Ben H. Winters joins In Reference to Murder today for a little Author R&R (Reference and Research). Ben is the author of five novels, including the New York Times bestseller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and the Edgar-nominated YA novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman. His other books include the sci-fi Tolstoy parody Android Karenina, the Finkleman sequel The Mystery of the Missing Everything, and the supernatural thriller Bedbugs, optioned for film by Warner Brothers.
Ben's latest novel is titled The Last Policeman, the first in a trilogy. It offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse and asks the question, "What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die?" Detective Hank Palace has asked this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Palace. He's investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.
But how do you research the apocalypse? Ben offers his take on that:
Quirk Books in Philadelphia is the publisher of my new novel, a murder mystery called The Last Policeman, and they’ve published several of my earlier novels as well. But my relationship with the company started when they hired me to do a series of books extending the franchise of their flagship title, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Guide. The premise of that very successful book, and its modestly successful sequels by myself and others, was to imagine rare and horrifying situations—like being attacked by a bear or falling from a plane or drowning in quicksand—and offer step-by-step advice, in the dry, practical tone usually used when someone has to reboot their computer or correct a dropped stitch.
Over a few years I wrote everything from The Worst-Case Guide: New York City (How to Survive Falling on the Subway Tracks) to Worst-Case Guide: Meetings (How to Survive Your Boss’s Unfunny Jokes, etc.). And perhaps the most important thing I learned from working on these books (besides the fact that, in a pinch, you can take off your pants and turn them into a floatation device) is the value of interview-based research.
Because at this late point in human civilization, there is so much information available on the internet, immediately and without charge, that the temptation when writing nonfiction is to just grab a bunch of it and stick it in where needed. (Just ask your local high-school student or PhD candidate who’s been bounced for plagiarizing from Wikipedia). But to the conscientious nonfiction writer the value of a one-on-one conversation is immeasurable. Of course you can find a paragraph on the Web somewhere about how to drive a car up a flight of stairs—but tracking down a stunt driver, engaging him in a long conversation, and recording a series of anecdotes about real adventures in the art of stair-driving, will give the finished product a salt and a snap one can never get online.
The point is, having graduated from tongue-in-cheek reference-book writing to fiction, I find myself addicted to this process. For The Last Policeman, a murder mystery set on the brink of apocalypse, I had dozens of one-on-one conversations. I visited a preeminent asteroid-tracking astronomer in his office and basically forced him to give me an intro-level course. I called an acquaintance who is a forensic pathologist and had her walk me through a typical autopsy for the kind of crime my hero investigates. Then I called her back about a thousand times with follow-up questions, significantly revamping the details of my murder to make it track more with reality. I sat in the office of an assistant district attorney in Concord, NH, absorbing not only the details of homicide law, but also the look and feel of the office itself.
And because my novel unfolds in a world of economic collapse, I called economists and economist reporters to chew the fact about the ways my scenario might play out. And the secret is that most people love to talk about what they do and what they know. Imagine that you’re an expert in the concept of insurable interest, a fine point of the insurance business that people at dinner parties aren’t necessarily so intrigued by. Then imagine that a guy calls and says he’s writing a novel, and would you please tell him everything you know? Wouldn’t you be delighted? My expert sure was.
Which is why, after I finish this blog, I’m goings to start calling experts in immigration patterns, because in the sequel to The Last Policeman—well, I don’t want to spoil it. But somewhere out there are very smart people who know things that I need to know—about how and when desperate people move from one place to another—and now I have to find them and call them.
You can read a Q&A about Ben, his writing and this new novel on the Quirk Books website, and also check out a book trailer for The Last Policeman.
