This is sort of an open section, which I hope readers (surfers?)
will
contribute to with their questions. As it gets longer, I've tried
to organize it roughly by book. The first questions deal with Death of a Nationalist. I've
also added a section dealing with
questions/issues with Law of Return.
WARNING: These questions
contain major spoilers. If you haven't read
the books yet, don't read them!
A few of the things people always ask about Death of a Nationalist:
1. Why did you write Death of a Nationalist? (Also varied as "What inspired you to write Death of a Nationalist?" "Where did you get the idea for Death of a Nationalist?" and "What is an American girl doing writing about the Guardia Civil and the Spanish Civil war?")
Short Answer: Why not?
Long Answer: In the summer of 2000 I traveled through Spain and
Portugal.
While I was there, I e-mailed a friend and former professor, asking her
if she wanted me to pick up any books for her while I was near Spanish
bookstores. She responded that she didn't need books, but asked
if
I had any ideas about mysteries set in Madrid, because she was
preparing
to teach a course called "Detective Fiction and the City." (I
always
regretted not having the opportunity to take the course.) We
continued
a friendly e-mail conversation about mysteries throughout my trip, and
after I returned. At some point, the medieval mysteries of Ellis
Peters came up, and I recommended One Corpse Too Many, the
story
of a murder which is committed at the end of a long siege in a bloody
civil
war, and the two men on opposite sides of the war who end up working
together
to solve the murder, each for his own reasons. The plot of One
Corpse Too Many somehow got mixed up in my mind with the idea of
murder
mysteries set in Madrid, and the idea of Madrid and a siege came
together
in 1939. I had just finished my Masters Degree, and was working
at
Columbia's Administrative Information Services, but didn't have a
teaching
job for the fall. So I had a lot of time on my hands, a computer
available to do web research, and an excellent reason to want to escape
reality. I wrote my idea for a post-civil-war noir novel set in
Madrid
to my professor, and she suggested writing the book. So I did.
2. Why is Tejada such a *&^% bastard?
The answer to this depends on how I'm feeling at the moment. I should start out by saying that Tejada was NOT conceived as the hero of the first book, much less of the series, although the series is his biography. He's an anti-hero, and although he's honorable, conscientious, and basically honest, he's not supposed to be sympathetic -- at least, not in the first book, although I believe he gets more so as the series continues. (I can always tell a reviewer won't like the book when he refers to Tejada as "Carlos." I don't refer to Tejada by his first name, and there's a reason for that.)
Also, remember that Death of a Nationalist was written mostly in the summer of 2000, immediately after the verdict completely exonerating Amadou Diallou's killers. (For those of you who are from outside of New York City: Amadou Diallou was a young African immigrant, who was shot to death outside his house by three policemen, for no particular reason.) The trial of his murderers was held outside of New York City, and the verdict brought the city together in grief, outrage, and fear. I knew (and still know) a number of members of the NYPD who generally strike me as decent, honest people, trying to do a job that they feel is important. I wanted to understand how a decent, humane, honest person could reach the point of shooting another person in cold blood, and feeling no immediate remorse. Thus, Tejada.
Finally, on my bad days, I just say that Tejada is my evil alter-ego.
3. What are the literary influences for the series? What books influenced you?
Aside from the above-mentioned Ellis Peters mystery (the second in the Brother Cadfael series), I think the only literary precedent for the series is Delano Ames' novel The Man in the Tricorn Hat, a hardboiled mystery of the 1950s, starring a young guardia civil on the rapidly developing Costa del Sol. It's the first of a series, which begins by being charming, and rapidly becomes dull, not least because Ames manages to completely ignore the political realities of Spain in the early 50s.
The second book, Law of Return, is heavily influenced by a
beautiful
Spanish novel by Carmen Martín Gaite, El cuarto de
atrás,
available in English as The Back Room Fortunately, I had
not
read Antonio Muñoz Molina's thriller Beltenebros (Prince
of Shadows), or Javier Cercas' Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers
of Salamis) when I started the series, because they say all there
is
to be said about the themes of the books, with considerably more grace,
and I would never have had the courage to keep writing.
1. Is the marriage at the end of
the book actually going to take place? (Also varied as: "Is she
going to dump him?" " She's going to dump him, right?" and "How could
you let her marry him?") (added May 5, 2004)
It's a little awkward to answer this question before the third book
comes out (in which some of the questions will be answered) but since a
lot of the people who asked (or rather accused) me about it seemed so
disgusted by the second book that I was afraid they wouldn't pick up
the third, I wanted to quickly reply now.
A lot of the (otherwise very kind) reviews of Law of Return said that I had
"caved" by making the book implausibly romantic. It is a romance, and I'm glad that
people are emotionally involved with the characters, but I'd like to
point out that except in the gushiest of romance novels and Disney
movies, getting married does not
necessarily mean living happily ever after. It means getting
married. In the society portrayed in the books, it also means not
getting divorced too easily. That's all that it means.
Furthermore, one of my pet peeves with a number of detective series (whose
names I do not wish to remember) is the protagonist's never-ending
on-again/off-again relationship with a love interest who always is on
the point of becoming
permanent. After a few books, the suspense becomes non-existent,
because you know that they're either going to break up at the end of
the book and get together in the next one, or get rapturously together
at the end of the book and then have tragedy strike in the next
installment. But either way it's boring. I also think
it's unrealistic. How many times around on this merry-go-round
would you go in real life
before you decided to get off?
So there. Wait until February 2005 for more details.