Some Odd Observations About the Profession of Words. Or: Thoughts About Being a Literary Hit Man.

Perhaps it is just a factor in getting older — or it might be because I have a new book out — but lately I’ve been reflecting on just how many people I’ve killed over the years.

I’ve lost count.

The first – just to get me started on the killing path: A high school teenager, a onetime cheerleader abducted as she walked home on a very hot summer night after a party in Coral Gables, Florida. This was a very reluctant killing on my part. Children – especially those that have just maneuvered past the discovery excitement of early childhood and playground rigors of adolescence should have some exemptions from the very worst the world has to offer – even if the world doesn’t frequently recognize this.

The last – but surely not the final: a man devoted to murder, upended by the machinations of the family he became obsessed with. The final death in the penultimate scene in my newest, Jack’s Boys.


The youngest? A thirteen-year-old child-woman, whose death triggered several other deaths, up to and including a trip to Florida’s electric chair.

The oldest? Hard to precisely say. There was the elderly Holocaust survivor living on Miami Beach back in the 80s. And then, a decade later, a retired English Lit professor from a prestigious New England college, in his late 60s suffering from the sudden onset of Lewy Body Dementia. They were about the same age, I think, when I did them in. I was very fond of both, especially the aging professor who was compelled to do something good before he was crippled by a truly awful disease. However, it wasn’t the disease that eventually killed him. It was me.

In between – a variety of victims ranging from their early twenties into late middle age.

I haven’t discriminated. White. Black. Hispanic. Men. Women. Large. Small. Short. Tall. Rich. Poor. Republicans. Democrats. Radicals. Liberals. Conservatives. Southerners. Northerners. Criminals. Cops. Ordinary folks. Exceptional folks. Straight. Gay. Alienated types of all occupations. People suffering from existential angst. A fireman. A lawyer. Businessmen. Teachers. A paranoid schizophrenic. A homeless man.

I’ve also killed:

A cat.

No problem. At the risk of angering the many book-reading cat-lovers of the world, I must admit that I really didn’t feel a thing when I did in this feline. I did give the cat a name. Mr. Boots. Even if that seemed friendly enough, it didn’t stop me from strangling him.

And:

A dog.

A mutt. No fancy pedigree and AKC registration. Admittedly, killing this dog was one of the hardest murders I’ve ever managed. A rescue dog of uncertain lineage. Getting on in dog years and near the natural end of what had turned out to be a remarkably good dog-life when I intervened. I didn’t steal much time from this elderly pooch. But some. Weeks? Months? Hard to say, but probably less than a year – although that was little solace. He was aged, arthritic, with bad eyesight and probably on the verge of doggie incontinence – but still loyal to a fault and utterly devoted to his owners. He went out fatally wounded by a single gunshot but fighting to the very end to defend his adopted family. He was a dog that remembered his noble calling and his true duty when a threat unexpectedly arrived in the home he shared with his owners, awakening him from sound foot-twitching, chasing rabbits elderly canine sleep. I still can’t remember this death without getting choked up – but then, I’ve always been an unapologetic dog guy.

A few other killings have set me teetering on the edge of personal grief.

That professor I already mentioned. I cared deeply about him because he knew he was confronting one fear so he could avoid confronting another, which made him damn honest and thoroughly honorable in my estimation, filling me with regret when he died at my hand. Then there was an elderly retired Miami homicide detective who fought a battle with a resurfaced evil from decades earlier. His death left a scar on me. There are others, as well: An ex-Marine Viet Nam war combat veteran who hid his past from his present, but when called on to remember all his youthful training, finds it close to his heart, which placed him close to my heart. A thoroughly refined British flight commander in the Second World War, and his onetime POW friend, a rough-hewn Canadian fighter pilot. A gay woman soccer coach who understood the real meaning of sacrifice at the very moment she faced a truly hard choice. Those were most assuredly deaths that pushed me towards real depression and took a slice from my emotions. A part of me went with each of them. But knowing the significant impact those killings would have on my psyche still didn’t prevent me from murder.

And with that slight acknowledgment, I would suggest that most of my murders would, in a practical manner, fit into the general category of convenience. When folks had to die, it was because their deaths fit. I didn’t think twice about doing them in. Their deaths, to put it bluntly, were appropriate. And, of course, there were many that left me feeling if not exactly joyful, sometimes eager, sometimes excited, and sometimes with a sort of nasty self-congratulatory pat-myself-on-the-back glee.

Those killings are the ones that inspire many of my friends to greet me with the loud salutation, “Boy, are you ever twisted.”

Alas, they tend to do this in crowded, public places. Once, in front of the local police station, which didn’t amuse the officers heading out on patrol. When I hear this greeting, I generally smile. Nod. Acknowledge the truth in their observation. What other response would work?

You can substitute sick for twisted. Or weird. Or a variety of other words, all marching lockstep along the same theme. I’ve heard them all. Over and over. I’m willing to accept any of them with a sigh of understanding.

Growing up I never thought I’d become a killer.

It just never occurred to me that killing might be a necessary – maybe even crucial — part of the territory I occupy in my stories.

And, as part of this overall confession, during my killing career – I’m tempted to use the old newspaper word spree — I’ve used a variety of weapons to achieve my homicidal ends. Handguns, ranging from the .22 caliber often preferred by professional assassins to a vintage military-issue .45. The Smith & Wesson .38 that used to be called the policeman’s special. The ubiquitous Glock 9 mm. A Colt Python .357 Magnum. A .12-gauge shotgun. An AK-47. Several knives, including the famous K-Bar that was once a staple on every Marine’s waistband. I’ve strangled with my hands and once filled a hypodermic syringe with a concoction of painkillers and cancer medications to administer a lethal dose.

