsively stuffing his face, ever a malcontent. He is certainly no poster boy for Perfect Adjustment. But unless his foibles are germane to the story, they are handled lightly. Yes, he's got issues. No, they won't stop him from getting to the bottom of horrible murders.
Alex is a hero, but he is also a real person who lives in my head and tells me great stories. And real people evolve and develop and go through rough patches.
In When the Bough Breaks, Dr. D's past involvement with a group of abused children ends up connecting, quite terribly, to other, similarly mistreated kids, as well as to multiple murder. Alex becomes an integral part of the story. But in the next two novels, Blood Test and Over the Edge, he steps back, is allowed to accrue some objectivity as he assumes the role of behavioral scientist and ad hoc detective.
The success of those books, particularly Over the Edge, which remained on the bestseller list for months, led me to realize that I was going to write a series, and that I needed to acquaint myself more fully with my recurring protagonist. The result was a vacation from Alex, so that I could attain perspective and understand him more fully. During that time, I wrote a stand-alone novel, The Butcher's Theater, a massive, disturbing account of serial killings (before they became known as such) in the holiest of cities, Jerusalem. The following book, the fourth featuring Delaware, Silent Partner, falls squarely in the noir tradition but also edges into surrealism and horror. Because one of the driving forces of that book was for me to solidify my understanding of Alex, he reverts to the role of primary player, as a supposedly chance encounter with a former lover--a beautiful, troubled, enigmatic graduate student named Sharon Ransom--draws him into a nightmare world of betrayal and corruption.