Writing Criminals
It doesn’t seem like a great couple of weeks for writers.
I know! Even the dead ones. First, news of Neil Gaiman’s sexual misconduct came to light. And then Alice Munro’s daughter revealed the sexual abuse she’d suffered, which her mother knew about and ignored. And then Brendan DuBois must have thought it was a competition or something and trumped both of them by getting arrested for child pornography.
Yikes.
Yikes indeed, although a lot of writers didn’t seem that surprised by the Gaiman stories - albeit distressing and hypocritical, the whisper network is full of stories about male writers and how they take advantage of women, particularly younger ones. Munro’s revelation, however, disappointed a lot of people, especially writers and readers who expect more from someone who wrote so knowingly about the anguish of the powerless. And the crime fiction community, in particular, was in a mix of shock and grief and anger about DuBois.
I know Gaiman and Munro…but who is Brendan DuBois?
Read the small print on the cover of a few James Patterson novels and you’ll see DuBois’s name. He was well-known in crime fiction, mainly for collaborating with Patterson, short fiction and, to a lesser extent, his own novels. I don’t think I ever met him in person, only via social media. He looked a bit like Santa Claus, although not so much in his mug shot.
Has DuBois been proven guilty?
Friends of mine with law enforcement experience (pretty common in crime fiction) tell me that an arrest with this amount of evidence is fairly damning.
It sounds pretty awful.
It’s worse. I did a lot of research into sex trafficking with my earlier work, and that research fundamentally changed me. I can’t unhear the stories I heard, and an appalling amount of the abuse was directed to young children. It’s hard to imagine a worse crime, and I have a general annoyance with people who are willing to overlook the cruelties done to kids, whether its in defense of guns or war or civility.
Assuming all of this is true, are these writers still going to be published?
The ghost of Alice Munro will be fine and, probably, Neil Gaiman will too. But assuming he’s guilty (see “overwhelming evidence” above), DuBois is doine. His publisher dropped him and his upcoming work (a new novel, editor of the upcoming Bouchercon anthology) is being hastily removed or reworked.
That’s not meant, incidentally, to be flippant. I understand the cruelty of crime, how crimes affect so many. Family, friends, business associates…everyone they know, beyond the victims, is hurt by the actions of the guilty and the damned. I have friends reading this who were friends with Brendan. Even though I’m personally ecstatic that a predator is off the street and soon to be behind bars, I am sorry for their pain. That kind of revelatory knowledge scars.
I’m a devoted reader, and is it weird that I expect more humanity from writers?
Ha ha, I know a lot of writers and yes that’s weird.
But I get it. When I meet someone who made really beautiful work, I hope they’re also beautiful. Or, at least, I want them to represent the thing that touched me. The way they made me feel with a sentence or a song, the way they saw something and explained it in a way no one ever had or could. Their understanding of suffering. There’s something sacred in that.
And then it’s lost.
It’s so exciting to read a book that feels like the author has discovered something wonderful and true about people. And then you find out that the author has a penchant for streaking through food banks or something, and you can’t ever look at that person, or their book, the same way.
So what do I do? I feel kind of empty.
Well, that’s the power you have as a reader, and it’s one which us writers are greatly, sadly aware.
Art is the sole province of no single criminal. No person, no matter how ruthless or powerful, can own it. In some ways we don’t quite understand, art isn’t even owned by the artist. It’s communal, and so it’s also yours, and you can just read a different book, and feel that love once again. That wonderful feeling you felt? That can’t be stolen. That can’t be lost.
No criminal can rob you of that.
EA
For those in the Yorktown area (near’ish Richmond, VA), you can come see LynDee Walker and me in conversation at the Yorktown Library on Saturday, July 27. LynDee is a former police reporter and now a prolific, celebrated crime fiction writer, and a good friend, and I love chatting with her. We’ll talk about our recent work, as well as trends and happenings in crime fiction. Will there be prizes and snacks? There will not, but it’ll still be a lot of fun! Register HERE.
And, for this month, my most recent novel, When She Left, is on-sale for just $1.99 via Kindle! That’s the cost of a cup of coffee in 1978! So, for the cost of a rather stale and very cold cup of decades-old coffee, you can treat yourself to a night of intense reading about a young couple on the run and the reluctant hitman/realtor hired to find them! Check it out HERE.
The Hollywood Assistant, May Cobb
Cassidy Foster is heartbroken, stuck in life, and getting a little too obsessed with plants. Then when a well-connected friend becomes sick of Cassidy’s moping and gets her a gig with famous Hollywood couple, Marisol and Nate Sterling, Cassidy jumps at the chance to move to sunny LA. And when Nate takes interest in her, asking her to read scripts he’s written, Cassidy thinks this could be the key to kickstarting her writing dreams. As their business relationship grows, so does their attraction. But Cassidy learns she was hired for a different purpose, and the Sterlings aren’t the perfect couple. And when one of them is found dead, Cassidy becomes the perfect suspect.
What Fire Brings, Rachel Howzell Hall
Bailey Meadows has just moved into the remote Topanga Canyon home of thriller author Jack Beckham. As his writer-in-residence, she’s supposed to help him once again reach the bestseller list. But she’s not there to write a thriller—she’s there to find Sam Morris, a community leader dedicated to finding missing people, who has disappeared in the canyon surrounding Beckham’s property. The missing woman was last seen in the drought-stricken forest known for wildfires and mountain lions. Each new day, Bailey learns just how dangerous these canyons are—for the other women who have also gone missing here…and for her. Could these missing women be linked to strange events that occurred decades ago at the Beckham estate? As fire season in the canyons approaches, Bailey must race to unravel the truth from fiction before she becomes the next woman lost in the forest.
Assassin’s Anonymous, Rob Hart
Mark was the most dangerous killer-for-hire in the world. But after learning the hard way that his life’s work made him more monster than man, he left all of that behind, and joined a twelve-step group for reformed killers. When Mark is viciously attacked by an unknown assailant, he is forced on the run. From New York to Singapore to London, he chases after clues while dodging attacks and trying to solve the puzzle of who’s after him. All without killing anyone. Or getting killed himself. For an assassin, Mark learns, nonviolence is a real hassle.
Shadow Heart, Meg Gardiner
In a Tennessee prison, Efrem Judah Goode draws haunting portraits of women he claims he has killed. Around the country, desperate families of the missing seek answers in his eerie drawings. And on darkened back roads and New York City streets, a new killer poses duct-taped bodies at the sites of Goode’s murders. To stop the brutal slayings, FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix must unravel the connection between Goode and the Broken Heart Killer. Their warped competition destroys anyone in their path. Caught between a manipulative psychopath and a ruthless UNSUB, Caitlin has to dive into not one, but two dark and twisted minds. She will risk everything, plunging into the depths of their depraved clash to hunt down an unstoppable killer.
It's giveaway time! The winner of a copy of one of the four books listed above (your pick!) is:
havana______@yahoo.com
Congrats, and I'll send you an email soon!
The writer Hannah Mary McKinnon has a new book coming out on July 16, and invited me to make a fun promotional video for it. Her novel, Only One Survives, is about a new rock band that undergoes a tragedy, and she asked friends to make a mockumentary-styled promotional videos for the band. I can’t include my video here, but if you click the image (or HERE), you can check it out. And learn more about Only One Survives HERE.