Background to the Donaghue and Stainer Novels
Recently I had the privilege of being interviewed by Omnimystery News regarding my crime novel series. Below are some excerpts from that interview that you may find interesting if you have been following the Donaghue and Stainer series: Blood Passage, Marcie's Murder, and The Fregoli Delusion.
When I began developing the characters of Hank Donaghue and Karen Stainer, I wanted them to come from different backgrounds, have different personalities and different approaches to law enforcement, and live separate lives. I spent a great deal of time developing their back stories so I'd have a very strong sense of who they were and where they're going. As a result, when the reader starts a new Donaghue and Stainer novel, they're greeted by two characters who jump off the page and lead them into a world they haven't experienced before.... Each novel reveals a little more of their backgrounds and motivations, but only over the course of the series will their full stories be told.
The city of Glendale which is the backdrop to the novels is a product of my imagination, but I've located it in Maryland (somewhere south of Annapolis), and I do my best to create an environment people in Maryland wouldn't find laughingly unrealistic. Maryland's prosecutors are called state's attorneys, they use the medical examiner system and not the coroner system, and they have the death penalty, for example. They're divided on whether they're a northern or a southern state, but not a lot of them like the compromise of being "Mid-Atlantic".
I research everything I can think of, including the regulations for tinted glass in automobiles and the windshield stickers issued by the DOT. I can do whatever I want with Glendale — because it doesn't exist — and more or less get away with it, but at the state level I'm hoping to achieve a certain level of verisimilitude. I still have to try the crab cakes, though.
The Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novels are police procedurals. The stories are told almost exclusively from the point of view of the homicide investigators working the cases at the center of each novel. When I'm giving a reading or a presentation I explain up front, for example, that the dialogue is realistic. Cops sometimes get excited when they do their job, and suspects sometimes get a little hot under the collar when they're being interrogated, and their choice of words is often less than polite. As well, when someone's shot to death or a body is examined on the autopsy table, the description needs to convey a realistic sense of what's happening. I don't indulge in graphic violence for shock value, and there are no scenes involving sex, but the narrative still might be a little upsetting to someone who prefers reading cozy mysteries.
I write the stories in such a way that a wide range of readers will enjoy the characters, they'll find them compelling, funny, mysterious and dynamic in turn, and they'll want to come back for more. High-quality writing should contribute something to the marketing of books, shouldn't it? It's certainly worked for Michael Connelly, at any rate.
To read the full interview, please see http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2013/0....
When I began developing the characters of Hank Donaghue and Karen Stainer, I wanted them to come from different backgrounds, have different personalities and different approaches to law enforcement, and live separate lives. I spent a great deal of time developing their back stories so I'd have a very strong sense of who they were and where they're going. As a result, when the reader starts a new Donaghue and Stainer novel, they're greeted by two characters who jump off the page and lead them into a world they haven't experienced before.... Each novel reveals a little more of their backgrounds and motivations, but only over the course of the series will their full stories be told.
The city of Glendale which is the backdrop to the novels is a product of my imagination, but I've located it in Maryland (somewhere south of Annapolis), and I do my best to create an environment people in Maryland wouldn't find laughingly unrealistic. Maryland's prosecutors are called state's attorneys, they use the medical examiner system and not the coroner system, and they have the death penalty, for example. They're divided on whether they're a northern or a southern state, but not a lot of them like the compromise of being "Mid-Atlantic".
I research everything I can think of, including the regulations for tinted glass in automobiles and the windshield stickers issued by the DOT. I can do whatever I want with Glendale — because it doesn't exist — and more or less get away with it, but at the state level I'm hoping to achieve a certain level of verisimilitude. I still have to try the crab cakes, though.
The Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novels are police procedurals. The stories are told almost exclusively from the point of view of the homicide investigators working the cases at the center of each novel. When I'm giving a reading or a presentation I explain up front, for example, that the dialogue is realistic. Cops sometimes get excited when they do their job, and suspects sometimes get a little hot under the collar when they're being interrogated, and their choice of words is often less than polite. As well, when someone's shot to death or a body is examined on the autopsy table, the description needs to convey a realistic sense of what's happening. I don't indulge in graphic violence for shock value, and there are no scenes involving sex, but the narrative still might be a little upsetting to someone who prefers reading cozy mysteries.
I write the stories in such a way that a wide range of readers will enjoy the characters, they'll find them compelling, funny, mysterious and dynamic in turn, and they'll want to come back for more. High-quality writing should contribute something to the marketing of books, shouldn't it? It's certainly worked for Michael Connelly, at any rate.
To read the full interview, please see http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2013/0....
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Open Investigations
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