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FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. A THIN LINE OF SMOKE – Story Statement A young architect must complete the design and construction of the most important building in his young career in the face of unfettered corruption. After a fire breaks out in the almost completed building killing the only female construction worker on the site the local fire chief and arson investigator must determine if the fire was arson and how the woman died. SECOND ASSIGNMENT: in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them. Frank Krunka is the alpha male at the center of this story who embodies and embraces the corruption, misogamy and greed. A self-made man, reformed cokehead, and hard knuckled contractor, Frank rules heavy construction in Nassau and Suffolk Counties with the intensity of a silver backed gorilla. You’ll never see him without his golden hardhat pendant banging against his well-tanned open collar, and you’ll never catch him doing anything illegal – he has guys for that. Frank keeps the wheels of corruption turning through influence, money or having a few skulls cracked. His pool parties are a venerable who’s who of local politicians, money men, contracting royalty and their arm candy. He uses his box seats at Yankee Stadium for patronage. In his fifties, Frank’s history of addiction, ex-wives, and shady decisions sit heavy on his shoulders. He isn’t ashamed to share advice with Georgie. He likes the new kid. In fact, he wouldn’t be upset if Georgie and his only daughter Hampton got hooked up. He always wanted a son. George must partner with Frank to complete the project, but as Frank becomes a surrogate father, George’s morality erodes, and he is drawn deeper into the ugly side of power. THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed). A THIN LINE OF SMOKE The Corruption of George Sumner FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why? Genre: Upmarket Mystery A THIN LINE OF SMOKE is a character centered story held together by a tragic event like Richard Price’s LAZURUS MAN. Told through the eyes of an untrustworthy narrator in a closed misogynistic environment similar to Rosemary Hennigan’s THE FAVORITES this novel deals with the corruption of a morally grey characters set in the same era and milieu as the SOPRANOS but on Long Island instead of New Jersey. FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication. Primary POV hook line (George’s POV) Thrust into the opportunity of a lifetime by the suicide of his mentor, a young architect must choose between a corrupted path to complete his greatest project or a moral path that may burn it all to the ground. Secondary POV hook line (Chief Edward’s POV) After a major fire breaks out in a newly constructed building, a fire chief embedded in the community investigates the cause of the inferno and death of a female construction worker. Under pressure from all sides the Chief is faced with confirming easy answers to maintain the status quo, or blowing open a case that will risk spotlighting systemic corruption across local government exposing mistakes by him. SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction. Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it? Secondary Conflicts George POV In the summer of 1998, young George Sumner was laden with tragedy. His father died unexpectedly from a massive heart attack, and his unyielding mentor committed suicide. Now as both the breadwinner for his family, and the torchbearer of the firm’s design George is weighed down with new responsibilities and expectations. Thrust into the world of major construction George is out of his depth both in the board room where millions are negotiated, and on the job site where mistakes cost money, fingers and lives. Paddling as fast as he can, George’s moral compass is spinning, and he is looking for a father figure to point the way. The most dominant male in his orbit is Frank Krunka, corrupt construction manager. George knows enough to be wary but is quickly drawn in to the earthly charms of quick cash, political stature and loose women. As the questions pile up, George faces his moral upbringing and must choose between his affinity for this new father figure in his life and what he knows to be right. As an outsider on the jobsite George searches for allies. After a rough start he connects with Maria Lisa, the only female on the construction site. As the crane operator and crew leader of the ironworkers on site she commands a hefty level of respect, but once she is out of her cab, she’s just another chick and the slurs, catcalls and lurid advances are relentless. Maria Lisa is also a union sympathizer, trying to work her way back into the unions after a sexual harassment claim was swept under the rug, she has a fraught relationship with the organizations that should protect her and her livelihood. Getting a spot on a Krunka jobsite was a boon for her, and her inside information about the physical construction is a chit she can trade to work her way back into the good graces of union bosses. George and Maria Lisa embark on an odd relationship, watching each other’s back on the job site, trading secrets and giving the boys a show to improve George’s manhood credentials, and get the tongue wagers off Maria Lisa’s back. As one thing leads to another the lines get blurred and George is never sure if he is being protected, used or worse. George has a healthy dose of distrust for both Frank and Maria Lisa, but an affinity towards both. As he gets deeper in each relationship the tension between conflicting loyalties knot him up. Without a father figure, or mentor to help him find his way George must become his own man. Chief Edwards POV Chief Edwards has been a stalwart of his community for three decades. Starting out in the volunteer fire department and rising up the ranks while also working as the local building inspector he’s always had a unique view on the local government. In more recent years after being certified as an arson investigator the Chief has worn many hats, but never all at once on the same building. Chief Edwards was the building inspector for North Shore Displays and was ready to sign off on its Certificate of Occupancy the week before the fire. When he got the call about the fire, he expected something minor, but this fire became a four alarm blaze that brought in departments from all over the county. Once extinguished a body was found, requiring a deeper investigation, he was tapped to complete the arson portion of the investigation. Wearing each hat – building inspector, fire chief, and arson investigator – there is an inherent conflict of interest, but he is a trusted member of the community, and the sheriff and township administrator have his back. Still, Chief Edwards is torn. He can’t avoid the fact that he looked the other way during some of his inspections, and the questions only pile up from there. The Chief needs to protect his community and himself. While his morality dictates that the truth should be unearthed from the ashes there is enough doubt and pressure to take the easy way out, lest the man in the mirror live up to his own moral code. FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it. A Thin Line of Smoke centers on a single building, North Shore Displays, as both setting and in some ways character. The building is a new corporate headquarters and factory that is being constructed in Melville Long Island in the 1998. We see the project from the time that the site is an open field, through the full construction, and the subsequent fire that consumes it. We also see the project through the eyes of George and Melvin (George’s mentor) as they work together to sketch out the design and dream about their aspirations for the building. Seeing this transformation from sketch through construction we feel the work. The book lingers in the grit and sweat of the effort it takes to complete a project of this magnitude. Long Island in the late nineties was also a place where the rules related to heavy construction were fluid. Labor unions had a strong hold on some trades (masons, electricians & iron workers), but the Island was more of a free for all with open conflicts between union and non-union on many construction sites. Sabotage and dirty tricks were commonplace. Construction sites were lawless places. It was also a time of pride in New York, and the tribal affiliations to teams (Go Yankees!), neighborhoods and backgrounds have a heavy influence on social interactions both on the job site, and beyond. The alternate universe of the story is George’s home in New Jersey. His life in what seems to be an idyllic suburb in many ways is dull in comparison to the hard scrabble, conflict laden buzz of the construction site with its constant movement, noise, friction and conflict. His life at home is centered on his newly widowed mother, her church community and George’s responsibilities towards both. As George crosses between New Jersey and Long Island we see the code switching he embraces, trying to fit into each environment. At note: The building for North Shore Displays is based upon a real building I designed early in my architecture career but enhanced for dramatic effect. Most other settings including the original Yankee Stadium, Cross Bronx Expressway, and even the offices of Cohen and Goldsmith are based on my memories of the real places, but the homes of George, Frank and the Chief are fictional.

Plot hacks, keep 'em coming Paula!

More sex.

Story Statement My book is a dual-timeline historical novel with two main protagonists: Liliana Perez Cohen (1970s) and Kate Gardner (2000s). Liliana is on a quest to break free from the restraints of her upper-class upbringing, explore her Cuban heritage, and find out who she is and where she belongs in the world by escaping to California, a hotbed of political activism in the 1970s. Kate is struggling with writer’s block and needs to publish her seminal law review article by next year to earn tenure. Her husband is ready to start a family, but she is concerned about juggling her career and parenthood, in addition to the challenges of raising a biracial child. Antagonistic Forces Both protagonists are fighting against the oppressive forces of a patriarchal society with prescribed roles for women. In Liliana’s life, this oppression is first embodied in her father, a successful businessman who wants her to fit the mold of upper-class society ladies and disowns her when she deviates from that path. Later in the story, her major antagonist is the historical character Jim Jones, who draws her into Jonestown, traps her there, and rapes her before she narrowly escapes before the massacre. For Grace, the antagonists are less clearly evil, but they are oppositional forces to her desire to be successful on her own terms. The Dean of her law school expects her to devote all her energy to the job and publishing in prestigious law reviews. Her husband wants her to put motherhood first, even if it means sacrificing her career. Titles Chasing the Seventies The Pendulum Swings From Good Girl to Feminist Comps Looking for Jane: A Novel by Heather Marshall, “follows three women who are bound together by a long-lost letter, a mother’s love, and a secret network of women fighting for the right to choose—inspired by true stories.” Spans the same time period (1970s – 2017) with a similar theme (women’s activism about the Jane Network and women’s right to choose in the 1970s). All You Have to Do by Autumn Allen: “In ALL YOU HAVE TO DO, two Black young men attend prestigious schools nearly thirty years apart, and yet both navigate similar forms of insidious racism.” Spans the time period from 1968 campus protests to 1995, with both protagonists engaged in the struggle for racial equality. Both comps involve the intersection of protagonists from different generations facing the same challenges around race, gender, and equality, illustrating the premise that “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” Hook Line Kate Gardner grew up believing that women could have it all, but as a tenure-track professor with writer’s block, she faces the reality that equality for women has not lived up to its promise as she wrestles with the tension between earning tenure and starting a family. Liliana Perez Cohen has never felt at home in her upper-class Westchester County boarding school, but her quest for her mother’s Cuban roots and a sense of belonging leads her to confront the harsh realities of a woman pursuing her own path in the 1970s. Inner Conflict Kate’s husband Kendrick has earned partnership in his civil rights law firm and thinks the time is right to start a family. But Kate is not sure the time is right, with an important tenure decision coming up that could decide the future of her career. Liliana rebels against her upper-class upbringing but is not sure where she belongs in the world. After dabbling with feminist socialism, she confronts the consequences of freedom when she is raped by her spiritual mentor, Jim Jones in Guyana. Secondary Conflict Kate want to be a mother, but she fears bringing a biracial child into the world in the wake of police brutality against young men of color. She also knows that despite formal equality, women shoulder the majority of homemaking and child care responsibilities in America. Liliana discovers that she is attracted to women and slowly grows to accept that she is a lesbian, but knows that her parents will never accept her if she confesses who she really is. Setting Liliana’s story takes her from the upper class community of Westchester County NY to the hotbeds of activism on the West Coast – Berkeley, San Diego, and Los Angeles during an era of student protests over civil rights, racial equality, and the Vietnam War. Later, she follows charismatic leader Jim Jones to Guyana, and barely escapes to Cuba before the Jonestown Massacre. Her story ends in Florida, where she finds a partner and raises the daughter fathered by Jim Jones in Little Cuba, Miami. Kate grows up on the tony suburb of Newton, MA and doesn’t stray far from her New England roots, but her work at Bay View Law School exposes her to a colorful band of faculty members and students who expand her horizons and support her budding feminism.

