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U nforgettable: An Interview with Martin J. SmithSenior Editor of The Los Angeles Times Magazine Author of Straw Men By Susan McBride Memory is at the cornerstone of California author Martin J. Smith’s crime novels, Time Release, Shadow Image, and the soon-to-be-released Straw Men. So it’s no wonder that Marty writes books that are unforgettable. His stories linger in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page. A veteran journalist and current Senior Editor of the The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Marty was a four-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and gathered over 40 awards in his career. Not bad for someone who focuses on characters who always seem to be missing pieces of the past. Straw Men, a January 2001 release from Jove, packs a real knockout punch and definitely scored high on my list of favorite reads this year. Read our review. SUSAN McBRIDE - Welcome, Marty. How did you come up with the idea for the plot in Straw Men? MARTIN J. SMITH - I’ve been following high-profile criminal cases involving issues of memory since the late 1980s, including the McMartin pre-school case in Southern California, the repressed-memory prosecution phenomenon of the early 1990s, and more recently, the ongoing rash of convictions overturned after DNA evidence proved someone innocent of the crime for which they’d been convicted. Most convictions are based on strong eyewitness testimony, and each time those eyewitnesses are proven wrong, it underscores the fragile nature of human memory. Two cases inspired Straw Men. The first was the 1996 release of a man in Orange County, California, whose ex-wife had testified passionately about how he’d stalked and attacked her one night in her home. Her recall of that attack was vivid and powerful, and her ex-husband spent more than a decade in prison - until the DNA tests results came back. It wasn’t him. The real attacker eventually confessed, and the case raised the question: "How can a memory be so terrifying, but so wrong?" The other was a rape case in North Carolina I believe, in which the victim’s tentative identification of her attacker grew increasingly vivid and confident as her case moved toward trial. It did so because the investigating officers reinforced the victim’s recollections at every stage while building their case, in effect rewarding her for remembering things that hadn’t necessarily happened. For me, that case raised questions of suggestibility and the possible manipulation of memories during the identification process. All of that came together in a story that I hope is both entertaining and illuminating. Straw Men struck a cord with me because of the idea of being victimized in one's own home, then living a life of uncertainty afterward, not knowing if you can trust your own memories or the people around you. What do you think makes the subject of our worst nightmares such compelling reading? There’s an intimacy to the home that makes the idea of in-home crime especially scary. That’s why burglary victims feel so violated: "This is my place. How dare someone come in here?" If you’ve ever been burglarized, you know the feeling. From that point forward, life’s everyday routines - taking a shower, brushing your teeth, entering a walk-in closet - become exercises in fear control. I experimented with the same idea in my first book Time Release, by using product-tampering as the vehicle of death. In that case, every package of food in the cupboard or fridge became a potential threat, and I wanted that suspense to help pull the story along. In Straw Men, the attack happened in the victim’s kitchen while she was preparing a meal of comfort food. She suffered a great deal of memory loss because of that trauma, but over time had knit together a narrative account of the attack from salvaged memories, factual details and interpretations by others. I tried to imagine the long-term effects of that. Would she ever find comfort in that food again? Would she remember what happened there every time she entered her kitchen? How would that affect her daily routines? What if she had reason to believe that the man with whom she shared that home wasn’t telling her everything? Ultimately, what if she discovered she wasn’t necessarily the person she thought herself to be? Each of your three books featuring Jim Christensen deals with the frailties and strengths of the human mind, and how our memories can often deceive us. What drew you to this subject matter? One of the great unspoken truths about our criminal justice system is that everyone involved -witnesses, jurors, judges, lawyers - knows instinctively that memory is a seriously flawed mechanism. It’s not a mental videotape of something that happened, but instead is continually shaped and reshaped by an individual’s past experiences, biases, and their need, often following trauma, to make sense of what happened. A memory isn’t just stored in that blob of tissue and electricity that we call a brain; instead, it evolves constantly. And, due to chemical changes in the brain, the traumatic memory that’s eventually retrieved often isn’t the same as the one that was stored. The schism that most fascinates me though, is the gap between that reality of human memory and the way it’s regarded by our criminal justice system. In a trial, powerful testimony from an eyewitness is considered profoundly reliable, but the certainty of DNA identification is proving just how unreliable it is. Jim Christensen seems a lot like Marty Smith to me. Do you see similarities between yourself and your main character? What are the biggest differences? If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t give him the same gray hair, beard and glasses that I have. That’s created the impression that Christensen is based on me. In fact, he’s much smarter, taller and better looking, with the broad shoulders I’ve always dreamed about. He’s sort of a fantasy me. I did, however, make him an involved father. I’ll cop to that similarity. It’s been said that sports don’t just build character, they also reveal it. The same can be said of parenthood. By letting readers see Christensen handle the running crisis of single parenthood (Time Release), then later as a partner in a blended family (Shadow Image and Straw Men), it’s easy to reveal his character in ways that a lot of readers can understand. What effect does your experience as a journalist have on your mystery writing and the research involved in your books? It helps a great deal, mostly because I’m not shy about intruding into other people’s worlds and asking stupid questions. I’ve always been naturally curious. But after 20 years as a professional journalist, it’s just second nature for me to call up a coroner and invite myself down to the morgue to watch autopsies, or to sit in on an art therapy session with Alzheimer’s patients and pepper the therapist with an endless string of questions. That career helped me in less obvious ways, too. A lot of reporters complain about having to cover city council meetings or school board meetings or stories that seem mundane, but nothing is wasted. While you're covering those stories, you're learning how government works and how people react under pressure; how families deal with tragedy, and