The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives

by Otto Penzler

  He looked a little startled.

  "She is happy, Sir Peter," Vespasia repeated. "She does not look back with question or regret. She does not envy anyone. And possibly that does not make her the right wife for a man seeking high office. She knows both sides of society. She can dance with a duke, but she never had the art of making trivial conversation or flattering to please. And so far as I know, she never made the attempt to hide her opinions on subjects about which she cared."

  "What subjects might they be?" he asked warily.

  "Right and wrong," she replied. "Justice and injustice, prejudice, intolerance, self-righteousness, cruelty, hypocrisy, and the building and destroying of dreams."

  "Are you sure we are speaking of Charlotte Pitt, my lady, and not perhaps a little of yourself?" His voice was gentle and a trifle wry.

  She sighed, her gaze far away. "Maybe I see in her what I wish to, but I think nevertheless that I am accurate. Charlotte was never as beautiful as I, so she had not the confidence in herself, nor perhaps the arrogance. Nor had she the title or the wealth, which both bound and freed her. But she married the man she loved, and she always knew in her heart that he loved her. That gave her a different kind of confidence, and an inner peace which few of us ever know."

  Naylor said nothing, touched by a sort of truth deeper and possibly more painful than anything they had said before.

  "She is also capable of rubbing elbows with the washerwoman," Vespasia went on, "and speaking sensibly to her of home and domestic duties, of poverty and good ways in which to save money. That she learned first from Pitt, then from experience. She does not belong completely to either one world or the other, which leaves her lonely at times. She is impetuous and given to acting before she fully considers the possible outcome. But then, too much thought, too much awareness of the pitfalls and the losses ahead, would rob us all of the courage or the passion to act. We can creep cautiously to death from inertia, and expire safely in our beds of old age and spiritual paralysis. We can look back on an unblemished career of never having said or done anything wrong--or anything right either. We could pass through the world without having left a mark."

  He said nothing, an abyss of emptiness opening up before his mind.

  "No one will say that of Charlotte," Vespasia continued. "She is a person one would remember for her vitality, the strength of her feeling, not always wise, certainly, but always honest. She is lukewarm about nothing."

  "I have not met her," he admitted. "She sounds rather daunting."

  "I think you would like her," she told him. "She is very attractive, both to look at and to speak with. She is fairly tall, but Pitt himself is of good height and has a certain artless grace of movement. She, of course, moves excellently, as do all girls brought up by a strict mother who has ambitions towards a good marriage. She practiced the customary walking while balancing books on her head, sitting with a straight back and shoulders, speaking with perfect diction, and knowing how to address everyone correctly, from the archbishop to the cook, and saying something pleasant and innocuous to all of them."

  "That is not what I have heard of her," he said dubiously.

  "She has good features and very beautiful hair," Vespasia continued, ignoring his interruption. "And perhaps too handsome a figure entirely for her own good. She has drawn much admiration at times, even if her strength of character has alarmed some people."

  He was curious, both interested and now concerned. "Are you trying to say that certain men have been... attracted to her?" he asked.

  She gave him a withering look. "I know of three or four who were unquestionably in love with her. What I do not know is if she herself was aware of it. She has my considered respect if she was and managed never to show it. It must have made difficult situations a great deal easier for the men in question."

  "Who were they?"

  "How indelicate," she reproved him. "Since I am quite certain that nothing improper took place, I do not think it is your concern."

  "It does not leave this room," he promised. "Either in word or deed. But the knowledge may affect my decision. Who were they?"

  "General Brandon Ballantyne and Victor Narraway," she replied. "Among others."

  "Indeed!" He was truly surprised. "I know them both. Neither are men of easy passion. I begin to look at Mrs. Pitt in a new light. She must have more depth of character and more integrity of purpose than I had supposed."

  Vespasia smiled. "You saw her as meddling in Pitt's cases out of boredom, mistaken idealism, the kind of arrogance that assumes abilities it does not possess and lacks the imagination to see what harm the well-meaning but ignorant can do?"