So you want to write a book with a big twist? Of course you do! Who doesn’t love a massive blindside? It’s an incredibly fun thing to pull off but it also takes skill from the writer. Consider all of the masters you are trying to please: –You want your readers to be shocked and entertained. –Yet, you can’t have them so dumbfounded that they get annoyed because there were zero clues leading up to it. –You want your reader to say, “Ohhhh! How clever…” and realize they missed clues hidden in plain sight. –But your hidden clues can’t give too much away or it’s all just way too obvious and the “twist” will feel rote. –You also need to decide how many twists you will have. Sometimes one is not enough. A twist upon a twist (upon a twist?!) can be especially fun for a reader but then all twists need to apply the same rules above. How do you do it? Here are a few ideas for how to pull off a really good distortion. #1 The unreliable narrator. In other words, your narrator is telling your reader things but not ALL of the things. Example: Your protagonist is packing for a getaway with friends. “I can’t wait for this weekend. The things I have planned, oh my, it’s going to be a trip none of us will ever forget…” might lead a reader to believe the characters are going to be drinking and partying when really your protagonist is going to pull off an elaborate murder. #2 A strong backstory. In the above example our protagonist needs to have some sort of experience with murder and a motivation to do it. They can’t just say, “Hey, I think I want to kill all of my friends this weekend.” Your reader needs to understand that this person has done something awful– or at least strongly considered it– before, and has a reason to do so now. Readers do not like it when a protagonist does something wildly out of character. It feels cheap to them, like the writer did it just for shock value rather than putting in the time to properly build the story. #3 Clues. Is your character packing a murder weapon but the reader doesn’t realize it’s one? You could set up that the whole gang was going to bake bread together this weekend so when our protagonist packs a knife the reader assumes it’s for that; or you write that the protagonist has been bothered by itchy, red eyes so putting Visine in the bag seems perfectly natural until the reader learns later that this will be the poison slipped into a drink. You don’t want to be so on-point that it’s obvious: “I packed my knife– I hoped it wouldn’t get too bloody– and my Visine wasn’t going to be for my eyes…” That takes away the “a-ha” moment later. #4 Speaking of clues… One way to hide them in plain sight is to slip them in and around other things. I wrote a book where something in a fish tank was going to play a prominent role later in the book but I slipped it into a long descriptor: “The accouterments that Ken had insisted on in the aquarium gave me a smile. Seaweed and fake plants and coral of all colors, a small treasure chest speckled with jewels, a replica of a scuba diver’s helmet, and a sunken ship with portholes so large the little fish could dart in and out of it.” This way the one big thing (which was the treasure chest) seems like just a detail in a series of descriptions and the reader might breeze past it on first read. Another way to hide clues is to have something massive happen right after your clue that takes the reader’s attention away. “I was packing my overnight bag and put one large bottle of Visine in, then another. The sharp ring of the doorbell startled me. It was my friend, an hour early. Why was she here now? Something had to be wrong.” Now the reader is focused on the friend’s premature arrival rather than the fact that the protagonist packed an unusually high amount of Visine for a weekend. #5 Make it believable. An alien can’t just drop into your world if you have not set this up as sci-fi. Think of things that are shocking to the reader but not so unrealistic that they lose trust in you as an author and never pick up your work again. #6 A few final tips. Make sure your puzzle comes together in the end with absolutely no loose ends. Readers want to feel 100% satisfied when closing your book, not think ‘But what about that giant knife she packed? It was never mentioned again.” Remember too that not all of your clues may come to you in the first draft. In every book I have written I have gone back and layered in more clues. I have also taken characters who I thought were minor at first and given them a more prominent role because I suddenly thought of a new way they could play into the twist of the story. I encourage you to give yourself permission to drop in fresh easter eggs or change trajectories as you go. The bottom line: try a few things and have fun getting bendy and turny. It’s like organizing a giant party game or an escape room for your readers and it’s a blast. *** View the full article

Welcome to “Scene of the Crime,” a recurring column in which we examine single memorable scenes from crime movies. Scene: Quinlan’s Death Film: Touch of Evil (1958) The foggy climax of Touch of Evil takes place just over the border in Mexico, up and down an oil rig, and eventually a garbage dump in a river, as a drunken and slimy Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), who is suspected of a number of crimes by Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) including murder and falsifying evidence, is being questioned by his best friend, Police Sergeant Menzies (Joseph Calleia), who is wearing a wire. As Quinlan hobbles across the bridges over the garbage dump, his limp is apparent, and highly symbolic. Scholar John C. Stubbs has written, “Welles makes Quinlan a limping figure… Presumably this was done to give a visual emphasis to Quinlan’s moral twistedness, as Hawthorne did with Rodger Chillingworth and Shakespeare with Richard III.” It also reveals a kind of “psychological deterioration”: a physical manifestation that something is disjointed or unhinged about Quinlan. Stubbs argues that Quinlan has deteriorated already (his mind, much like his eventual death in the waters of the dump, is soggy), and, as evidenced by the fact that he groggily washes his hands in the muddy water in an equally Shakespearean manner, could have been driven to insanity. He walks with the cane sometimes, and abandons it at others; having Quinlan lose his cane occasionally hints the degree to which he has lost his mind. Stubbs argues, “The cane is discovered by Menzies after Quinlan leaves it behind in the hotel room where he strangled Uncle Joe. Welles sets up Pete’s discovery in advance by having Quinlan forget the cane once earlier. (He will forget it twice earlier in the movie.) We may see Quinlan’s act of forgetting his cane at the murder scene as another example of habitual forgetfulness or as a Freudian slip by a man who wishes finally to be caught.” Quinlan continues to behave in the manner of madman, as well. After confessing to Menzies, Quinlan grows suspicious, shoots his friend, and hurries down from the bridge to where he had been standing (captured by a canted frame, similarly to show the crookedness of what has just occurred) and collapses, belly-up, into a pile of soggy trash only to point his gun at Vargas. Here, Quinlan places an emphasis on the importance and integrity of the “front,” calling out to the retreating Vargas, “I don’t want to shoot you in the back,” and informing him that “this” (meaning Mexico, Vargas’s homeland and jurisdiction) “is where you’re gonna die.” He is wrong on both counts—he is the one shot in the gut, and in Mexico. Quinlan staggers about the trash for a few moments, before collapsing backwards once more, into the river. Quinlan is defined by his front—his gigantic, flabby stomach—and, in the film the “back” of things, in this film refers to concealment; with his death, and Vargas’s recording, the underbelly of Quinlan’s corrupt network is overturned when Quinlan dies belly-up. The “body” is an important aspect of Quinlan’s existence, not only because his body is a metaphor, itself, as giant and slimy as his own sub-governmental law enforcement body, rank with corruption, but also because, by trade, he deals in bodies—and, sometimes, body parts. According to scholar Eric M. Krueger “Quinlan mentions that an old lady found a shoe with a foot in it: the explosion blew Rudi and his girlfriend into rubble—human entrails to be scattered to the wind like piles of litter.” As a detective, it is his job to solve terrible occurrences such as this, and squash the pent-up tension and corruption in the town that causes such things, but he, a manipulator of people, and a dirty cop who plants evidence instead of digging it up, only piles up the rubble and missing pieces from his cases to aid him in his climb to relative power and respected position. Pieces of the trash he does not unearth are human remains—he can no longer tell the difference between the organic and the artificial, what is human and what is filth. He, himself, has grown too filthy, too big, too powerful for the heaps of trash he has created, and, “after thirty years of dirt,” he botches up and finally gets caught; “In the accusation scene where Vargas presents the evidence linking Quinlan to a frame-up in Sanchez, Quinlan makes a mess of himself by squashing an egg in his hand. This is, one can add, symbolic of what he’s done and is doing to his life.” Not only does this moment express that Quinlan has lost touch with the delicateness of life—or even artifacts that once held life—but, his own dehumanization (brought on by the accumulation of inhuman, or once-human debris), but it reveals that both of Quinlan’s bodies—corporal and administrative—are no longer subtle. Quinlan, though, has also polluted the environment with his personal corruption. “Welles,” claims Krueger, “by placing his story in the border-town cosmos, gives us the mad compliment to his theme. All that lies repressed in the mother country thrives on the surface in the border of humanity. It is a place, where anything can happen—where the underside of humanity is exposed.” As such, Quinlan finds his comeuppance, dying on his back in piles of garbage symbolic of the ones he, himself, has created. Not only has he created it himself, though, he has built it around himself—and trapped himself there. Unbeknownst to Quinlan, Vargas chases him up and down oil rigs and all through a garbage dump, recording his guilty testimony on a radio, but Quinlan has nowhere to run—he is trapped in that he has been set up by Vargas and Menzies (his best friend), but he is also actually unable to escape the from the mounds of garbage and putrid water of the garbage dump. This, argues scholar Susan P. Mains, is symbolic of what Quinlan has done to the Mexican side of the border—and the town of Tijuana. “The setting is not simply a backdrop, but rather reflects the entrapment of the characters: Quinlan cannot survive without being involved in cross-border crimes and investigations in order to overcome feeling responsible for his wife’s death. At this point in the film, he is a pig caught inside a pen he built himself, dying belly up, finally exposed. This final scene generally reinforces an “undoing” of Quinlan’s whole identity, exposing him for the vile creature he really is. After he shoots Mendies, and runs down to the river, the aforementioned overhead shot captures Quinlan kneeling over and washing his bloody hand in the dirty water. His body curled, he resembles a caterpillar. In his death scene, collapsing among garbage, he smells, he salivates, he sweats, and—his eyes popping out of his fleshy face, resembles a slug. His death among piles of garbage, and dirty water, and oilrigs reduces him to a waterbug or some other sort of a large, junkyard insect—an association he unwittingly articulates screaming at Menzies as he realized he is being both “bugged” and “tailed” by Vargas. Over the border, his true nature is revealed: he is filth, vermin. View the full article

