For my fifth published novel, I once again felt driven to go off in a different writing direction. I had done whodunits and funny mysteries, but now I wanted to do a psychological thriller.
I really didn’t know if I could do justice to the book I wanted to write. This time I set the yardstick higher than it had ever been. I wanted to write a multi-layered novel, with characters that were screaming to be written. Coming to terms with those characters wasn’t easy, though. At the center of the book I needed a homicide detective. The book wasn’t going to be a police procedural, but for the sake of verisimilitude I thought it essential to experience what San Diego police homicide detectives go through.
I made some calls and went to talk with some higher-ups in the San Diego Police Department. I was grateful that they smoothed the way for me to be assigned to one of SDPD’s homicide teams. The sergeant of that team, Bill Holmes, was incredibly cooperative. He patiently answered my questions and allowed me to shadow the workings of Homicide Team IV (San Diego Police Department has seven homicide teams. Every homicide gets one team assigned to it. There are four detectives and a sergeant on each team).
When a homicide call goes out, all detectives on the team are supposed to arrive at the scene of the homicide within forty-five minutes of the time they are contacted. Most homicides occur in the middle of the night. Whenever the phone would ring at two or three in the morning, it was always Sergeant Bill Holmes on the line. Cheerfully he would say, “Alan, you awake?” The groggier I sounded, the more cheerful Bill seemed to be. He would tell me the address of where the homicide occurred, and I would write it down. What usually followed was a mad dash of getting clothed (in official “homicide garb” of blue blazer, tie, and khaki slacks), a thumbing through of the Thomas Guide, and then a drive through the dark of the night.
I navigated my car to some tough neighborhoods I had never been to before, and probably won’t ever visit again. I was allowed to go behind the yellow crime scene tape, and mainly I observed. Sometimes I helped the detectives in menial tasks, such as marking where bullets had struck. On more than one occasion local news media took me for a detective and asked me questions. In serious voice I would always refer any queries to Sergeant Holmes.
On one occasion my wife slept through my homicide call. I left her a little note: “Dear Laura, Gone off to a homicide. Not sure when I’ll be back. XXOO, Alan.”
After twelve hours of working a homicide, the caffeine from coffee doesn’t give you any lift at all. I learned to admire the doggedness of the detectives.
To write this book I also needed to learn about dissociative identity disorder (a.k.a. multiple personality disorder), and that involved talking with therapists as well as patients diagnosed with the disorder. The entire book was an education for me.
I had decided my D.I.D. character would manifest her personalities or “alters” in the form of Greek goddesses. My goal was to make this book anything but run of the mill. I wrote an outline that I hoped would make sense of the ambitious plot. In two pages I tried to sum up the characters and what was going to occur. These days publishing is getting ever more like Hollywood. They like to be able to sum up the book in a sentence or two. MULTIPLE WOUNDS wasn’t tidy that way, and I didn’t want it to be. What follows is the outline I wrote:
When the body of BONNIE GILL is discovered amidst the classical statuary of her San Diego art gallery, the community mourns the loss of the business leader and activist.
But HOLLY “Helen” TROY mourns differently than others. She cries real tears of blood.
Helen may or may not have witnessed Bonnie’s death. Even Helen doesn’t know, though one of her alters might. Helen is a multiple, one of those damaged souls diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. Her personalities are no mere mortals: they include Nemesis, Pandora, the Fates, Cronos, Eris, and Eurydice - and one frightened five year old child.
ORSON CHEEVER is the homicide detective assigned to open Pandora’s Box and face its consequences, including his own. Over twenty years earlier Cheever lost his own five year old daughter to leukemia, and though he might not fear the gods, he is more than vulnerable to the little girl that comes out in Helen. Like Odysseus, Cheever has traveled for twenty years, but has never been able to get back home. In battling Helen’s demons, he has to confront his own.
RACHEL STERN is the psychiatrist who has been treating Helen. Like the detective investigating her patient, Rachel carries her own wounds. The troika of patient, investigator, and psychiatrist are all walking wounded. Though Rachel and Cheever begin as adversaries - the psychiatrist trying to protect her patient and the detective trying to clear his homicide - their loneliness brings them together.
Faced with a woman who is a little girl one minute, a raging god the next, and three Fates inhabiting one body the minute after that, Cheever has to navigate between past and present, between myth and reality. Before he can learn who killed Bonnie Gill, Cheever needs to unwrap the many layers that are Helen. Among his key clues are the stigmata that Hygeia, one of Helen’s alters, exhibits: two of the wounds correspond with the fatal stab wounds Bonnie Gill suffered, but there is no easy answer to the third stigmata that shows itself on her body.
Like Orpheus, Cheever needs to descend into the underground, both Helen’s and his own. Helen’s art shows him the way, and even the perils. She is a talented artist who makes her living through the crafting of statues and paintings. The daughter of a classicist, Helen knows the grim mythology of the gods better than anyone, and interweaves it with her own labyrinthian past and present.
In a setting where ancient mythology meets modern murder, Detective Cheever has to come to terms with twisted passions and hidden secrets, but most of all, he has to find a way to his own redemption, as well as Rachel’s and Helen’s.
In the words multiple wounds are multiple meanings: multiple wounds discovered on the body of Bonnie Gill; multiple wounds, seen in the lives of Cheever, Rachel, and Helen; multiple wounds, exhibited in Helen/Hygeia’s stigmata; multiple wounds that come out in Helen’s multiple personalities.
It is said that good things come in three. But with two homicides already perpetrated, and Helen targeted for the third murder, Cheever has to put his life on the line to save her, and somehow save himself at the same time.
The above outline detailed the ambitious nature of the book, but realizing it in the writing was another matter altogether. When I finished the book I felt as if this great weight was lifted from me. I had not only met my personal challenge of writing the book I wanted to write, but had exceeded it. In all my novels I never felt I hit the mark so well.
Bob Mecoy, my editor at Simon & Schuster, said that this book excited him more than any he had read in years. My literary agent called me a genius. Those who read advance copies, including a number of peers, said that it was by far my best work. The cover was great, and as the reviews rolled in everything seemed wonderful.
Except for those pesky things called sales.
After the book was released I was reminded of a cartoon I saw in the NewYorker years ago. The man is standing there with his wife looking at the remainder table, and he’s saying, “I can’t understand it. My agent loved it, my publisher loved it, the reviewers loved it . . .”
Here I felt I had done something special, and yet it seemed to be the invisible book.
Because writing is such a personal pursuit, when things don’t go well it can be very depressing. I remember being very blue for weeks that stretched into months. Gradually I came out of my funk. And for a book that “disappeared without a trace,” it somehow still managed to be recognized. MULTIPLE WOUNDS was nominated for an Anthony and a Macavity for best mystery novel of the year. It didn’t win either award, but I was glad the novel moved enough people to be recognized that way.
Sometimes the characters aren’t the only ones with wounds. Sometimes the author does his share of internal bleeding as well.
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