  He blushed. "I had not thought of it quite so cruelly, but I suppose that is more or less what I had supposed. Pretty women sometimes are led to believe that charm can overcome any deficit in intelligence or experience."

  "I can hear Charlotte's laughter in my mind as you say that," Vespasia responded. "She is very observant of small things, as women often are. She notices tone of voice, the way people stand, look at each other, the expressions on faces when they imagine themselves unobserved. But of course she would be far too wise to tell you what she had seen--at least she would now."

  "And earlier?"

  "That was a different matter," Vespasia admitted. "If one's mistakes are dramatic enough, one does not repeat them."

  "You alarm me, and intrigue me," he said. "I shall most certainly meet Mrs. Pitt. Tell me, do you think she will wish him to take this position, should it be offered him?"

  Vespasia thought for several moments. "Oh yes, she will wish him to accept it. She was never a coward. But she will not be blind to its costs. She will know that the decisions he has to make will at times be dangerous and painful. He will make mistakes, because we all do, and he will grieve over them. He will lie awake wondering how he can spare people, knowing there is no way and yet still laboring to find one. He is a man born poor, who understands the poor, the ordinary, and the fearful. He will speak to the common man as an equal. He will at times be something of a prude and offend the aristocratic, as he has offended the king. He will not always know when to laugh and when to keep silent. But sooner or later he will earn their respect, because they will come to know that they can trust both his judgment and his kindness. That is a lot to say of any man, Sir Peter."

  "And Mrs. Pitt?" he asked.

  "Oh, you may trust her to be shocking, charming, disastrously frank, and utterly loyal. You will like her, whether you wish to or not, because you will not be afraid of her. She is impractical only in the things that do not matter at all, except to people who have no sense of proportion." Her face tightened fractionally. "A sense of proportion is going to matter in the times ahead, I think. We will need to know with great certainty what it is we value, what we are prepared to give our lives to preserve. Yes, Sir Peter, the prime minister should offer this position to Thomas Pitt. He is the essential Englishman, rooted in the soil of his ancestry, willing to live and die for the common decencies of life, the honor and tolerance, the kindness and the absurdities.

  "You will be happy to sit at the kitchen table with him and drink tea with a slice of cake at the end of a long case, and know that you have done your best."

  He rose to his feet. "Thank you, Lady Vespasia. I shall recommend to the prime minister that we overrule His Majesty's misgivings and do exactly that. I appreciate your candor. I believe that I now know more of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt than anyone else could have told me."

  She inclined her head and smiled, with a faraway, dreaming look of long and happy memory.

  DOUGLAS PRESTON and LINCOLN CHILD

  Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956. He graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, anthropology, geology, astronomy, and English. He worked at New York's American Museum of Natural History for eight years as writer and editor of the in-house publication, eventually writing the nonfiction
book Dinosaurs in the Attic for St. Martin's Press, where his editor was Lincoln Child. They formed a friendship that resulted in their coauthoring the bestselling FBI Agent Pendergast series and other novels.

  Lincoln Child was born in Westport, Connecticut, in 1957. He graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, majoring in English. He took a job with St. Martin's in 1979 and, after editing more than a hundred books and founding the company's horror division, left in 1987 for a position with MetLife as a programmer and systems analyst. His first collaborative novel with Preston, Relic, was published in 1995.

  Preston and Child have collaborated on thirteen novels, nine about Pendergast and four stand-alones: Mount Dragon (1996), Riptide (1998), Thunderhead (1999), and The Ice Limit (2000).

  On his own, Child has written the thrillers Utopia (2002), Death Match (2004), Deep Storm (2007), and Terminal Freeze (2009).

  Preston's solo works are Dinosaurs in the Attic (1985), Jennie (1994), The Royal Road with Jose Antonio Esquibel and photographs by Christine Preston (1998), Cities of Gold (1999), The Codex (2004), Tyrannosaur Canyon (2005), Blasphemy (2008), and Monster of Florence with Mario Spezi (2008).