I used to be a stalker. In college, I chose my study spots on the campus green so I’d have a direct line of sight to my crush’s dorm. A few years later, I pored over my work crush’s Facebook page, analyzing whether the woman he held close in a photo looked more like a sister or significant other. And sometimes, when that crush was in the break room, I made excuses to linger there too, washing out my mug so long my fingers nearly pruned—all to keep myself in his line of sight. This might be why it wasn’t a huge leap for me in my latest novel, Cross My Heart, to write a female character who engages in some stalking of her own—though, unlike my protagonist, Rosie, I’ve never stood outside a crush’s house at night, tracking him as he moves through the rooms. In fact, Rosie crosses all sorts of lines I never did, because her crush just happens to be the husband of her heart donor, a man she feels fated to meet, to fall in love with—no matter what she discovers as she scrutinizes his past and present. I’m certainly not the first to center a book around a female stalker. In the riveting Just One Look by Lindsay Cameron, a woman gains access to her coworker’s emails, obsesses over his seemingly perfect marriage—and becomes determined to take his wife’s place. Sarah Zachrich Jeng’s When I’m Her, a STEMinist delight best described as “Freaky Friday but make it a thriller,” features a protagonist who watches and memorizes every aspect of her former best friend’s life so she can literally switch bodies with her. And in the voicey and addictive Looker by Laura Sims, a woman begins to lose her grip on reality when she stalks a famous actress—who’s also her neighbor. These obsessive female characters have been popping up more and more in recent years, and one reason might just be the relatability factor. In fact, the reason I was so willing to write about my own instances of stalking at the beginning of this piece is because I’m confident I’m not the only woman who’s engaged in such behavior. Still, for most of us, keeping our eyes peeled for any sight of our crush, or investigating them on social media, is as far as we’ll go—which is why it’s so thrilling to follow a character who pushes the boundaries, who leans toward the extremes, who allows herself to act in ways we’d never let ourselves. “It’s like getting a peek into what might happen if we gave in to our most intrusive thoughts and desires,” says bookstagrammer Kayla of @kayreadwhat. “It’s a way to understand those raw, unfiltered impulses that drive us all.” At the risk of sounding a bit too unfiltered myself, there’s something almost aspirational about a stalker character. Briana of @brianas_best_reads says she loves “characters who are bold enough to take matters into their own hands—for better or worse. They’re compelling because they exude a level of confidence I can only imagine having.” In Cross My Heart, Rosie isn’t exactly confident; she’s frequently anxious about being perceived as “too much”—a phrase that more than one ex-boyfriend has ascribed to her—but every time she tries to put a lid on her enthusiasm, the intensity of her emotions boils over anyway. In short, she’s a mess, and in our society, messiness is not a characteristic to be celebrated in a woman. But when we read stalker-ish characters like Rosie, we get to watch women stray outside the lines, muck things up—in their own lives and others’—which can often scratch an itch for female readers that, in real life, they’ve been conditioned to ignore. Then there’s the power of it all. In crime fiction, there’s no shortage of female victims, whether they’re murdered, abducted, or forced to endure some other act of violence. This, of course, reflects the stark dangers that exist for women off the page, especially at the hands of men, and it’s important to shed light on those realities. But it’s just as important for readers to see that power dynamic flipped, to watch the woman become the danger instead of the endangered, to see the default male gaze swapped out for, in the case of stalkers, a literal female gaze. Sure, she’s got her eyes on someone who has no idea they’re being watched—her actions aren’t exactly ethical—but these days, our newsfeeds are clogged with stories of men behaving unethically, often with little to no consequences. While the #MeToo movement was a public reckoning that saw serial abusers like Harvey Weinstein finally held accountable, it was only four years after he was tried for his crimes that Weinstein saw his conviction overturned—not because of new evidence exonerating him, but because of a technicality: during the trial, the judge had allowed the testimony of women whose experiences with Weinstein predated the charges. In other words, there had been too much evidence of his crimes. Coming on the heels of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, this felt like another devastating blow to the decades of progress women have made, causing them to be more attuned than ever to the erosion of their rights and agency, and to the male-dominated groups making decisions about their lives and bodies. It’s understandable, then, that readers would find satisfaction in stories where female characters do exactly what they want, consequences and controversies be damned—just like so many men. For Gare of @gareindeedreads, it’s precisely the power-abusing men that make a female stalker character so irresistible. “You may not agree with her actions and behavior,” he says, but often it’s clear: “if it weren’t for the actions of a man, none of this would’ve happened.” Plus, he adds, “Women are smarter than men,” and what better way to showcase that than with a character who’s at her most calculated and cunning? Ultimately, though, whether you’re in it for the vicarious thrill or the feminist slant of it all, crime novels featuring female stalkers are just plain fun. Of course, it’s no surprise I would say that, having written one and having been a benign stalker myself, so don’t take it from me. Take it from Kendall of @sunflower_book_lover, who’s read plenty of books that use this trope: “These stories are wild and unhinged and oh so good. I’m obsessed with and addicted to the crazy ride!” *** View the full article

When my kids were little, I knew a momfluencer who rescheduled her kindergartener’s birthday party because the light wasn’t right for photos. I laughed, but underneath was jealous, because she clearly had the world’s most easygoing child. Mine would freak if I rescheduled a trip to the park, let alone a birthday party. I always knew that society judges mothers, but it wasn’t until I had children that I realized how much moms judge each other, and how much social media amps up the stress. Modern motherhood is struggle enough, and when you throw in the mommy-judging—which gets inside your head—well, the pressure can make a woman crack up. No wonder so many psychological thrillers, including my novel Clever Little Thing, feature a mother doing just that. Personally, I don’t pay much attention to momfluencers, and I have no interest in looking pretty for a photo while making sourdough pancakes in a prairie dress. But when I look in the mirror and worry that I look tired, or feel guilty for giving my kids boxed cereal for breakfast, who’s to say that these women haven’t wormed themselves into my brain anyway? It’s far worse if you take momfluencers seriously, as shown in Chelsea Bieker’s brilliant novel, Madwoman. Mother-of-two Clove obsesses about attaining the life of the perfect crunchy Instagram mom. She gets trapped in what Sara Petersen, author of the nonfiction book, Momfluenced, calls: a vicious cycle of aspiration, consumption, and self-loathing.” Clove compulsively shops for organic infant skin cream that costs $19 an ounce and performs #unplugged motherhood on Instagram with pictures of “my kids from the back skipping down narrow dirt paths.” But none of it makes her feel better until she realizes that what she needs to do isn’t to make motherhood look good, but to feel good, and she can only do this by resolving her relationship with her own mom. The second wave of momfluencers rebelled against curated perfection, and proclaimed their #authenticity. In Ellery Lloyd’s People Like Her, Emmy Jackson, aka @MamaBare, posts about endless bottom-wiping and splotches of spaghetti sauce on her shirt, and wants to start “a more authentic discussion about parenting.” But as long as a momfluencer is producing sponsored content, her life must be aspirational. When Emmy preps her home for a photo shoot, she makes sure the artful mess suggests #familyfun, including craft supplies and staging “a collapsed cushion fort.” Of course, truly authentic motherhood can’t be shown in #mamahoodinsquares, because the real thing is often too consuming and exhausting to document. In Clever Little Thing, my protagonist Charlotte watches videos other parents have posted of their kids’ meltdowns, hoping to feel solidarity about her daughter’s epic freakouts, but instead she feels alienated. “If you can take a step back and film it, it’s not that bad.” Chasing after the ideal #momlife is not only futile, but can interfere with actually being a mom. In novels, some desperate momfluencers put content first and kids second. In You Will Never Be Me, Aspen forces her young daughters to pretend to wake up and recite their lines ad nauseam until she has the perfect “morning routine” video. And in Erin Quinn-Kong’s Hate Follow, when her husband dies, momfluencer Whitney posts a shot of her eleven-year-old daughter, face contorted in grief, standing over his open coffin. When Mia later protests, Whitney doesn’t want to take it down, because the picture down, because it engages her fans emotionally. Mia eventually sues Whitney for violation of privacy. You can bet that other people judge Whitney and she judges herself. A mother internalizes the critical voices around her, whether she wants to or not. What mom hasn’t stressed about the right weaning food or sleep-training method and wondered if she’s doing it right? And when a child undergoes a mysterious and abrupt change—as Stella does in my novel—then the judgmental voices in her head can drive a woman mad. Charlotte’s task as a mother