What's in Your Rearview?

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: A  somewhat thoughtful post today. We all remember Sue Grafton, who, incredibly, died almost two years ago now. We learned a lot from her, of course,  and one of the many things that stays with me is how careful she was about the victims in her stories. She made sure they were real people, that their lives mattered, that they weren’t simply pawns for crime fiction writers, objects for them to use to  get the action going.

 Steven Cooper feels just he same way.  As an investigative reporter, he’s seen those victims—what happened after they were killed—close up and raw, and personal.  And he says, they haunt his fiction,  including his brand new third novel,  VALLEY OF SHADOWS.

And what he says will haunt you, too.  You don’t get to choose what’s in your rearview mirror. 

The Shadows of Death

Steven Cooper

 There are murders I’ll never forget. Murders that stay with me, that echo through time, that intersect with the muse and find their way into the consciousness of my writing. There are murders that haunt me, that taunt me.

Did they really find the killer? Did the guilty really go to jail? How do the heartbroken heal?

I’ve long since left my life as a crime reporter, long since left my life as an investigative journalist, and long since left those days of clandestine meetings with sources who often shined a light but sometimes came in disguise to thwart my quest for the truth. When a significant part of your career is spent racing from one crime scene to the next, however, the horrors of humanity never fully secrete from your skin. They linger there at the outermost layer. You wonder why. You wonder how. Life never quite looks the same. You hope the ones who grieve get back up on their feet and learn to love again.

You don’t get to choose what’s in your rearview mirror. I’ll never forget Joan Andres. I never knew Joan Andres. I never knew any of the victims. I only heard their life stories in the past tense. Joan Andres was a 27-year-old bright, up-and-coming lawyer in Springfield, Massachusetts. She was shot dead and brutally stabbed one cold, winter night in her apartment in the Forest Park neighborhood of the city. She had been shot once and stabbed twice, I recall. To a reporter hell-bent on accuracy, the number of bullet holes and stab wounds mattered. But she mattered more. This happened more than twenty years ago. And she still matters to me. In part, her story inspired Deadline, a novel I wrote long ago. I thought it would end there on the page. I waited for catharsis. And it came, but only partly.

Murder is profound. It’s explosive, violent, incomprehensible, and so often random. It’s a punch to the gut. Even in the stillness of a crime scene, it rages. It rages through the darkness. It rages through the light. It rages through the minutia of trial. It rages through the verdict. 

I remember, gavel to gavel, the trial in the Joan Andres case. I remember the defense attorney whispering conspiracies in my ear, trying to deflect his client’s guilt. I’m still, all these year later, not convinced of his client’s guilt. A random guy broke into her apartment and shot her in the face? I don’t know. I wasn’t convinced by the evidence. 

The district attorney, nearly foaming at the mouth, all but threw me out of his office when, in a one-on-one interview, I questioned the evidence. Perhaps I had been too easily influenced by the colorful imagination of the defense attorney. I’ll concede to that. But the DA hammered me. Every ounce of vitriol he had ever suppressed about the media he unleashed on me. Lucky me. His anger made my skin crawl. But both sides felt dirty. I didn’t know whom to believe. But I believed Joan. I believed she was too young to die. I believed she was the only one who knew the truth. I believed her soul would never rest in peace.

Murder, quietly or violently, reminds us of the society we live in. We can shut our eyes but we can’t shut out the evil. Murder has a name. It has lots of names. We can’t forget the names. The names of real people make us seek justice, or light, or redemption. Probably all three.

 Joan Andres was a real person to me because Joan Andres was a real person. So was 13-year-old Danny Croteau. And 24-year-old Lisa Ziegert. And 5-year-old Eric Steven Dostie. And 16-year-old Arnaldo Esteras. The grief of Arnaldo’s mother was palpable as she clung to her son’s casket, her body shuddering, her agonizing cries the only sound in the cathedral. The intimacy of grief and despair I was allowed to witness in the Dostie home followed me to my own home, insidiously lurking in my psyche, and informed me, rather emphatically, that it would never fully leave me.

And it hasn’t. It has informed my writing, all of it. It reminds me to be truthful, even in fiction. It reminds me to be respectful of my characters, even the bad ones. It reminds me that making my characters real people requires treating them like real people.

 For all the shade I throw at TV news, and I throw plenty in my new book, Valley of Shadows, I’m grateful for what journalism taught me about accuracy and authenticity. I’m grateful that, while sometimes harrowing, I took that journey into the darker side of the human condition because often the journey taught me regrettable but unforgettable truths about life. The journey introduced me to real people, real lives, and real suffering and it, thus, made me obligated to those truths, obligated to never, ever fake it in my fiction.

I owe that much to the victims and their loved ones.

HANK: Steve is a dear pal, and a terrific writer, and  I’m interviewing him at New England Mobile Book Fair on September 28—y’all come!  He’s not always this outwardly philosophical—he’s generally hilarious. But I do agree with him-- the job of a news reporter, if you have any heart at all, will eventually break it.

Steve and I both work/worked for local news. And we’re interested—do you still watch it? And writers and readers, do you think about the victims  in the mysteries we all read?

VALLEY OF SHADOWS

A Gus Parker and Alex Mills Novel

   by Steven Cooper

A cop. A psychic. And a dead socialite. Who killed Viveca Canning and where is the Dali masterpiece that hung on the walls of her estate?

So many people had a motive. Phoenix Detective Alex Mills is on the case with the help of his sometimes-psychic buddy Gus Parker. You won’t find another duo like them. And once you hop on the wild ride, you won’t want to get off. 

Who will survive a doomed flight over the Pacific? Who tried to blow up an art gallery? Who saw Viveca Canning as a threat and shot her twice in the head? Those questions hound Gus and Alex as the case unravels. It’s an art caper wrapped in a murder mystery.

 The Valley of the Sun becomes a Valley of Shadows, where everyone has something to hide and the truth lies beneath Phoenix in a labyrinth of tunnels and dungeons. There’s a lot at stake for Gus and Alex. 

With the case swirling all around them, the future of Gus and his rock n’ roll girlfriend hangs in the balance. 

For Alex, it’s a test of family loyalties as a health scare for his wife brings him to the breaking point. 

Cooper’s style is, at once, scorching and wry. He deftly and seamlessly mixes thrills and chills with snark and wit. There’s good and evil, love and despair, compassion, deceit, and danger. The action swerves around twists and turns and collides with a cast of characters you will not soon forget.

 Steven Cooper is a former investigative reporter. His work has earned him multiple Emmy Awards and nominations, as well as a national Edward R. Murrow award, and numerous honors from the Associated Press. He taught for five years in the English department at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Steven has lived a bit like a nomad, working TV gigs in New England, Arizona and Florida, and following stories around the globe.

 He currently lives in Atlanta. Valley of Shadows is his latest Gus Parker and Alex Mills Novel.