And that was honest.
And that was what the two of them were all about.
7
IT WAS WHILE OLLIEwas investigating what in his mind would always be known as “The $$$ Case,” that he’d received from a knowledgeable editor at the publishing firm of Wadsworth and Dodds, which later turned out to be a front for a big drug-running operation and God knew what else—but that was another story. Anyway, a woman up there named Karen Andersen had given him a form letter from an editor up there named Henry Daggert, and it was from this letter that Ollie had learned everything he knew about writing bestselling thriller fiction. The letter read:
Dear Aspiring Writer:
I often receive inquiries from writers who wonder about the most effective way to get a suspense novel on the bestseller list. After years of experience, I have discovered that there are some hard and fast rules to be followed in the writing of successful suspense fiction. I would like to share these rules with you now, if I may.
IF YOU WANT TO CRACK THE BESTSELLER LIST
1) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PUTS AN ORDINARY PERSON IN AN EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION. Your protagonist must be an “Everyman.” However, you must have at least one complex female character as well. Don’t forget, you want to capture both male and female readers.
2) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PLAYS OUT A UNIVERSAL FANTASY. You must put the reader in a situation that tests him in ways he’s always wanted to be tested, vicariously.
3) YOU MUST COME UP WITH A PLOT THAT PASSES THE “COOL” TEST. You must find an idea that makes readers want to read the book simply on the basis of the ideaalone!
4) YOUR PLOT MUST INVOLVE HIGH STAKES. You must make clear that the fate of the world hangs in the balance—or, at least, the fate of a character we desperately care about.
5) YOU MUST INTRODUCE A TICKING CLOCK. You must give your protagonist only a limited amount of time to solve his problem, and the reader should be regularly reminded of the urgency via “COUNTDOWN CUES.”
Ollie deciphered all this to mean that a bestselling suspense novel had to tell a simple story about an ordinary person who found himself in an extraordinary situation that tested him in ways he’d always wanted to be tested, vicariously. Moreover, the plot had to include at least one complex male or female character in it, and the fate of the world had to be hanging in clock-ticking suspense.
But there was yet more to learn.
6) BE SURE TO AVOID AMBIGUITY! You must avoid situations where points in favor of both sides diminish the reader’s ability to root intensely for one side over another. For example: Novels about the IRA. Novels about murky Central American conflicts. Novels about Pro Choice versus Right-to-Life disputes.
7) AVOID WRITING ABOUT WHAT’S IN THE NEWS! Editors (and especiallythiseditor) will be seeing a slew of books onwhateverit is, believe me! Be especially wary of plots about Computer Hackers, Genetic Engineering, Air Disasters, Terrorist Attacks, etc.
Good luck!
Sincerely,
Henry Daggert
Before Ollie went to bed that night, he reread the last chapter of his novel yet another time. It seemed to him that it was perfect. He had completely mastered all the rules of bestselling suspense fiction, which was why he’d been able to bend them a little. Hence the multiple twists, turns, and edge-of-the-seat suspense inReport to the Commissioner.
Small wonder some cheap thief had stolen the book.
I am locked in a basement with $2,700,000 in so-called conflict diamonds and I just got a run in my pantyhose.
I am writing this in the hope that it will somehow reach you before they kill me.
You will recall having met me once, Mr. Commissioner, when I received a Police Department bravery citation for having foiled, as they say, an imminent robbery at the Stillwater Trust on King Street in Rubytown, as that section of the city is called. They were giving away free toasters when the Attempted Rob occurred. I spilled a glass of red wine, do you remember? Not during the holdup attempt. I mean at the reception following the award. On your white linen suit.
I am a female police detective, twenty-nine years old, five feet, eight inches tall, and weighing one hundred and twenty-three pounds, which is slender. My hair is a sort of reddish brown, what my mother used to call auburn. I wear it cut to just above the shoulders, what my mother used to call a shag cut. My eyes are green. I look very Irish, although Watts is a British name, I think, although Olivia is Latin, which I’m not. My friends call me Livvie. I am a single woman, Mr. Commissioner; I notice from the newspapers that you are recently divorced, by the way; my condolences. My weapon is a Glock nine I carry in a tote bag, but this was taken from me along with all my identification when I was locked in here. A black woman brings me my meals. She is armed with an Uzi.
I have not been killed yet because they are waiting for orders from someone higher up. I can’t imagine why anyone would want me dead. Then again, nothing is ever simple in police work, is it, Mr. Commissioner? I guess you know that better than me. Or perhaps even better than I. I don’t even know where I am. Otherwise I would give you the address and make things really simple. But I was driven here blindfolded from the underwear factory. Which makes it somewhat complicated. So I guess I’d better take it from the top, and tell you everything that happened, and get this report out of here somehow. Then maybe for the love of God you can piece it all together and get to me in time.
Let’s start with Margie Gannon and me, or perhaps Margie and I, having an after-hours beer last Monday night in a bar called O’Malley’s a few blocks from the station house. Margie is sometimes partnered with me, although I’m known in the squadroom as “Livvie the Lone Wolverine,” which of course is the female tense of “The Lone Wolf.” Margie has blond hair she also wears short, and blue eyes, and we make a good team together, partnered or otherwise. We were sipping beer when these two detectives from the Oh-One waltzed over to join us, nice guys we worked with once on a joint narcotics bust sometime back. (I was surprised, to tell the truth, that the little police action back then hadn’t netted at leastsomebodya citation, but I know you have a lot of other things on your mind.)
Anyway, Frankie Randuzzi, who is with the Oh-One, and was on that Colombian bust I was telling you about, is getting married in June, and he was showing us this rathermodestdiamond engagement ring, I must say, but you know how much detectives are paid in this city, don’t you, even First Grades like Frankie and me. The guy with him, Jerry Aiello, anotherpaisan,couldn’t help remarking that he’d seen bigger chips than that left by cows in a pasture, to which Frankie replied it was a legit diamond and not one of these diamonds had cost some kid in Africa the loss of an arm or a leg. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, excuse the French, Commish.
Margie, it so happens, knows quite a bit about diamonds. She has been married and divorced twice and has therefore sported engagement rings of various sizes on the third finger of her left hand, more’s the pity I have not. In fact, she is fond of telling the boys around the squadroom that she gets divorced every six years and shot every three, which happens to be true. I was with her once when she took one in the left shoulder. She never wears off-the-shoulder gowns to police functions anymore, but she is very well constructed otherwise, witness the way Jerry Aiello was trying to peer down the front of her blouse.
Margie explained that there’d been a war going on forever in the Sierra Leone and in Angola, over there in Africa someplace, wherever, I always thought Angola was a max security prison in Louisiana. She said that so-called conflict diamonds were what funded the rebel groups fighting over there.