is to decide whether to listen to what everyone else is telling her is going on with her daughter, or to listen to her gut. And that isn’t easy, because when moms let momfluencers tell them what to do, they risk disconnecting from their own maternal instinct Motherhood today is overwhelming, thanks to the lack of traditional support networks, affordable childcare and neighborhood play. I’ve come to understand that judging others is a small way to get some power back when you feel powerless. In my novel, Charlotte judges other moms, but not because she’s a horrible person. She has no extended family support, everyone around her is telling her how to parent, and she gets no school support for her daughter’s neurodivergence. Judging others is her way of making herself feel a little better. I try not to judge other moms these days, even when their kid is seventeen years old and still only eats buttered pasta. I remind myself that nobody except the parents knows what it takes to take care of that particular kid, and that some of my parenting decisions doubtless seem eccentric to others too. This helps me to be more compassionate toward myself too, to blame myself less when my kids struggle. I don’t look at momfluencers on social media, because they test my resolve not to judge too much (as when @BallerinaFarm competed in a Mrs. World pageant days after giving birth). As for the momfluencer who rescheduled her kid’s birthday party, she made her way into my novel, as Charlotte’s friend Emmy, who always wears a chic, stripy ensemble, whose daughter Lulu sports Insta-worthy braids. Charlotte and Emmy judge each other. But over the course of the novel, they find that the one thing that can make you feel better than judging other moms is finding solidarity with them. I wish I could say that I made friends with the real-life momfluencer. I tried. I thought that despite her oversized sunglasses and invariably stripy sundress, despite her three well-behaved daughters in matching outfits, underneath she was surely just a mess like every other mom I knew. But I never got her to admit it. So I made friends with the women like me, whose idea of chic was a shirt that the kids had not wiped their noses on. Women who admitted they were cracking up under the pressure of motherhood. And these are the women I love to read about. It disturbs me to look the feed of a mom who seems to have it all figured out. But it’s strangely comforting to read a thriller about a mom who loses it. *** View the full article

When I read technology news these days, I feel impressed and excited—and mostly terrified. We’re advancing so quickly, with so many pitfalls. Self-driving cars that crash, Bitcoin scams that deplete retirement savings, deepfake videos that can change election outcomes, algorithms that redirect children to step-by-step instructions for self-harm. It’s sometimes hard to know how to talk about the risks of technologies that seemed implausible until about five minutes ago. Enter tech thrillers, which peel back the ethical layers of our relationship to technology, entertaining us while also forcing us to confront the consequences of constant innovation. The term “thriller” is notoriously vague. Some people think a thriller must have spies or gunfights. Others expect a marital cat-and-mouse. To me, a thriller is simply a novel that’s fast-paced and exciting (a subjective assessment, to be sure), with a dark tone and life-or-death consequences. In tech thrillers, that darkness is rooted in the ever-mounting tensions between technology and human nature. These novels usually involve some speculative element, exaggerating an existing technology to throw its dangers into relief. Robots become fully sentient. Virtual reality becomes completely immersive. Devices begin actively surveilling humans. Lately, these fictional scenarios tend to focus on artificial intelligence—not surprising, given the increasingly urgent public conversations about AI. When reading these novels, it can sometimes be hard to tell where the real technology ends and the speculative technology starts. With artificial intelligence and biotech evolving minute-to-minute, some readers might incorrectly identify some very real threats as imaginary. This is the challenge and the risk of writing about technology. In the years it takes to write a book (or even in the twelve months it takes to go from copyedits to bookshelves), the world can evolve to make the novel’s contents obsolete—or all too real. Some deepfake horrors that I added to my latest novel, Vantage Point, seemed speculative when I started writing it, and are now accepted parts of reality. Colin Winnette, whose recent novel Users offers a damning look inside a near-future virtual-reality company, had a similar experience: “I wrote what I thought was a kind of exaggeration of reality, and then over the course of the book’s publication, reality quickly caught up with that exaggeration and everything in the book seemed suddenly more possible in a way I hadn’t really anticipated. It was kind of thrilling, but also terrifying.” The best tech thrillers embrace this risk. The books on this list are living on the blade edge of progress, using fiction’s vast possibilities to imagine what comes next, for tech and for the people who use it. In a world where tech companies pursue innovation for innovation’s sake, these novels redirect our focus to the human element, trying to anticipate the potential social costs of these advances. And they do it in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. Michael Crichton, Prey You can’t talk about techno-thrillers without talking about Michael Crichton, and it’s almost impossible to choose a best novel from his famous body of work. But while Crichton is probably best remembered for his treatment of biological technology in The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park (for which I will always have a soft spot, having spent most of my childhood wearing out the VHS tapes of the movie adaptations), the book that best captures the potential horror inherent in artificial intelligence is his 2002 novel Prey, in which scientists develop a type of nanobots that become sentient and murderous, capable of infesting and devouring humans. As the killer swarms begin infecting the scientists who created them, a computer programmer must act quickly to destroy the swarms before they kill his loved ones. One section in which nanobots create perfect replicas of characters resonates with contemporary conversations about deepfakes, and the novel overall speaks to rising fears about artificial intelligence becoming autonomous. Samanta Schweblin, Little Eyes Have you ever had a conversation with a friend about an ocean-themed costume party and then gotten an Instagram ad for shark onesies a few hours later? Have you ever wondered how much our devices truly see into our lives? If so, you might empathize with the characters in Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes, translated into English by Megan McDowell. In the universe Schweblin imagines, the world has become enchanted with kentukis, an electronic pet equipped with a camera that allows people thousands of miles away to observe your every move. Through short chapters spanning the globe, Schweblin tracks the allure and danger of these Tamagotchis-on-steroids, exploring how far people will go in search of connection. The novel’s structure is more fragmented and experimental than your typical thriller, but the foreboding tone and pervasive violence can go head-to-head with the darkest crime fiction. Sierra Greer, Annie Bot Sierra Greer took the book world by storm last spring with Annie Bot, a novel narrated by a sex robot who gains sentience at her owner’s request, then starts to dream of a life beyond him. This novel is a clever twist on the classic domestic thriller, using the intimate environment of a home to broach broader societal conversations about freedom and artificial intelligence. After all, “sex and lies” has a whole new meaning when one party was invented for sex and has only learned how to lie. Greer executes the concept beautifully: Annie’s voice is the perfect blend of robotic and human. I loved seeing Annie gradually come into her autonomy, learning to fend for herself and protect others, even as her thwarted owner becomes increasingly violent and vengeful. In most of the other novels on this list, technological developments are the source of danger. In Annie Bot, the tech itself is the protagonist. This reversal creates a psychological thrill ride that also delivers a powerful commentary on power, identity, and humanity. Ken Liu, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories I learned about Ken Liu’s work from one of my students, Luis Ferrer, who wrote his senior thesis on Liu this fall. This collection pulls together eighteen stories and a novel excerpt, some of which take place in fantasy worlds or distant futures. But the collection also features other stories that speak to more specific present fears. There’s a series of several linked stories beginning with “The Gods Will Not Be Chained”—the series Luis focused on, and which was also the inspiration for the TV show Pantheon—set in a world where it has become possible to upload individuals’ brains to computers, turning them into digital consciousnesses and effectively allowing their minds to “live” forever. In another story, “Byzantine Empathy,” cryptocurrency-literate nonprofits begin turning real atrocities into violent VR experiences to shock users into donating. The story that hit me a little too close to home was “Real Artists,” in which an aspiring filmmaker learns that the films she loves are secretly made by artificial intelligence. An advanced algorithm called “Big Semi” tracks audiences’ real-time responses and creates countless story iterations until it reaches the “exact emotional curve guaranteed to make them laugh and cry in the right places”—then uses this information to make “perfect films.” When Big Semi’s film studio offers the protagonist a job, she discovers that in this world (as in our own), AI’s success depends on the exploitation of human creative expertise. *** View the full article