in what possibly unstable manner people behave; how to talk your way out of trouble and into the lives of people who really don’t want you there. In short, you're learning things that can only enrich your fiction. My work in magazines has helped as well. Magazines live or die based on rather slippery concepts: cover design, typography, public perception, newsworthiness, relevance. I developed a real appreciation for the difficult task publishers face in getting their work noticed, and I've used a lot of those lessons to help my books reach a wider audience. When I offer an opinion on cover design or typography, I think my editor listens because she knows I speak from experience. I don't always win those arguments, but I also don't think the opinions of most authors get that same level of attention. How do you compare nonfiction writing, such as reporting, to creating a world with fictional characters? Is it harder or easier? Fiction is much harder. I still do as much or more reporting for my fiction as I do for my nonfiction, so on that level it’s a wash. But with fiction, I have to actually create something from what I’ve gathered: well-developed characters, a fast-paced and plausible plot, crisp dialogue. With nonfiction, you just organize information and tell a story that already exists. It’s the difference between painting a detailed portrait, and putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You've gone on the road in the past with Philip Reed, doing a "Dad's Tour" with your kids in tow. Do you think it's getting tougher to stand apart in this crowded book market? What makes promotion so tricky? I’m not sure it’s any tougher to stand out today than before. Bookstores and libraries have always offered a lot of options. I do think authors today are competing with more distractions than in the past: TV, the Internet, entertainment choices, school activities, organized sports. I see it in my own kids, who seldom slow down enough to discover the pleasure of sitting for hours with a great book. They live incredibly hectic lives. There will always be dedicated book readers, but generally I think their numbers are dwindling. There are happy exceptions, including mystery and suspense readers. They have an endless appetite for books. That’s what makes this job so much fun. My views about promotion have evolved over the course of three books. I still subscribe to the "do everything you can" school of marketing. Personal letters to booksellers. Promotional postcards. Store signings. Mystery conventions. Whatever it takes to get as much exposure as possible for the book, because chances are the author’s efforts are going to be the most intelligent, passionate and determined marketing the book will get. James Ellroy once told me to spend every cent I get from my publisher on promotion. I’ve come close on occasion, but I’ve also become much more realistic. I now know what works and what doesn’t. I’ve also realized that even the most active author can’t move the needle all that much. It really takes two things: a strong book (over which the writer has total control) and a smart, coordinated and well-financed marketing campaign by the book’s publisher (over which the author likely has no control). Still, I do everything I can because I want to give my books every chance to succeed. With your family life and your day job as Senior Editor of The Los Angeles Times Magazine, where does mystery writing fit into your busy schedule? While writing the first two books, Time Release and Shadow Image, I kept an absolutely insane schedule. I was up at 4 a.m. and wrote until 6:30 a.m., then got our kids up and off to school. Then I commuted an hour [back then I edited Orange Coast Magazine in Orange County, California] and worked a full day, then came home for dinner, homework, and bed by 10 p.m. I did that four days a week for about three years. By the end of that grind, I was ready for a break, and so with my wife's encouragement, we decided we could live on less money and be a lot happier. For 2 years, I worked from home writing the books and freelancing magazine pieces. It was great, particularly being home with our kids, but it also had a downside. Suddenly, writing books went from being a hobby to being a career. My income depended almost entirely on something that, at best, was unpredictable. That’s not a comfortable position to be in, and a weak position from which to negotiate book contracts. So when I found the right opportunity to resume my magazine career, I took it. As is, my nonfiction work keeps me in the real world, and the real world feeds my fiction. The day job also gives me the option of writing the type of books I want to write, the way I want to write them, without worrying about whether I need a check or not. True, it’s a lot of work to juggle the three careers of family, magazine work and novel writing. But I’ve always believed that we’re limited only by the amount of work we’re willing to do. Who are some of your favorite authors/books and why? I have pretty eclectic tastes. My first love has always been reported fiction: American writers such as John Steinbeck and Tom Wolfe who work hard to understand the dimensions of really big stories, epic stories that define a moment in a culture’s history, and who write those stories only after reporting them well and establishing a good foundation from which to write. I also like literary women like Louise Erdrich, Annie Dillard, Toni Morrison. I also try to read and learn from specific authors who write crime fiction particularly well. There are so many good ones I hate to exclude anyone, but I'll name a few from whom I've learned specific lessons. I admire James Ellroy for the sheer power of his writing. I know we write in the same language, but reading him is like reading English on steroids. Thomas Harris does psychological suspense better than most. Mary Higgins Clark is great at pacing. No one can touch Elmore Leonard for dialogue. And I love the depth of Michael Connelly's characters. I still consider myself a student of the genre, and I try to learn from the best. What's next for you? Another "Memory Series" book, and if so, can you tell a little about it? I’ve plotted out a fourth psychological thriller in the series, but I’ve decided to take a break to write the stand-alone thriller I’ve been thinking about for several years. It features a different cast of characters and an entirely different theme. It’s a contemporary "virological thriller" with a backstory that reaches into the early 1950s. The main character is an epidemiologist who leads a special Centers for Disease Control Task Force investigating a mysterious viral outbreak. I’m having a blast writing it, which I hope means readers will enjoy reading it. But in contrast to the previous books, which we’ve sold based on the synopsis, I’ve decided to finish this book before we even try to sell it. I’m a creature of instinct, and that just feels like the right thing to do at this point in my career. How can readers contact you? The easiest way to reach me directly is through the "Memory Series" web site at www.martinjsmith.com. My e-mail address is marty@martinjsmith.com. My publicist is Jackie Green, and she’s at 310-859-7055. Her e-mail address is jgprinc@aol.com. |
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