Jilliane Hoffman began her professional career as an Assistant State Attorney prosecuting felonies in Florida from 1992 to 1996, with special assignments to the Domestic Violence Unit and the Legal Extradition Unit. Through 2001, she was the Regional Legal Advisor for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, advising more than one hundred special agents on criminal and civil matters in complex investigations involving narcotics, homicide, and organized crime.
She turned to writing thrillers and hit the big time with her 2004 debut novel Retribution, an international bestseller that received widespread critical acclaim and is currently under development with Warner Bros. Hoffman has also appeared on various TV news shows giving her expert opinion on legal issues and high-profile cases.
Her latest book is Pretty Little Things, the story of thirteen-year-old Lainey Emerson whose disappearance is at first written off as a teenage runaway case—until Special Agent Bobby Dees, head of the Crimes Against Children Squad in Miami, finds information on the girl's computer that details a secret Internet relationship. Dees fears the girl may be the victim of an online predator, and when chilling evidence of other possible victims is sent to a Miami television station, Dees suspects Lainey may not be the only victim. The faceless monster from cyberspace, who goes by the name "El Capitan," instigates a game of cat and mouse with Dees, who is still haunted by the unsolved disappearance of his own teenage daughter.
I asked Jilliane about the inspiration for the plot, which hit a little too close to home.
Q: As I understand it, you got the idea for this novel when your oldest daughter told you a disturbing story about a friend of hers?
That’s right. My daughter was in the fourth grade when a classmate friend of hers was approached on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) by a “boy” with a screen name of “rooster69”— the double meaning of which was lost on an eleven year old. She told him she was 16 and began an internet relationship with this “boy” and eventually shared her friend’s email and AIM account information with him. He then began to correspond with her friends, as well, who all thought the whole thing was very funny. Until this “boy” asked one of the girls to send him pictures of herself—naked. The girls did not run to their parents to tell them what had happened, though. In fact, if my daughter had not told me what the girls were talking about over lunch at school, I am not sure when, if ever, a parent would have gotten involved. And that is really scary. I contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), Crimes Against Children squad. Agents conducted an investigation and discovered the “boy” was a 43 year-old man from North Carolina.
Imagining a worst-case scenario of what might have been served as the inspiration for Pretty Little Things.
Q: I imagine almost everyone has read about the occasional case of cyber predators in the news, but just how common is this type of crime?
Common enough to generate headlines on a consistent basis around the country. Just 3 weeks ago, on the second page of the local section in the Sun Sentinel, was an article about a 13 year-old girl who’d met a boy she’d been chatting with on MySpace at the movies. He turned out to be 20. She invited him back to her house. He snuck in through the window and raped her. And of course, not every story involves abduction, results in murder, triggers Amber Alerts, or generates national headlines. We sometimes judge how serious something is by how often we personally see it on the front page of our local paper. Oftentimes cyber-predator crimes are underreported, because the child/teen was not abducted; rather, he/she was assaulted or molested and is embarrassed or frightened to tell an adult what happened.
Watch Dateline’s “To Catch A Predator” to get an idea how pervasive the problem is. That’s a simple sting set up by a TV news show, and the producers have to practically usher each bad guy out the back door and into the waiting arms of the cops just to make room for the next bad guy who is already knocking on the front door. All parents should school their children on the dangers of the internet—particularly, that not everyone is who they say they are on the other side of that computer screen.
Q: Your legal background must be helpful with getting details right and also contributing a sense of realism to your writing. But do you find that background is ever a hindrance? Perhaps making you obsess over details too much or worrying you might be caught with an error?