Imagine waking up one morning and deciding to become William Shakespeare. You have fantasized about it for years and now you’re taking the fateful step. Overcome by a heady mixture of zeal, naivete, and hubris, you’re freed from feelings of shame or guilt. Although you live in the late eighteenth rather than the early seventeenth century, time won’t be an impediment for you because you’re gifted, studious, and even visionary in a deranged sort of way. Your father is a renowned collector of the original Shakespeare’s works, an authority in the field, so this transition is in your blood. Most importantly, when you present him with your handiwork he will finally come to love you. You acquire some period paper, mix the correct tone of iron gall ink, sharpen your quill. Then, in secret, you write a love letter to your wife “Anne Hatherrewaye” and attach to it a lock of his—well, your—hair bound elegantly with pink and white silk thread you find in your mother’s sewing basket. Next, you scribe some hitherto unknown poems for Anne and, emboldened, fabricate passages of the original manuscripts of Hamlet and King Lear. You produce missives to Queen Elizabeth I. Careful not to create anachronisms, you autograph and annotate the margins of books printed before the original Shakespeare’s death in 1616. Out of fear that one of the Elizabethan playwright’s legitimate descendants might step forward to lay claim to the growing sheaf of valuable artifacts you’ve so expertly forged, you counterfeit a genealogy that proves the trove is rightfully yours. To this end, you prepare a legal document in which your alter ego—grateful for having been rescued by one of your imaginary ancestors from going to a watery grave in the River Thames—gifts him this archive in 1613. You even manufacture a coat of arms that combines your family’s with his. ___________________________________ William Henry Ireland’s elaborately forged love letter with hair locket from Shakespeare to Ann Hathaway. (Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.) ___________________________________ Your distinguished father is so proud of you for discovering these miraculous long-lost treasures that he publishes a book to memorialize your achievement. To your anxious delight, Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakspeare [sic] becomes a bestselling cause célèbre in 1796, the same year Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk appears, a lurid Gothic novel that also relies upon deceits and masked identities. It isn’t long before your worst fears come true, and your reputation is annihilated by the eagle-eyed critic Edmund Malone, who accuses you of fraud that same fraught year. Soon enough, you are forced to confess. Your real name is William Henry Ireland and you are destined to become one of the more notorious con men in the history of literary forgery. And you are far from alone in your criminal endeavor. * Literary forgery is as old as literature itself. “As soon as man set foot on the slopes of Parnassus,” wrote E. K. Chambers in his fascinating 1891 treatise The History and Motives of Literary Forgeries, “the shadow of the forger fell on the path behind him. The first historian records the first literary fraud.” Chambers here refers to Herodotus—heralded by Cicero as the “Father of History” and later excoriated as the “Father of Lies” by Plutarch since he played fast and loose with historical facts, concocting events in his Histories whenever he didn’t have first-hand knowledge and it suited his purposes. The faker of history, however, told the truth when he fingered its first forger. To wit, an Athenian scholar named Onomacritus (circa 530–480 BC), who was tasked with compiling and editing the oracles of poet-polymath Musaeus. For reasons we can only guess, based on the motivations of later forgers, this devious scribe, or chresmologue, started inventing his own prophecies and verses, interleaving them with Musaeus’s originals. Herodotus accurately states that when Onomacritus was inevitably caught—one Lasus of Hermione, a lyric poet, snitched—he was exiled to Persia where he simply continued his faux-oracular shenanigans, even urging Xerxes the Great to invade Greece. Which he did. These days when people think of forgers, Lee Israel comes to mind, in no small part because of Melissa McCarthy’s riveting performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me?. But compared to Onomacritus and William Henry Ireland and other high-stakes forgers of the past who manipulated the historic record in far more technically sophisticated, intellectually cunning, and ethically diabolical ways, Israel is a minor figure in an illustrious if corrupt pantheon of literary scammers. Just as Ireland the forger was the son of Ireland the pundit, many accomplished forgers—most of them men—have been the children not of finaglers and fraudsters but of upstanding literary citizens in their day (or else absent fathers). The son of the now pretty-much forgotten poet Eugene Field, genial nineteenth-century author of children’s verse like “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” and “Little Boy Blue,” would himself be entirely forgotten were it not for his being a prolific forger. And because Eugene Field, Jr. specialized in faking Abraham Lincoln documents, forging the president’s ownership autograph in books from his uncle’s library, today is he part of a large rogues’ gallery of Lincoln forgers. After the president’s assassination in 1865 and well into the next century, members of this cohort of Lincoln “specialists” were busy reinventing honest Abe’s life and work. Their backstories are often so freakish as to seem unreal. Take Mario Terenzio Enrico Casalengo, an Italian immigrant who changed his name to Henry Woodhouse after being released from prison for manslaughter in upstate New York. Unbowed, he reinvented himself as a credible scientist, aeronautics expert, economist, historian. And forger. Woodhouse—or Colonel Woodhouse, or Dr. Woodhouse, as he styled himself while ascending into higher echelons of society—produced fake Lincoln documents as well as missives by the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He even forged letters by his newfound friends Teddy Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, and Alexander Graham Bell, to name a few. At some point Woodhouse decided to position his creations side by side with authentic materials—not unlike his ancient predecessor, Onomacritus—though he did so in order to sell them at Gimbels Department Store in Manhattan, not archive them in the repositories of the tyrant Pisistratus in Athens. And while he served time for killing a fellow cook (yes, he was a professional cook, too) and his illicit expertise was sometimes called into question, the good doctor Woodhouse was, astonishingly, never exposed as a forger during his lifetime. ___________________________________ Two Lincoln letters, one by Lincoln and one by the notorious Joseph Cosey, both dated 1863. (Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, The Library of Congress.) ___________________________________ If Abraham Lincoln has the unhappy distinction of being among the most forged of historical figures—maybe the most frequently forged of all—at least he attracted the best of the worst. Others famous for their first-rate simulacra of Lincoln documents are Harry D. Sickles (Field Jr.’s partner-in-crime), John Laffite (or Laflin—names are fluid in the forgers’ subculture), and the masterly if careless Charles Weisberg, who died in Lewisburg Prison in Pennsylvania, serving one of several sentences after being convicted on fraud charges. The ink he used in supposed Civil War documents was wrong for the era. He wrote lengthy Lincoln letters though Lincoln himself tended toward brevity. His last gaffe was to write an authorial inscription in Katherine Mansfield’s posthumously published The Dove’s Nest. You can, as a wise man once said, always get it right most of the time. Arguably, the greatest of them all was Joseph Cosey. Born Martin Coneely in 1887, he ran away from home and led a solitary, shady existence as a small-time crook, living hand to mouth as he developed a taste for alcohol and phony Lincoln letters. Under the alias “Cosey,” he produced with legendary ease many thousands of unsurpassed forgeries of Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Edgar Allan Poe. If you bought him a drink at a bar, he would knock out a masterful forgery for you on the spot; buy him another, get another. An unknown but likely considerable number of his forgeries remain unidentified to this day, reposing in private collections and temperature-controlled archives of institutions around the country, indeed the world. Some of them have even been unwittingly cited in biographies of Poe and others, perverting our knowledge of influential writers and historical figures, revising American history itself. The mere mention of Cosey can provoke an apoplectic response from otherwise refined, mannerly collectors of 19th-century Americana. I’ve seen this fury first-hand and appreciate the exasperation of being deceived by Cosey even decades after his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1950. To buy unknowingly an immaculate fake for the same money that an original fetches, only to learn later that it’s by Cosey, not Jefferson or Twain, is a vexing and expensive misstep. The most seasoned collector has at some point or another been duped, at least temporarily, by forgers nowhere near as sophisticated as Cosey. Myself included, details to follow. ** Equal in skill to Cosey, but with an antithetical lifestyle and approach to forgery, was Thomas J. Wise (1859-1937), the well-liked, esteemed dean of book collecting in his day as well as an illustrious bibliographer—president of the Bibliographical Society, no less. His Ashley Library was among England’s finest in private hands, subsidized by his shrewd dealings as a behind-the-scenes bookseller. He also covertly printed severely limited editions of pamphlets by the likes of Tennyson, Kipling, Rossetti, and Swinburne, editing them together from genuine published texts, then falsely dating them earlier than their first editions. Any serious, completist collector of one of his counterfeited writers really had to add these manufactured rarities to their holdings. Given Wise’s impeccable reputation in London and abroad, together with the fact that he catalogued his fakes alongside genuine first editions in his erudite, elegant bibliographies, the scheme was, for a long time, failsafe. When Wise personally offered a “newly discovered” Browning or Shelley or Ruskin to a prospective buyer, money usually passed hands and all involved were satisfied with the transaction. The British Museum was happy to pay the then-strong price of three guineas for a copy of his George Eliot pamphlet, Brother and Sister Sonnets by Marian Lewes. This fall I visited Washington University in St. Louis to speak at the centenary celebration of writer William H. Gass. While touring the library I noticed there was an exhibit of forgeries on display. In one glass case I saw a pamphlet that looked for all the world to be Wise’s Brother and Sister Sonnets. But here was a fake of a fake—strange as some two-headed calf, I remember thinking as I peered at it through the glass. Amazingly, I’d encountered a later fabrication of Thomas J. Wise’s original forgery from 1888 (which Wise had backdated to 1869 on the cover and title page, designating it “For Private Circulation Only”). Surely Wise might never have guessed that, years later, some obscure American forger would decide to counterfeit his counterfeit. They look—as good piracies are supposed to look—alike. The only way to tell the difference, as the curator of rare books, Cassie Brand, noted while touring me through her selection, is that the later “creation. . .used a fleuron on the corners of the cover and left out the horizontal line at the end of the text.” Without that devilment