The main thing was that I discovered my love for writing. It was cathartic, it was an outlet for my zany imagination, and it gave me something to do. I wrote notebooks full of novels, stories, and plays, but deep inside, I knew I was spinning my wheels. It’s certainly okay to indulge in creative outbursts, but if I had any hopes of getting published-of having my works out there to be read and critiqued-I had to be a little more thoughtful about what I put down on paper.
I began to think about what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. Equally significant, I began to wonder what I wanted to write about. That meant structure.
I needed a plot.
In the ’70s and ’80s, to have a strong story line was somewhat anathema and was eschewed in modern literature. Plot was for chumps, a crutch used in genre writing. But since I wasn’t an English major in college and since I didn’t follow the vagaries of the literary world, I didn’t know that. Plot just appealed to my sensibilities as a mathematician. Well-crafted stories had beginnings, middles, and ends, and propelled the reader forward from the first page to the last. I considered plot to be a good thing. This revelation dovetailed nicely with the kinds of books I liked to read-mystery and suspense novels.
Jonathan had introduced me to Ross Macdonald. He had found The Zebra-Striped Hearse in a used-book store near work, and we began to systematically devour many of the best “hard-boiled” writers-Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett… the list was long and impressive.
My choice was clear. I decided to write crime novels, and my timing couldn’t have been better. There was a growing renaissance of mystery writing in the ’70s and ’80s. Joseph Wambaugh and Evan Hunter writing as Ed McBain were pumping out some of the best police procedurals in the business. Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake had switched over from Westerns to capers and mysteries. There were others: Arthur Lyons, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Linda Grant, Stephen Greenleaf, all of them giving the murder mystery their unique spin.
To me that was the key: to make the murder mystery genre my own, I needed to give my book a voice. I needed a narration that told the reader that this was a different kind of suspense novel from a new author named Faye Kellerman. I felt that I could put my imprimatur on my story only if I wrote from a point of expertise, i.e., if I wrote what I knew. The problem was, at thirty-two, I didn’t know all that much. I had gotten married at nineteen and had spent most of my adult life being a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a student. I could probably figure out a good plot, but who would my characters be? What could I take from myself that would give my novel an exclusive punch? Who was I and what could I do to set myself apart?
Knowing that I wanted to write a mystery novel was a good first step, but I still had to figure out who would people my deliciously intricate plot. I had to start thinking about who I was so I could develop a flesh-and-blood protagonist.
First, I considered the fact that I was female. That was more relevant than you might think, because in the early ’80s, women PIs were coming into their own. I thought about writing from the perspective of a woman PI-I certainly admired Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky-but I had been married for a very long time. As a wife and mother, I didn’t see myself as chasing down bad guys and wielding a gun, so the idea of writing a character like that really didn’t strike a chord.
Second, I was a dentist. Now, there had been lots of dentists in film and literature, but I struggled to remember the name of any dentist portrayed as a hero. My recollection was that the characterization of fictional dentists usually revolved around their being sadists, louts, or geeks. Although I was sure I could imbue my dentist with sterling qualities, I thought the profession lacked the sexy image that might be needed to interest an editor.
I vetoed a dental protagonist.
Last, I was a Jew.
My Judaism has always been important to me, and I have always loved the rites and traditions of my religion. I was raised in a Conservative home, but we bordered on traditional Orthodoxy. The term used today for my kind of observance is Conservadox. We always kept a kosher home, and we were somewhat Sabbath observant. We didn’t cook, sew, or clean on Saturday, nor did we wash clothing or turn on a vacuum. But we did turn on lights and watch TV. My father had come from an Orthodox home and was a native Yiddish speaker. He added a little of the Old Country to our lives. I loved watching my mother light Shabbos candles. I loved going to synagogue on Friday nights and eating stale sponge cake and drinking flat soda in the social hall. I loved cleaning the house for Passover with my mother and buying boxes of matzo-bread dough that has been baked for no longer than eighteen minutes to prevent it from rising. (My mother used to call it hemstitched cardboard.) I didn’t even mind fasting for Yom Kippur. I fasted earlier than was religiously required because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.
Judaism was such an integral part of my being that I had no real sense of self without it. This affiliation was only fortified when I met Jonathan, who was an observant Jew. For me, the change from Conservadox to Orthodoxy was more like a small step than a giant leap. I liked praying in an Orthodox synagogue-it was what I was used to-and it didn’t bother me not to watch TV on Saturday. As I got older, the prohibition against using electricity became a boon rather than a burden.
As I thought about my Judaism and how much it had made me who I was, I began to wonder if I shouldn’t make my characters Jewish. If I wanted to write about what I knew, it was a good start for my books to have Jewish content, and what better way than to have my protagonist be an Orthodox Jewish woman? But how would that play in Peoria? Would it be too limiting for the average reader?
I thought about that for a while. Since I enjoyed reading novels that took me into other worlds, I figured that there had to be readers out there who would enjoy learning about religious Jews. There had been some precedent for Jews starring in novels. For me, Chaim Potok was a tremendous source of inspiration. The Chosen had been one of the most successful novels of its day because it provided a peek into an ultra-religious life.
But Potok wasn’t a crime fiction writer.
Harry Kemelman had penned a very successful mystery series centered on a crime-solving rabbi. The books were informative, but they were also as much about temple politics as they were about murder. The series was far from the crime novels that I had found so compelling.
I narrowed down my definitions. I wanted to write about a Jewish woman in a religious enclave but somehow integrate this into the style of an LA crime novel. That meant darker, deeper suspense fiction. Would it make sense for my religious Jewish woman to run around exposing herself to danger and mayhem to solve a crime? Would it be too artificial to have her chasing clues and outsmarting the police? Might it be better if she was involved in the crime in some way but left the actual nuts and bolts of solving the crime to someone else?
Enter the professional.
To do the grunt work, I needed a police detective or a private eye. I chose the former because it was easier and faster to get a police detective involved in a capital crime. Private eyes have to be solicited, whereas the police are the first line of attack when trying to solve a homicide. I could have included a female detective, but I chose a male for contrast. And as long as I had a man and woman, well, what can I say? I’m a sucker for romance. (Which is why Peter was divorced and Rina was a widow.) You have to remember that I had no idea that this was going to be the first novel in a series. I was trying to throw in as much as I could to maybe attract an editor.