Michael Kaufman is the author of three novels but over the past decades his focus has been on engaging men to support women’s rights, end violence against women, and positively transform the lives of men. His work as an adviser, educator, and activist with the United Nations, governments, women’s organizations, NGOs, universities, companies and trade unions has taken him to fifty countries. He is the author of The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution. His first mystery, The Last Exit, came out in January. It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was named number four in the “22 greatest mysteries and thrillers of 2021” by the influential PopSugar.com.
The Last Exit is the first of the Jen B. Lu series. It’s Washington, DC. 2033. Bad things are happening in the nation's capital, but, then again, you just might say that about the last few years. Climate change is hitting hard, fires are burning, unemployment is high, and a longevity treatment is only available to the very rich. Enter resourceful police detective, Jen B. Lu, and her 'partner', Chandler, an experimental SIM implant tucked into her brain. He's a wannabe tough guy, with a sense of humor and his own ideas about solving crimes. Jen catches wind of a counterfeit version of the longevity drug and the bizarre outbreak of people aging almost overnight. Soon, she puts her own life on the line to stop the people pushing this. The Last Exit is true crossover: a police procedural; a near-future mystery; a novel of political intrigue; a story of personal heroism and change. And page-turning fun.
Michael stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching his new mystery:
How do you research a mystery set twelve years in the future? Given, as the lame joke goes, that my time machine was in the shop, I did what any writer would do: I realized that I was actually writing about the present. My shift into the future was merely so I could sharpen my focus on things that are already happening around us. It would allow me to create drama, excitement and fun by throwing my protagonist, Jen B. Lu, into a situation that doesn’t yet exist but feels completely familiar and possible.
I did not want to write a grim, dystopian future. In part, I’ve gotten sick of those—you know, the utter hopelessness; the fog-bound, puddled streets reflecting neon; the total decimation by war or dictators or climate change. And in part because I really feel that the best way to confront the very real problems that we face—climate change, stark economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, political dysfunction, war, and the incursion of AI and the virtual world into our lives—is by sensing that we as humans can create positive alternatives.
One funny outcome of extrapolating from the present is that it recently led a movie producer to ask me if I wrote or rewrote it during 2020. After all, there’s a virus affecting millions; there are fires sending smoke into a major city; and there is, as part of the backstory, an uprising similar to Black Lives Matter. I had to assure him that it was written in 2018 and 2019. And, in fact, I actually felt I had to change one thing as I wrote: In the opening pages, Washington DC is filled with smoke from the Great Shenandoah Blaze. In an early draft, I wrote, “Jen slipped on her N95.” When I was revising it in late 2019, I thought few readers will know what the hell an N95 is. So I edited it to make it clear she was putting on a mask. How things have changed in the past year.
There’s that old saw that mysteries are plot driven. Up to a point that’s true and, writing The Last Exit (and now its first sequel), I love the discipline that comes with that. There is no room (as there is in a straight-ahead novel) for page long, gorgeous descriptions or for things to happen just because they’re fun or cool. Things need to drive the plot.
At the same time, without a strong and interesting protagonist, what reader will care deeply about what happens? And when I say “strong” I don’t mean a fearless, emotionless, superhero who saves the world. I mean a character who lives and breathes, changes and evolves both in the course of this book and in the series to follow.
In other words for me, and I think for the mystery/thriller writers who I love the most, what creates compelling books is the interplay between plot and character. If plot takes over, you create cartoon page-turners; if characters take over, you create books where the reader might well stop turning the page because it seems that nothing is happening. What’s key is not simply the balance of the two, but the dialectic between the two in the sense that what’s happening (the plot) is challenging and pushing the character; that in turn causes crises and challenges for the protagonist; and her/his/their response further drives the plot.
I’ll let readers decide if I got that right! But so far, I’ve been thrilled with the response I’ve been getting.
You can learn more about Michael Kaufman via his website and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. The Last Exit is now available via all major booksellers and from Penguin Random House.
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