of a detail, none would be the— Wise was run to ground in 1934 by an intrepid pair of young rare book dealers, John W. Carter and Henry Graham Pollard, who published their shocking landmark bibliographic investigation, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets, three years before Wise died. While the authors never explicitly accused him of wrongdoing, controversy swirled around him and he went to his grave denying any involvement. *** Given what a precision craft forgery is, it’s intriguing that pride, precociousness, diffidence, depression, alcoholism, and a tendency to suicide feature in the lives of many of its finest practitioners. While some are gregarious, like Wise, and others reclusive, like Cosey, most major forgers possessed the intellect, creativity, and energy to have pursued legitimate careers as historians, poets, professors, and the like, socially negotiable but for one countermanding trait. In some way or another, all forgers—even those who create fakes to make ends meet—share a compulsion to outwit experts and outmaneuver authorities. The elite among them try to transcend accepted reality, nudge their bizarre way into the known, be a player in history from a skewed and illegal angle. The genius of an authentic writer dovetails with, and is temporarily subsumed by, the forger’s own genius. With a defiant, willful, and full flowering of hubris, they aspire briefly to become the very person they forge. It is an intoxicating enterprise, this fusion of imagination and chicanery. A white collar (or ruff, as the case may be) crime as sophisticated as it is deplorable. It is also, largely, doomed. Just as most deceits eventually unravel, most forgeries sooner or later are identified and exposed. Examples abound. In one recent case, a Galileo document dating from 1610, with historically groundbreaking sketches and notes depicting the orbits of Jupiter’s moons, resided at the University of Michigan Library for a century before being outed in August 2022 as the work of the infamous 20th-century Italian forger Tobia Nicotra. Following extensive research into the document, focusing on a telltale watermark of the paper used by Nicotra, the library announced that their once-priceless “jewel” was a fake and, as a result, the revisionist history of Galileo prompted by this manuscript required yet another revision. While one might reasonably assume that all such proven forgeries would instantly lose their value, be relegated to the category of worthless curiosities, this is not always the case. Indeed, some counterfeits and forgeries are collectible in themselves and even boast values similar to the originals. In the Sotheby’s October 18, 2024 sale of books from the magnificent Renaissance library of T. Kimball Brooker, an authentic 1502 copy of Dante’s Le terze rime—the Divine Comedy—one of eight known copies printed on vellum in Venice at the Aldine press, beautifully illuminated, brought $165,100. Several lots later, the Gabiano-Trot forgery of the same book printed on vellum just a year or so after in Lyon, France—the first edition of Dante ever printed outside Italy—was hammered down at a competitive $158,750. The intrigue behind Lyonese Aldine counterfeits is the stuff of legend, and in the history of intellectual property theft it is hardly surpassable for prowess, guts, and mendacity. **** Were there a Forgers Hall of Fame—or, Infamy—influential sleight-of-handwriting artists would certainly include the precocious, deeply troubled Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), who committed suicide in London by overdosing on alcohol at age 17, but not before brilliantly forging the spurious, inspired “Rowley” poems that would have a major impact on the Romantic poets Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley. Scottish poet, politician, and collector James MacPherson (1736-1796) claimed to have discovered and translated a Scottish/Gaelic epic from the third century by a Bard named Ossian. Though the subject of withering attacks of critics like Samuel Johnson who claimed the “Ossian cycle” was a fraud, MacPherson’s forgery proved popular and is credited, for worse or better, with helping to fashion Scotland’s national self-image. The list is long. Denis Vrain-Lucas forged and sold over 25,000 documents beginning in 1854, including “original” letters from Cleopatra, Isaac Newton, Attila the Hun, Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate, and even the resurrected Lazarus—all in French. Alexander “Antique” Smith, a Scottish law office clerk turned forger in the 1880s, cranked out a vast number of “unpublished” letters and poems by Burns, Scott, and Thackeray. Robert Spring migrated from England to America, erased his past, and set up an antiquarian bookshop in Philadelphia where he commenced forging payment orders and letters by George Washington and others. He was arrested, fled to Canada, returned to America, leaving a trail of fake documents in his wake until he was apprehended again, confessed, and died in prison. Like Cosey and Wise, Spring now has the distinction of being collected in his own right as an upmarket forger whose work, whether or not identified as fake, is no doubt held in the archives of prestigious collections. It is safe to say that most university or public libraries of any size could mount a similar exhibit of literary forgeries as compelling as the one in St. Louis. Even my own book collection includes a problematic copy of the 1919 first English edition of Joseph Conrad’s The Arrow of Gold, with an elaborate armorial bookplate of Baron Leverhulme of Bolton-le-Moors, whose engraved insignia of a cock and rampant elephants lends it an impressive air of authenticity. Laid in is a clipping from an early bookseller’s catalogue offering this copy as having “Conrad’s autograph signature below his printed name on the title page.” Yet despite its persuasive provenance and expert assurances, despite its signature appearing to be contemporary and confident in its execution, my signed Conrad is surely a forgery. Many details of the autograph seem wrong, beginning with the shapes of the initial letters of his name along with an overall studied appearance—overly careful, deliberate, antiseptic, and simply misshapen. Fortunately, when I acquired it at auction, the lot included another first edition of Arrow in superlative condition, which was the one I actually wanted. To their credit, the auction house listed the signed copy as possibly spurious. ___________________________________ The authoritative provenance and early bookseller’s assurance of authenticity (left) and the sad truth (right). (Author’s collection.) ___________________________________ Some years later, two Cormac McCarthy rarities I acquired from a highly respected auction house in London were so cleverly wrought that they fooled both the firm’s seasoned cataloguer and me, an experienced collector and sometime dealer. I had never before seen proof copies of the British editions of McCarthy’s early novels Outer Dark and Child of God, so I went for broke and outbid others anxious to get them. They arrived, clearly uncirculated and pristine, and after cataloguing them, I gingerly put them on my shelf with other McCarthy firsts. Alas, several months later I received an email from my friend at the house, apologizing as he told me they were forgeries. The design layout, the covers, the text itself were cleverly cobbled together. Even though it came out of a prominent collection belonging to one McCarthy’s own friends, it was wrong as rain. ***** Picasso once remarked that “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” Forgers do both. And whether we think of them as twisted imitators, diabolical artificers, antiauthoritarian heroes, or whatever else, it is reasonable to believe that they will continue to cast shadows where legitimate writers tread. As E. K. Chambers long ago suggested, those of us who value originals over fakes will ever owe gratitude to the Lasus of Hermiones, Edmund Malones, Carter and Pollards of the world for revealing the truth. After all, the history of literary forgery is still actively being made. More than one bookseller friend of mine is even now involved in exposing brazen forgeries of iconic modern writers. Veteran rare book dealer Ken Lopez, just for instance, was asked by a client to authenticate Cormac McCarthy’s signature in a previously unrecorded proof copy of Outer Dark. With the help of his assistant, photographer Brendan Devlin, they caught “telltale inkjet color spots” on the proof and through a combination of technical scrutiny and decades of expertise, both proof and autograph were declared fakes. As Lopez wrote to me, with typical modesty, “It was just a matter of looking and paying attention.” What followed was the discovery of a massive cascade of far-flung forgeries meant to alter both McCarthy’s bibliography and biography. An impressive “Illustrated Edition” of Blood Meridian was even in the works. Thanks to Lopez’s “paying attention,” a collaborative pair of ambitious McCarthy forgers, whose methods were akin to Wise’s, was exposed. ___________________________________ Sophisticated McCarthy forgeries of British proof copy and illustrated Blood Meridian. (Photographs by by Brendan Devlin. Courtesy of Ken Lopez.) ___________________________________ This kind of ongoing work represents just the kind of erudite, diligent, passionate investigation that will bring forgers to heel at least most of the time. For, as long as writers write and forgers forge, there will be astute, idealistic book sleuths—often book dealers, auction houses, and librarians—shining true light into devious shadows. Indeed, on the very day I finished writing this piece, I attended online an auction taking place in Texas, where the first edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s ultra-rare first book, The Shunned House, was listed in the sumptuous print catalog of the William A. Strutz sale. But when the auction went live, I noticed the internet listing had been revised: “*Note: This description has been amended, and the references used have been updated. The present copy is the 1965 forgery as described by Joshi.” Unbeknown to one of the great collectors of his generation, The Shunned House had resided in a place of honor, shelved between Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Amy Lowell, for decades before a sophisticated auction cataloger flushed it out as a fake. Even at that, however, it was hammered down at well over a thousand dollars. And so it goes. ****** Note. The author is grateful to Janet E. Gomez whose essay in Fakes, Lies, and Forgeries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2014) was crucial to my research on Henry Ireland. Thanks also to Selby Kiffer and Fenella Theis at Sotheby’s, Cassie Brand at Washington University Library, Hannah Elder at Massachusetts Historical Society, Michael North at Library of Congress, and Ken Lopez, for their time and expertise. View the full article

