Seeing Double

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: There's a fascinating  publication called Publishers Marketplace, which every day prints the new book deals that have just been made.

 

Category by category, it's an incredibly intriguing way to see what books are coming in the next couple of years. And also to see what trends are developing in titles, for instance. It’s clear the “Girl”  titles have almost vanished, haven't they?

 

And now there are more titles like  "The Something Something of Someone Someone."

 

It’s also fascinating to see the trends in topics and milieu. Suddenly there’ll be SO MANY books about trains, or TV shows, or podcasts, or influencers or secluded scary mansions.  Why?

 

Anyway, the other day in Publishers Marketplace, I saw an entry that stopped me in my tracks.

 

I won't publish the entire listing, but just to just a line from each. First:

Liann Zhang's FOLLOW US, following a young woman who steals her mega-influencer twin's identity after she mysteriously dies, only to discover that her twin's picture-perfect life is more sinister than it appeared on social media…

 

AND. Right after that:

 

Lori Inglis Hall's A WORLD OF OUR MAKING, pitched as having shades of ATONEMENT and A GOD IN RUINS, following British twins, one who accepts a dangerous job as a spy for the SOE in occupied France, and the other, an airman who is wounded in the war, who devotes his life to finding out what happened to his sister behind enemy lines,

 

I thought: WHAT? This is certainly a trend! Or a coincidence. Or a topic so fascinating that there writers find it irresistible

 

And then, into my email, came today’s blog from Otho Eskin. I thought: WHAT?  It’s a sign, it’s certainly a sign. 

 

(And don’t forget to come to the Reds and Readers Facebook page for another question for you—AND a giveaway!

 

 

 

Seeing Double

  By Otho Eskin

 

Some early readers have asked: Why did I use twins?  In my new Firetrap, I make multiples the face of Big Pharma? Why?

 

 For the most part, I was simply following my narrative intuition. I wanted to capture the notion of familial evil, and I invented these two brothers united both by their near-identical DNA and by their capacity for evil.

 

I present the twin brothers, Sabastian and Maximilian Poole, as enigmatic and other-worldly. “They’re twins,” one of their old college classmates tells Zorn, “Although nobody’s actually seen them in public in years, so that may just be an urban legend.”

 

In the past, it was their personalities that distinguished them. One was once “affable and friendly,” the other “withdrawn.” But over time, they became one. They shared a dorm in college, attended classes together, ate together, and seldom mixed with others. Their behavior was abhorrent. When they were finally expelled, rumors swirled that they’d done something truly horrific. “I’m not sure I know what evil means,” the old classmate relates, “but whatever it means, Sabastian and Maximilian were it.”

 

I have come to think that twins captured my literary imagination for the same reason that they captured the literary imaginations of countless writers and storytellers before me: They serve as screens onto which we can project our own fears and desires about human nature.

 

The most famous mythological twins are Romulus and Remus, part of Rome’s founding story. They were supposedly nursed by a she-wolf when the basket containing them washed onto the shore of the Tiber River. One brother, Romulus, killed Remus in a fight over where to place their new city.

 

In Greek and Roman mythology, twins are often the products of adultery. Both Leda and Alcamene become pregnant with twins after sleeping with Zeus and their mortal husbands. Multiples are also depicted as having a superhuman bond. Some versions of Leda’s story have it that, when her mortal son Pollux dies, his immortal brother, Castor, asks to share his fate so the two can be reunited—so intense is their fraternal connection.

For a modern iteration, think of the preternaturally attached Grady Girls of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining. Alexie and Alexa Grady dress alike and speak in unison, stirring the feeling that they embody deeply sinister forces.

 

If intense love is an enduring trope—so much so that “twincest” appears in stories ranging from Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire—so is its opposite. Sibling resentment characterizes the biblical accounts of Esau and Jacob. In fact, we’re told that Jacob comes into the world grabbing his slightly elder brother’s heel as if to hold him back.

 

But twins are not always conceived in negative terms. Think of Lewis Carroll’s beloved “Tweedles” Dum and Dee, Laura Lee Hope’s Bobbsey Twins, and Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield of Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley series. These multiples represent a more wholesome bond, and many of their readers confess to yearning for an identical other long after turning the last page.

 

Consider, also, the mischievous but adorable heroines of Erich Kastner’s Lottie and Lisa, who encounter each other at summer camp and then, upon realizing they were separated at birth, swap identities to meet their estranged parent. Their charming story was twice adapted for screen as The Parent Trap, the first starring Hayley Mills and the second, Lindsay Lohan. 

 

In the mystery/thriller genre, twins are often depicted as cooperating to solve crimes. Alternatively, one twin will redeem the other or seek justice on their behalf. In Janet Porter’s Free Rider, for instance, a woman goes to extraordinary lengths to save her identical sister from being devoured by the forces of darkness. Tess Gerritsen’s Body Double tells of a medical examiner who sees her own face in that of a murder victim. Realizing that she had an identical twin sister, she vows to learn the truth of her own past and bring her sibling’s killer to justice.  

 

Sometimes it’s a superhuman power that allows one twin to save the other. In Mary Higgins Clark’s suspense novel Two Little Girls in Blue, a three-year-old twin is presumed dead—until her other half uses telepathy to convince her parents she’s still alive and wants to come home. Likewise, in Carolyn Mitchell’s dark, gripping detective thriller The Silent Twin, a nine-year-old twin breaks a mute spell to speak to investigators from the persona of her sibling, who is missing.

 

So, if twins sometimes symbolize depravity, they can also symbolize unbreakable bonds. The icons of platonic love, they allow us to imagine what it means to intimately see and be seen by another.

 

What fictional multiples stand out in your mind? What makes them memorable? 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Twins are so risky, aren't they? In mysteries, especially. And thinking about this just briefly, the only way to make it fair is that the reader knows, right from the get-go, that there are twins involved. Don't the iconic rules of detection prohibit the surprise use of twins? I think they do.

I know at least some of you are twins :-) ... let us know about it if you feel comfortable with that!

And for everyone else: Reds and readers, what are your favorite twin books and movies?

How do you feel about twins in storytelling?

And we'll see you on the Reds and Readers Facebook Page for our giveaway! Remember, you have to join us to join the fun--so click here and ask to join--and if you are not a bot, we will let you right in!

 

Otho Eskin is the author of the Marko Zorn thriller series. He has also written many plays, which have been professionally produced in Washington, New York, and Europe. Before turning to writing, Eskin served in the U.S. Army and Foreign Service. He is married to writer Therese Keane and lives in Bethesda, MD. 

 

 

 

Firetrap takes D.C. homicide detective Marko Zorn on his most dangerous mission yet. A street drug, more dangerous than fentanyl, is spreading across the country and his search for those responsible leads him to a Big Pharma corporation run by mysterious, psychopathic twin brothers. Anyone who crosses them is dead.

 

Zorn must clear the streets of this deadly opioid and also prevent FDA approval of a new drug similar to Oxycontin to which the Pharma Corporation technicians have secretly added traces of fentanyl. If misused, this new drug is highly addictive and potentially fatal. Zorn must also solve three murders carried out by the corporation to cover up these criminal activities.

 

I was inspired to write Firetrap after learning about the opioid crisis. I was appalled by the predatory promotion, the price fixing, and the misinformation given to the public as well as the coopting of pharmacists and doctors used by Big Pharma, including Purdue Pharma owned by Sackler family. These activities, driven by greed, all showed indifference to human suffering. I considered how I could transform my outrage into narrative fiction. Firetrap is the result.

 

Publisher page: https://www.oceanviewpub.com/books/firetrap

https://othoeskin.com

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