  ALOYSIUS X. L. PENDERGAST

  BY DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD

  Douglas Preston

  My first job out of college was as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was over a quarter mile from the front door of the museum to my office, way in the back, and it took seven and a half minutes to make that walk (I timed it). I had to pass through the great African Hall, with the elephants, a series of smaller halls, the Egyptian Alcove, the Hall of Man in Africa, the Hall of Birds of the World, the Precolumbian Gold Hall, and the Hall of Mexico and Central America. It is one of the largest museums in the world, and I found it an amazing place to work.

  Part of my job was to write a column about the museum in Natural History magazine. I wrote about the Copper Man, about the Ahnighito meteorite, about Meshie the chimpanzee, about the dinosaur mummy, and the Star of India.

  One day, I got a call from an editor at St. Martin's Press. He had been reading my columns in the magazine and wondered if I would do him the kindness of joining him for lunch at the Russian Tea Room to talk about a possible book.

  I said I would certainly do him that kindness, and I rushed down to the Salvation Army to buy a jacket so I could get into the Russian Tea Room. When the appointed day came, I showed up expecting to meet an eminence grise from St. Martin's Press. Instead, waiting for me at a table in the back was a kid even younger than I was: Lincoln Child.

  Lincoln Child

  I had been a fan of the museum ever since coming to New York as a dewy-eyed college graduate. I loved nothing better than taking the behind-the-scenes tours and seeing the cubbyholes where real-life Indiana Joneses hung their pith helmets. After each such tour I would leave the museum thinking, "What an amazing old pile! When I retire I'll have to write its history." Then one day I realized: "You dolt! Why go to all that work when you can pay some other poor scrivener to do it?" After all, I was a book editor, and it was my job to find new projects for my house to publish. I found Doug's articles in the museum's magazine, and I invited him to lunch. He was exactly the kind of person I was looking for: young and hungry looking (note to Preston-Child readers: imagine Bill Smithback). I pitched the idea of an informal history and armchair tour of the museum, to be written by him. He immediately jumped at it: he was more than ready to graduate from articles to full-length books. And that was the birth of what was to become Doug's nonfiction title Dinosaurs in the Attic.

  During the writing of the book I was always pestering Doug for a real behind-the-scenes tour, not the two-bit one that the tourists got. But he was afraid to do it, because I didn't have the appropriate security clearance and he wasn't able to get it for me. But finally he hit on a plan: it would be a midnight tour, when presumably nobody would be around to check our credentials. Doug had a special key that would get us into many odd places and storage rooms full of strange things. So it was that, one midnight, Doug snuck me in for a personal guided tour. And what a tour! I saw flesh-eating beetles, whale eyeballs in formaldehyde, rooms full of dinosaur bones as big as VW Bugs. We ended up on the fourth floor, in the (then-named) Hall of Late Dinosaurs (no pun intended). There was a terrific storm outside, and flickers of lightning from the ceiling skylight illuminated the huge, ancient T. rex towering over us. I don't know what possessed me, but I turned to Doug and said, "This is the scariest building in the world. Doug, we have to write a thriller set in a museum like this."

  He turned to me, eyes shining with emotion--or maybe it was just that last wee nip of Macallan making an unwelcome reappearance.

  And then a guard making his rounds surprised us. I don't know who was more scared: us, the guard, or the T. rex. But that's a story for another time.

  Doug

  No, let's tell that story now. When the guard surprised us, I thought, now I'm in deep shit. But Linc's brilliant wit saved us--the first of many such rescues. As the guard inched into the dark hall, shining his light around, anxious voice booming out, "Who's there?" Linc came up with the perfect reply. He cried out, "Thank God, you've finally found us! We've been wandering around for hours looking for the exit! How in the world do you get out of this place?"

  The guard escorted us out the security exit, never knowing I was a rogue museum employee conducting an undercover tour.

  Linc and I began discussing our novel, set in the museum, which we had decided to call Relic. One evening, Linc and I were sitting on his porch in Westchester County, sharing a bottle of good single malt. Between tipples of malt and discussions of what fine fellows we were, what rare geniuses, and how we would take the literary world by storm, we managed to hash out the plot to Relic. I agreed to take a crack at the first few chapters.

