Unforgettable Characters

Jungle Red will never forget. September 11, 2001.

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HANK ON TOUR! The Wrong Girl is in Milwaukee today! Come say hello at Mystery One Bookshop at 7pm.  Hope to see you there..

And the winner of Sue Grafton's W is for Wasted is: Mary Martinez! I'll email you directly!

HANK: 

So--speaking of  unforgettable characters! Sue Grafton herself is amazing..and her creation, Kinsey Millhone, is one of a kind. (I can't help but think of the Reader's Digests I devoured at my grandmother's house. Remember that feature? My Most Unforgettable Character? Why do I remember that--but not where my phone is?)

ANYWAY--speaking of unforgettable characters--how about Jon Land? We always love having him visit--he's a whirlwind, nonstop best-selling author and reviewer and ITW big shot, and and and...He's--a character.  And that's why it's so perfect that he's here to day to talk about, what else? Characters! 

Jon Land:   When I began writing the Caitlin Strong series, the latest of which STRONG RAIN FALLING has just been released, it was with the idea of doing something new and different in the thriller genre.  That started with creating a female protagonist who was every bit as strong and capable as more traditional male heroes, a kind of female Jack Reacher (Lee Child’s wonderful hero) you might say. 

            But that wasn’t enough.  I also wanted to add layers of emotion along with personal growth and angst seldom seen in thrillers.  So I came up with the idea that Caitlin would have a love affair with Cort Wesley Masters, the most notorious outlaw in modern Texas history who she once put in prison after he was framed.  The conflict inside each of and between them is there right from the start of the first book in the series, STRONG ENOUGH TO DIE, since it appears a recently exonerated Cort Wesley is going to come gunning for Caitlin.

            The fact that he doesn’t and, quite the opposite, opts to save her life in a wild gunfight instead, is due in large part to the fact that Cort Wesley has two sons he’s never met.  He sees his release from prison as a second chance he’s not quite sure how to exploit and the last thing he wants to do is risk getting jailed again, likely for good this time.  It isn’t too much later when the mother of his boys is murdered because of him, leaving Cort Wesley no choice but to become a father and take responsibility for raising the two boys who’ve never even laid eyes on him.

            See what I’m getting at here?  In traditional tales, it’s the woman who tries to get the male gunfighter to give up his guns and settle down.  But I decided in the Caitlin Strong series to reverse that paradigm and define the relationship between Caitlin and Cort Wesley based on his struggles as a single father and her gradually acceding to her maternal instincts to become a surrogate mother for Cort Wesley’s sons.

            Thrillers especially, you see, normally have loads of action and plot, but what’s the difference if we as readers are not emotionally vested in what happens to the characters?  We need to root for them, care about them, worry that their next gunfight might be their last.  Emotional vesting derives from building characters through the relationships they form, and I personally have not encountered a stronger relationship in this kind of book than the one between Caitlin and Cort Wesley.  The struggle to get past their own natures is constant.  Caitlin wants to have things both ways, but Cort Wesley wishes she was around more.  This as he acknowledges that the times that they’re the closest, when their relationship feels the strongest, is when their lives are threatened and they need to go back to their guns.

            But STRONG RAIN FALLING brings that emotion to a whole new level.  The book opens with Caitlin taking Cort Wesley’s eighteen-year-old son Dylan to visit Brown University in my own hometown of Providence, Rhode Island—about as parental, and maternal, a thing as you can do.  But this is a thriller, of course, and before you know it both Dylan’s and his younger brother Luke’s lives are in jeopardy, and Caitlin and Cort Wesley are both gunning down bad guys to save them.  The stakes are higher and more personal here than in any of my previous books, as Caitlin comes to realize even more how much these boys mean to her.  And that, in turn, continues to showcase the wonderful push-pull that defines her character as she struggles with the conflicting impulses driving her.

So in my visit to Jungle Red today, let’s explore what makes you care about a character and root for them to triumph over adversity and bad guys alike.  I think it was P.T. Barnum who said “Always leave them wanting more.”   What do you think?

Hank: And Reds,  who's your current favorite character? Not of all time, because, well, we want to hear about someone new!