When it comes to our understanding of crime and criminals, lawyers and novelists—and lawyers-turned-novelists—might offer the same caution: presume nothing. At the forefront of this elite group of storytellers is attorney Scott Turow, who redefined the legal thriller with 1986’s Presumed Innocent. A breakout bestseller now largely considered a contemporary classic, the book inspired a feature film starring Harrison Ford and a more recent streaming adaptation for Apple TV with Jake Gyllenhaal. Turow has now published thirteen novels and two works of non-fiction, which have been translated into more than forty languages and sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide. His newest, Presumed Guilty (Grand Central Publishing; January 14, 2025), is his third to feature former prosecutor and retired judge Rusty Sabich. Sabich—twice tried for murder (in Presumed Innocent and its sequel), and twice acquitted—is living a quiet life in the Midwest, where he’s engaged to be married to school principal Bea Housley. They share a lakefront home with her and her 22-year-old son, Aaron, whom she adopted at birth. Aaron—a Black man raised in White America—is on probation for a drug offense and faces reincarceration after violating the terms to go camping with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Mae. But things go from bad to worse when Aaron returns alone and Mae is later found dead, the victim of an apparent homicide. Aaron is soon charged with first-degree murder, and Bea implores Rusty to represent him. Doing so would be a personal and professional quagmire, and yet Rusty— failing to find a suitable alternative, and knowing full well how hard it would be for Aaron to get a fair trial—reluctantly agrees. With Aaron’s freedom at stake, not to mention his future contentment with Bea, Rusty must put it all on the line in the hopes of winning a case that has torn the community apart—and that will have consequences regardless of the outcome. Now, Scott Turow discusses the rules of law (and writing), race, and revisiting Rusty Sabich … John B. Valeri: As a title, Presumed Guilty isn’t simply a callback to Presumed Innocent but an acknowledgement that perceptions can beget judgments regardless of the actual truth. Please expand on this notion and how it relates to these two stories. Also, what compelled you to revisit Rusty Sabich at this moment in time — and did you find it a calculated risk to do so given how (and when) things were left in Innocent? Scott Turow: So many fruitful questions. Yes, perceptions are reality—until they’re not. Because my novels are more internal than some in this genre, my protagonists’ inner life often leads him/her astray. It often amazes me how frequently we blunder through life, living with wrong assumptions. But suspending judgment, reaching no conclusions at all about what is going on in the life of others, seems vaguely immoral—we need to try to understand what is transpiring outside the boundaries of our own skins. Fiction itself depends on that. As for why I went back to Rusty, I had suspected when I finished Innocent that Rusty and I were destined to spend intimate time once more. His life was so shattered at the end of Innocent that I felt he might have deserved better. As for what he’d been through, everybody in their later years has endured some stuff. Surviving cancer, loss of loved ones, time in war. Rusty has a little more unusual list to trot out on a first date—time in prison, tried twice for murder—but as he recognizes, he has an easier path than some, since it’s broadly accepted that he was framed—twice, in fact, by a vengeful prosecutor. This is yet another misperception, in some ways, the who if not the what, but he has condemned the real facts, as he understands them, to a tomb of silence. JBV: Aaron is a Black man who was adopted into a white family immediately after birth. In what ways does his race color (some) people’s attitudes and impressions of him, no matter how subtly, and might this impact his ability to get a fair trial? ST: I doubt that any white person in our country—certainly not this white person—can fully understand the lived experience of African Americans, as it occurs day by day, even though I am always cautious about any stereotype. I doubt racism affects all Black people equally. For some it’s a bitter fact most moments of everyday; for others, I suspect, it’s like bad weather, regrettable but something to be accepted in the category of things they can’t change. But as Aaron points out, growing up black in a white family is a special case, because the racial divide is less stark. Aaron came of age loving and being loved by his white family, which makes the prejudgments of other white people about him often more surprising and embittering. But he understands from the start that in a place like Marenago County, where most residents have had next to no exposure to African Americans, the racial prejudice, where it exists, will be strong. JBV: How did you approach capturing the essential truth of his experience despite not having lived it yourself? ST: First, I don’t accept that a white author could never fully recreate the experience of being black. But it’s a very steep hill to climb, starting with the number of readers who’d say to start that it can’t be done. At any rate, I was quite conscious that what I was relating, to a very large extent, were Rusty’s perceptions, not Aaron’s. Rusty knows what he’s seen—and as he says to Bea, no one in the U.S. is really well-adjusted about matters of race—but he accepts as a starting point that he has not lived with the same realities as Aaron. The last scene with Aaron in the jail delves deeply into these differences—but they are always acknowledged. And of course, I solicited the views of a reader who’d grown up in similar circumstances. She had some minor corrections but generally approved of what I’d done. JBV: Rusty – both very much the man for the job and very much not – is understandably conflicted about defending Aaron. Tell us about the factors he must weigh in making his decision. ST: You could not have put that better—Rusty is very much the man for the job and very much not. As a general matter, representing family members is not recommended for lawyers, because of the enormous challenges to objectivity. Can you really dispassionately judge the credibility of the client relative, who will never leave your life? In this case, Rusty has a thin veneer of protection because he and Bea are not yet married, so he has no legal relationship to Aaron. But it’s far from an ideal situation. On the other hand, in the unusual circumstances of this case, he comes with two pluses: first, as he puts it, he will work cheap, meaning he will not leave Aaron and his parents broke as a consequence of paying an enormous fee to another lawyer to conduct the trial. Second, he is far more experienced in first-degree murders trials than any other lawyer who is available in a rural area—and it’s very much the case that any attorney with a ‘city shine’ would be regarded with suspicion by a rural jury. Talk about prejudices! JBV: Also, what are the potential consequences of this decision, and how are they inordinately heightened by his personal involvement with both Aaron’s and the victim’s families? ST: The sharp irony is that in the end, it’s the factor that makes this a bad idea that moves Rusty to do it. He is desperate to preserve his relationship with Bea, and Bea is desperate to see Rusty take the case. He believes he has no way out. If he says no and Aaron is convicted, she will always believe he could have done better than whoever represented Aaron in the end and blame Rusty for the result. JBV: The victim, Mae, had a history of drug abuse and erratic behavior that could be relevant to her death and who may have caused it. But bringing out those things in court opens the door to the perception (there’s that word again!) of victim blaming and/or shaming, which can be off-putting. What was your intent in presenting her character, proverbial warts, and all – and how does this speak to the broader, real-life issue of attorneys towing the line between truth and tarnish? ST: Well, victim blaming may be looked down upon as a cultural matter, but in the courtroom it’s tried and true—and I would argue, for good reason. It is certainly the case, as Mae’s parents believe, that it seems like bringing out Mae’s problems diminish the crime, seeming to suggest that her life was ‘worth’ less. But her erratic behavior, which hardly started the day she died, also goes to explain some of the damning circumstances of the crime, like why Aaron left her behind in a sparsely inhabited area. JBV: While conventional storytelling wisdom extols the virtues of showing the reader something rather than telling them, trials are very much about telling in order to show (and many of this book’s most dramatic moments come from what is said in court). Can you talk about this seeming conflict and how you balance the two in your writing? ST: Well, clearly a lot gets said in court. And in terms of the circumstances of the crime, as the prosecutor perceives them, and as the defense reveals them to be, there are a lot of outright surprises (or so I hope) but as for Rusty’s emotional state, the strategy is more typical, shown more than told. JBV: Further, tell us how Rusty’s age and reflective state of mind play into how he narrates this particular book. ST: Rusty has never been anything other than self-conscious, a determined observer. Knowing that he is participating in a criminal trial for the last time, after a lifelong career centered in this forum, there is a lot to say—accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the shortcomings of the process. With so much at stake emotionally, his perceptions are to some extent a buffer for his feelings. He observes, rather than succumb to his dread of the outcome and the wreckage that might be his life in the aftermath. JBV: While trials are inherently dramatic, the proceedings can also be tedious. What liberties do you allow yourself to take for the sake of story – and, using that as a point of reference, what advice would you offer to others when considering creative license with the overall integrity of a piece? ST: Of course, when you are the lawyer trying a case every moment is dramatic, even the legal rulings that seem trivial or unintelligible to lay observers, because something is happening that you feel is important for your side—otherwise, there’d be no argument. That becomes the advantage of telling the story from the trial lawyer’s perspective, because he so often understands the stakes in moments outsiders might find boring—whether to move for a mistrial, for example, or a judge’s attitude toward an objection. I have no quarrel with the short handing of trials that is often necessary, especially in time-limited media like film. but I’ve never gone for changing the rules, maybe because I know that if I was in the audience it would totally disrupt my suspension of disbelief. I don’t go through the jury instructions conference in Presumed Guilty. but I’d never pretend that the judge doesn’t give the jury instructions. JBV: As a former practicing lawyer, you know better than most that justice isn’t always done. What satisfaction, or wish fulfillment, does fiction allow you that real-life sometimes doesn’t? ST: When I wrote the first draft of Presumed Innocent, I didn’t say who’d committed the crime. My excuse to myself was that was like what happens in court, where, after an acquittal especially, we don’t know who’s really guilty or how the crime occurred. That provoked a long heart to heart with myself, which took place over many months, in which I ultimately accepted that the premise of the mystery is that we can always know whodunnit and why. JBV: Since retirement, have you found that your relationship with the work has changed? If so, how? ST: I’m still not fully retired. I have one remaining pro bono case, which keeps me pretty engaged with the law at times. But I doubt surrendering the reins entirely will do much to change my perspectives. Being a trial lawyer is such an intense experience, that it is more or less burned into your soul like a brand. The one difference is that with less law to practice I’ve been able to write faster, which is a good outcome as you’re getting older when there still seems to be a lot to say JBV: Leave us with a teaser: What comes next? ST: I’m in the cogitative stage. But I believe the next book will start with a very old lawyer who consults the obituaries, as he does every day, and finds a death notice for a man he was certain had been murdered nearly fifty years before by a central figure in the old lawyer’s life. View the full article

