Diane Capri is the New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon bestselling author of numerous series, including the Heir Hunter Series, Hunt for Justice and Hunt for Jack Reacher series and the Jess Kimball Thrillers. A former lawyer, she now divides her time between Florida and Michigan. Capri has been nominated for several awards, including the International Thriller Award, and she won the Silver award for Best Thriller e-Book from the Independent Publishers Association.
After Diane and Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels (and now movie series), got to know each other through the International Thriller Award organization, Lee suggested that Diane create a series based on his Reacher character, only without him ever making an appearance. The result was the "Hunting for Jack Reacher" series featuring FBI Special Agents Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar who learn of a major plot against Reacher and try to track him down from his past associates.
The latest in the series is Deep Cover Jack, and Diane stopped by In Reference to Murder for some Author R&R (Reference and Research) to talk a bit about how she prepares to write the books:
My friend Lee Child, who writes the Jack Reacher novels, famously says he doesn’t do much research for his tales. Which means he’s missing a lot of the fun. Writing a novel is a grand adventure for me. When a new idea sparks my interest and I begin the research, I’m like a dog chasing a rabbit. Where will the chase lead?
I write for the same reason I read: to find out what happens next. My readers are the same. While characters are the backbone of every novel, for mystery/thriller/suspense novels, we also want to be entertained by interesting and exciting events along the way. And that’s where lots and lots of research comes into the writing process.
Deep Cover Jack is novel #4 (book #7) in my Hunt for Jack Reacher series of thrillers featuring FBI Special Agents Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar. Otto and Gaspar are sorting through the aftermath of Reacher’s adventures, looking for everything they can find out about the man himself. After all these years, is Reacher fit for duty? Otto and Gaspar are tasked with finding out.
Hunting Reacher is deadly business for these agents. Research gives my books twists and turns, interesting settings, clever plots, loads of atmosphere, and a different take on one of the most iconic vigilante heroes of the past twenty years. All of which is a tall order and lots of fun to write and, I hope, to read.
The smallest details can require hours of online research, conversations with experts, and lots of thinking.
Questions like, if Gaspar falls from a jet bridge to the ground, how far would he fall and what injuries is he likely to suffer? Does it matter what kind of airplane it is? Is it possible for a sniper to hit a target more than a mile away, in the North Carolina mountains during a cold and blustery rain, with undetectable precision? What kind of training and equipment would he need to make that happen? Why do commercial airplanes crash? How safe is air travel, anyway? Answers to these questions and hundreds more just like them help me write books more than two million readers, so far, have loved to read.
Here’s how my writing process for the Hunt for Jack Reacher books goes. I have that idea spark and I’m wondering the best way to write a good story around it. I begin by selecting a Lee Child source book. There are twenty-one Reacher novels now, which provide a gold mine of choices. I’m looking to tell the rest of the Reacher story. What happens to these people and places when Reacher finishes his adventure and moves on? Because Reacher always leaves plenty of mayhem behind; I’ve got a lot of fertile ground for planting new plots and disasters.
I read the Reacher books differently now than a normal reader does. I look for situations in the source book, such as overlooked holes or missing pieces, that I can use to spin a new tale. Reacher fans have often read the Reacher books many times; they have accumulated much knowledge, too. Working deep into the source book helps me delight and surprise the most devoted Reacher fan as well as people who haven’t read Reacher before.
My training, and the work I did for years, was practicing law. Analytical skills and the ability to investigate and discover connections between disparate facts served me well then and it really helps in writing my Hunt for Jack Reacher tales.
As I reread the source book several times, I make notes about characters, settings, plots and any other matters that I might be able to use for a good Otto and Gaspar story. What happened to the good people in Reacher’s source book after Reacher moves on? What about the bad guys? Reacher doesn’t usually manage to kill them all. Where are they now?
I choose two characters from the source book for Otto and Gaspar’s interview subjects, one man and one woman. The women are trickier to interview than the men because Reacher has slept with most of the women. By all accounts, Reacher is a respectful lover and the women are especially loathe to reveal too much that might get Reacher in trouble. Both male and female interview subjects are protective of Reacher and suspicious of Otto and Gaspar, usually because the original adventure is riddled with Reacher’s illegal activities and the subjects don’t want those old bodies to surface now.
My story builds around the aftermath of the wreckage Reacher dependably produces in every Lee Child novel.
Writing my books also comes with several self-imposed rules. Like what? Well, one goal is to write a great story that can be enjoyed whether the reader has read the source book or not. Another goal is not to spoil any of the Reacher novels for those who haven’t read them already.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is that many readers will have read some or all of the Reacher books. This means those readers will know a lot more about Reacher and the original adventures than Otto and Gaspar do. A deeper level of suspense comes from this unusual dynamic, but it means keeping several extra balls in the air while I’m writing.
When I get stuck on some of the more esoteric Reacher lore, I have two great resources available to me. The Reacher’s Creatures group knows every Reacher book backward and forward. And, of course, I can ask Lee for the right answers.
Don’t Know Jack, the first novel in my series, starts in the same place Reacher begins: Margrave, Georgia, and Killing Floor. Otto and Gaspar are sent to Margrave to interview the two main characters, Roscoe and Finlay.
Crime begets crime. Reacher solved some problems in Margrave, but he left a mess behind, too. Otto and Gaspar handle the rest of the story as they struggle to complete their assignment and learn all their is to know about Reacher.
The entire series presents a sort of Rashomon Effect — contradictory interpretations of the same event by different people. In this case, Otto and Gaspar encounter some people who like Reacher, and others who don’t, and the two groups see Reacher in competing ways.
In short, creating a Hunt for Jack Reacher book is like taking a huge jigsaw puzzle out of the box for the first time and trying to put it together without benefit of a picture. Was the finished puzzle meant to look more like a Picasso or a da Vinci? Research supplies the clues as well as the surprises. When my friend Lee Child skips the research, he’s missing some of the best parts.
You can learn more about Diane and her books along with ordering information via her website and also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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