  In the meantime, I had moved from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the calls began coming. How were the chapters going? Fine, just fine! I would reply. After a year of this, Linc's patience began to wear thin. He is not normally the kind of person who employs vulgar language, but I do recall him telling me one time, "Doug, just write the fucking chapters already."

  So I finally did. To my great surprise, I enjoyed the experience. I had always thought of myself as a serious writer, in line for a Nobel Prize, but I found I enjoyed writing a novel about a brain-eating monster loose in a museum a lot more than I expected.

  I sent the first few chapters to Linc. He called me and said he liked them very much, except for one thing. I had two New York City cops, partners, who were the investigating officers. "Doug, they're both the same character," Linc said.

  "What do you mean?" I was immediately furious at this slight to my literary talent.

  "You got this one guy, Vincent D'Agosta, ethnic New York City cop, rough on the outside with a heart of gold. And then you've got his partner--exactly the same, except he's Irish."

  After profoundly damning Linc's contemptible literary taste, I finally came around to seeing his point.

  "What we need," Linc said, "is a detective no one's ever seen before. A real fish out of water. Someone who will act as a foil to D'Agosta and to New York City itself."

  "Oh, God," I said, "not another 'unique' detective, please! What, you mean like an albino from New Orleans?"

  There was a long silence and then I heard Linc say, "An albino from New Orleans... Intriguing... Very intriguing... "

  Linc

  The thing one has to keep in mind is that we wrote Relic as a lark. Don't get me wrong: we had high opinions of our writing skills and our ability to craft an interesting story. I'd edited dozens, hundreds, of novels, and Doug has always had a far deeper knowledge of literature than most English professors could boast (and he himself has taught writing at Princeton). What I mean is that we wrote the story to amuse ourselves rather than others. A lot of first-time novelists try to write what they think other people want to read, or cynically attempt to write a
novel that will have the broadest appeal. Not us. We wrote--for want of a better word--irresponsibly. We created eccentric characters and put them in extravagant situations. Having two of us in on the job improved--or exacerbated--the situation. I'd read something Doug wrote, would be hugely amused, and would then expand on it. If he wrote a scene of a terrified mob stampeding past an upended table of free hors d'oeuvres, I'd add a gratuitous bit about a huge bolus of pate being ground into mud beneath the running feet. And then Doug would have some character knocked to the ground, landing face first in the pate, and so on, each trying to top the other.

  It was into this hothouse atmosphere that Agent Pendergast first stepped. In those days Doug frequently wrote four out of every five new chapters, while I did significant rewriting and produced the outlines for the chapters to come. So one day I received, via 2,400-baud modem (don't laugh; it was the Pony Express of its day), what would eventually become chapter fourteen of Relic. It was an exciting rough draft. Among other things, in it Lieutenant D'Agosta is so revolted by a particular sight that he vomits his breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham, cheese, and ketchup all over a museum courtyard. This happens moments after Agent Pendergast makes his very first appearance. (The two events are unrelated.)

  What is remarkable is that even in this first chapter, Pendergast displays some of the traits that go on to become his defining attributes: touchstones that readers return to again and again like mantras. For example, the first word out of his mouth: "Excellent." Or, when discussing certain personal flaws: "A very bad habit, but one that I find hard to break."

  Doug had put the initial touches on a character that, I saw immediately, had the potential to be deeply cool. He was cultured and cultivated. He was unabashedly eccentric. He could take in a crime scene with a single heavy-lidded glance... though you wouldn't comprehend the depth of his perspicacity unless he chose to reveal it to you. He could descant at length, and with extensive learning, on the beauty of a particular painting--and then point out in an offhand way the fresh bloodstains that had recently marred it. This was exactly the kind of character I could sink my teeth into. So I was quick to add my own eccentric touches. As I did so, I had several antecedents in mind: Sherlock Holmes (of course), Futrelle's Thinking Machine, and (perversely) Christopher Walken's character in The Dogs of War (from whence came the many references to Pendergast's feline grace). But for me, the single biggest influence was Alastair Sim's insouciant portrayal of Inspector Cockrill in the obscure English mystery film Green for Danger.