I’m a TV writer by profession, and when I’m not staffing a show, I develop TV series adaptations with the goal of selling one to a buyer. My favorite novel genres to adapt are mysteries and thrillers because I love suspenseful, propulsive storytelling and because thrillers make damn good TV. TV shows demand action and surprises that compel a viewer to keep watching, and since suspense novels are built around twists, with chapters that end on cliffhangers, they lend well to adaptation. In the Age of Streaming, where thousands of TV shows across 400 networks compete for attention, it’s incredibly difficult for a series to gain traction, but a delicious thriller can quickly amass an audience. If I spark to a novel, I develop my “take”—a 20-minute pitch on how I would adapt the book into an on-going series. When pitching a series, the most important question I need to answer is Why Now? A thriller novel with a strong hook and a juicy twist is great, but one that has something to say, that sparks discussion around a timely, compelling theme, is undeniable. Think Big Little Lies, with its examination of domestic violence among the elites, or Codename Villanelle (the source material for Killing Eve), with its rare depiction of female obsession. The other important question I need to answer when pitching a series is Why You? I need to convince a potential buyer that I am the perfect person to adapt the novel, and I need to demonstrate how I will expand the world of the book into a series that could run for multiple seasons. After studying and deconstructing many thrillers, I decided to try my hand at writing my own. My debut novel, The Ends of Things, is a psychological suspense about a solo female traveler who disappears from a beach resort. My heroine, a fellow vacationer, becomes obsessed with the missing woman and embroiled in the police investigation that unfolds. At first, I didn’t set out to write a novel. I thought my idea would make a great movie, so I wrote an outline for a feature script. But then I realized all my favorite parts were scene descriptions and stage directions—none of which would make it from page to screen. I’ve always loved mysteries that feature protagonists who aren’t so much unreliable narrators as they are unaware that they’re unreliable narrators, like Rachel in The Girl on the Train. I wanted to explore a character who was her own worst enemy, and since my protagonist is a catastrophizer, it was crucial that I have access to her private thoughts. My problem was that interiority is notoriously difficult to express in a screenplay unless you use a trope like voiceover, which is generally considered to be a narrative crutch. (There are exceptions, of course. Some of the voiceover in the TV series You, for example, is lifted from the pages of the novel on which it is based and is used cleverly to endear the viewers to Joe, even though he’s a creepy stalker with homicidal tendencies.) Typically, though, a screenwriter needs to demonstrate character through action. What your character does or doesn’t do reveals who they are. Novels, however, allow you to express your character’s thoughts and feelings better than any other medium. That’s how I knew my story needed to be a book. I had never written a novel before, and I had no idea how to approach a project that was so, well, long. On a craft level, screenwriting and novel writing seemed completely different. But over the eighteen-month journey that followed, from conception to completed manuscript, I came to discover that for all the differences, the processes had some surprising similarities. My first hurdle was “breaking” the story. Television is typically written in a group setting, specifically in a Writers Room, so-called because it’s a (sometimes windowless) room where ten or so writers spend all day every day for months on end pitching storylines, brainstorming ideas, eating snacks, and breaking the Season together. The writers are then assigned scripts, which they write on their own and bring back to the room for feedback and dialogue punch up. The great thing about working in a Writers Room is that you can use the brain trust to help you solve your story problems. Discovered a plot hole while outlining? Take your beats back to the room. Spinning your wheels on a weak cliffhanger? Ask the room to brainstorm alternatives. The room is paid to solve problems, so you can see how an entire season of television can be conceived and written relatively quickly, in about six months or so, with a group of writers working collaboratively before the cameras start rolling, and then doing rewrites through production. Novel writing, though, is a solitary pursuit. If you’re lucky, you have one or two trusted readers to help you solve your story problems. But mostly you’re on your own. When I started, all I had was a long, unwieldy Word document full of stream of consciousness musings and fragmented observations, along with some ideas for plot twists. My next hurdle: How do you structure a novel? The only frame of reference I had was breaking story in a Writers Room. When you get hired to join a room, you typically spend the first few weeks discussing the Season as a whole, as well as delineating or “arcing” the emotional journeys of the characters. You do this by writing story beats on index cards and mounting them on a cork board or white board. Once the shape of the Season comes into focus, and once you have a general sense of where the characters are headed emotionally, you begin tackling individual episodes, ensuring that each one progresses the Season Arc, and that each episode fits, like a puzzle piece, within the larger serialized framework of the Season. Since I didn’t know how else to do it, I broke the structure of my novel the same way. I pulled out a giant stack of multi-colored index cards, and using Sharpies, the writing implement de rigueur of a Writers Room, I transposed every story beat from my Word document onto the cards. My story takes place in two timelines, so I color coded the cards: White for “present-day” action and purple for “flashbacks.” Then, I mounted the cards on a cork board. In a Writers Room, each column of cards on a Season Arc board corresponds to an episode. Thirteen columns = Thirteen episodes. In my case, every column corresponded to a chapter. Thirteen columns = Thirteen chapters. And because I was writing a suspense novel, I wanted each chapter to end on a cliffhanger, to compel the reader to turn the page. Once I had the structure figured out, it came time to sit down and actually write, and here’s where I found the mediums vastly different. When writing a screenplay, you write with blocking in mind—describing what your characters are physically doing and where they are in relation to their location and each other. (If you don’t properly block a scene on the page, your actors will definitely accost you on set with their notes, and this can be very embarrassing.) With novel writing, though, I found that my heroine could think thoughts for pages on end without having to physically move. It was liberating to explore her musings without having to worry about what she was doing with her hands! Another major difference had to do with time management. In the TV world, it’s common to develop multiple projects at the same time. When you get stuck on one script, you can move to another, in a constant rotation. I’ve found this can help when you get blocked: delving into one creative world sometimes helps unlock story problems in another. But what surprised me about writing my novel was how all-consuming the process was. Sustaining my book’s fictional world in all its granular detail demanded my undivided attention. All I did for eighteen months straight was eat, sleep, and breathe my characters. When you wrap a season of television, if you’re lucky, you’ve made a handful of lifelong friends. After being in the trenches for months on end, trauma bonding from tight deadlines and harsh network notes, and going feral from lack of sleep and daylight, you can’t help but feel a strong sense of camaraderie. You celebrate together, go to karaoke, buy each other wrap gifts, and group-watch the season premiere. Sometimes, the room’s group text keeps going for years after the show has been canceled. Finishing a novel, though, hits different. When I printed out my completed manuscript and spread the pages across my bedroom floor, I was overwhelmed by a deeply personal and very private sense of accomplishment I had never felt before. I had managed to write this big thing all by myself. And when my ARCs arrived in the mail, it felt incredible to hold my book in my hands. But this feeling of triumph was followed by vulnerability because unlike a TV show, my novel has only one name on the cover, and it’s mine. As proud as I felt, I couldn’t also help but feel a bit exposed. There’s a troubling new trend in Hollywood, where streamers are deleting entire seasons of television from their digital libraries to avoid paying creatives residual fees. This means that along with losing revenue, writers are losing access to their work. A book, though, is forever. It feels good knowing that no matter what happens, my novel will always have a place on my bookshelf. Now that pub day is approaching, my TV agents have asked me to put together my take for a potential series adaptation. Talk about a full circle moment. It’s a bit surreal crafting a pitch for why I am the perfect person to adapt my own book. But that’s Hollywood, for you. *** View the full article