I do obsess over details. I think you have to to get it right. I think all readers deserve realism, and characters and settings and scenes that are authentic, especially when you write genre specific novels, such as legal or medical thrillers. I didn’t go to medical school and anyone who works in the medical profession would see me for a fraud if I tried to write about life in the ER. I write about the criminal justice system, which I know like the back of my hand. I take my readers through that system that I worked in, through the court hearings and into the holding cells and the Formica cubicles of the State Attorney’s Office, and it is those seemingly mundane details that readers most appreciate, because it makes them feel as if they are walking through that courtroom or standing in the secretarial pool. And if I do write about something outside of my field of knowledge, such as in my third novel, Plea of Insanity, where I wrote about a character suffering from schizophrenia, I research the subject until I feel as comfortable talking about it as I would talking about tort law. I personally cannot stand to read a book where the author didn’t do his or her homework. Once I catch on to that, I put the book down, no matter where I am in it.
Q: You've said that you didn't set out to be a writer, and after tedious college papers and legal briefs, you weren't exactly thinking about writing as a career or hobby. What changed your mind and direction?
I was prosecuting a violent serial rapist and I got a crazy thought when my victim was on the stand: “What if a victim had an opportunity to prosecute her offender? Would she choose justice, like she was taught in law school, or would it be retribution?” From there, that tagline grew into a storyline with characters and arms and legs and subplots, until it had finally developed into a full-grown novel in my head, just itching to come out. So I quit my job and put it down on paper. That was my first novel, Retribution.
Q: As a prosecutor, you came in contact with sociopaths and other less-than-savory people, which must help with developing characters in your books. Are there any areas left where you find you still have to conduct research to help with characterization, setting or technical points?
I always conduct research, particularly with character development. Because not every sociopath is the same as the one before, and mental conditions do not come in a one-size-fits all description. I always call on my special agent friends with FDLE to help me with the finer points of “cop-stuff”, (such as, weird enough, how they take off their gun belts at night). Because as I said above, it is all about realism, and if I describe something wrong, even if one reader out of a thousand spots it, I will lose that reader. It’s just not worth it, when I can do the research and make it right.
Q: The Guardian newspaper said that you were "guaranteed to follow in the best-selling footsteps of (Patricia) Cornwell, (Kathy) Reichs and (Karin) Slaughter." That's a huge compliment! Do you have any writing mentors or authors who have been a particular inspiration?
That was quite a compliment! I love Nelson DeMille—he is the first author that I actually read by author. I had finished The Gold Coast, loved it and went back and read everything he had written. One of my personal favorite authors is Thomas Harris, who wrote Silence of the Lambs, because he can scare the hell out of me, which is not an easy task. As for other authors I read, I like James Patterson because he makes the pages fly by, and I like John Grisham, because he can make even corporate law sound exciting!
Q: Tell me about the inspiration for the protagonist in Pretty Little Things. Bobby Dees is called "The Shepherd," due to his track record in finding missing children, even though he hates that title. Is he based on anyone you know?
Bobby Dees is a combination of people I have met and worked with over the years. Crimes Against Children Agentsand detectives that work missing children cases and child sexual battery cases are a special lot. They have a particularly high burnout rate and a certain dark cynicism about them. They have seen things that no one should see in this world and then they have to go back to work the next day and see more of it. Investigating the scum of society that commit heinous crimes against innocent children has its rewards, but it also can break down even the biggest and baddest detective.
Q: Your next novel is going to be the third in a trilogy (following Retribution and Last Witness) featuring C.J. Townsend, an over-worked, underpaid prosecutor. How much of you is in C.J.?
I can relate to C.J.; I share her prosecutorial zeal for justice and her idealism and, at times, her bitter disappointment in a system that doesn’t always work.
Q: Will we be seeing more of Special Agent Bobby Dees in the future?
All four of my novels share some continuing characters and Miami as their setting. I did that on purpose, because I always figured it might be fun to work characters from different novels together in a fresh storyline. So, yes, you may very well see Bobby Dees again. Maybe I’ll partner him with John Latarrino or Dom Falconetti or Manny Alvarez.
For more information on Jilliane, the book and her upcoming events, check out her web site. There's also a link where you can download the first two chapters of Pretty Little Things.
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