When one writes the sorts of books I do, one becomes familiar with Death. Black-robed. Skeletal. Wielding his favorite large scythe. Lurking. Beckoning.

And the many ways Death delivers. I feel I’ve only scratched his surface.
Death and his threats often are the energy in my books. Death is the heavy foot on the accelerator because he asks the most pointed, direct questions:
Who is most at risk? Who might die? And how? Where? When?

And the largest question, the one that keeps me up at night and hunched over in front of my computer staring at the page before me, when Death demands an answer: Why?

Death is a high-test fuel for words. He customarily drives the plot forward, hiding behind actions, thoughts, and plans. A constancy of presence even if he’s not named on the page. He’s there – just not always obvious – waiting for the moment he’s called upon.
He has been a faithful companion in all my killings.


I can hear the objection: Wait a second here! You’re not a real killer! You just kill characters in your books! Thrillers! How hard can that be?

It can be quite hard, thank you for asking.

And I would simply and humbly add the explanation: If the characters in my books aren’t real to me, how could I possibly expect them to be equally believable for readers? So, it is both easy and hard, all at the same time.

In my youth, as a journalist dedicated to hard-core reality, I saw my share of dead bodies and went to my share of bloody crime scenes. I recall them all, especially stand-out ones. Like the scene in the underground basement parking garage of a fancy Coconut Grove hotel. The bodies were in a car. Been there for a couple of days in a forgotten area where the temperature had climbed well past 120 degrees. And got a lot hotter inside that car. Cooked victims of a drug deal that had soured. What made this moment memorable was the helpful medical examiner who sauntered over to where I stood, notebook in hand, trying to get the best vantage spot. He offered me a Kleenex sprinkled with strong talcum powder and whispered, “we’re going to open the car door now…” as he strapped on a surgical mask permeated with the same talcum powder. A smell one never forgets and destined, years later, for a paragraph in a novel.

Over the years, I’ve also met many authentic killers. From naïve teenage let’s rob the local 7-11, I mean, what could go wrong? types to cold-hearted icy eyed how much is it worth to you? contract killers, to psychotic what is God or the Devil or my neighbor’s dog telling me to do? murderers right up to and including those favorites of all thriller writers: serial killers.

Most weren’t really that interesting. And what they did in real life wasn’t all that exceptional. And despite our continuing fascination with that genre known as true crime, for the most part their stories are simply sad. Gory, convoluted, filled with twists and turns that summon a dark side resonance within us which leads to brief fascination, disgusting sometimes, but ultimately just sad, because they reflect just how many things can go wrong with our lives.

Not many names I remember. Manson. Bundy. Dahmer. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Jack. Most of the others just fade into a stew of evil.

This is decidedly not the case in the best thriller fiction.

These people we remember. The good guys and the bad guys. Those that die and those that live. From Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert to Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty to Arkady Renko. From Raskolnikov to Lisbeth Salander and Chili Palmer. We remember them because the stories they are enmeshed within resonate in a far different fashion. We easily slip inside their thoughts and eagerly participate in their actions. They fascinate as they engage us. I suppose – at a stretch – we could admit, because they operate just outside – but close enough — of the world we know as normal or even real — they thrill us.

Except…

… I very much don’t like the term thrillers.

The word oversimplifies a far more intriguing relationship.

Typical — yet complex, like the relationship between – say for the sake of argument — Annie Wilkes and Paul Sheldon. (Stephen King’s Misery for those of you scrambling for Google). Devoted fan/reader/psychopath and bestselling author. Their relationship is emotionally sophisticated, at the same time coupled with, well, perhaps it is best put as some interesting and not fully recommended methods of writing encouragement. A typewriter and a sledgehammer.

Some years ago, a famous editor at a well-known publishing house sent me a contract that specified I was to write “psychological thrillers.” This description caused me some confusion. I thought all novels were “psychological” at their core. Are the choices made by Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy less “psychological” than those chosen by Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter? Equally, I have always believed that all novels should be thrillers. Or “page-turners.” (Here’s a bitter aside: Once at a cocktail party at a well-known elite New England college, a tweed-clad, eyeglasses perched at the end of his nose, all he was missing was a smelly pipe, English Literature professor once snorted with poorly concealed contempt, ‘Oh, so you write page-turners?’ before moving on to share his white wine and hummus with someone unsullied by being adequately paid for their writing.) Could a story demand more page-turning than Great Expectations? Or The Accidental Tourist? The Lord of the Rings? How about The Odyssey? Exactly how will Odysseus out-smart and out-maneuver Polyphemus? In that regard, I’ve never known any writer – whether of “literary” fiction or “romance” novels or “historical” or “fantasy” books or any type of non-fiction and, for that matter, anyone in my own genre, that doesn’t want readers to feel that intense compulsion to turn the pages of their story with a mixture of excitement, curiosity, delight, and dedication, drawn into the tale they are telling – whether it is about Thomas Jefferson designing nifty stuff and eying Sally Hemmings at Monticello, or Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Little Round Top contemplating what to do as Hood’s 5th Texas comes up the hill again and the air fills with Minie balls and the rebel yell or Smilla Jaspersen seemingly walking across the water, but really astonishingly sliding on thin ice just beneath the surface of a harbor in Oslo.

The essence of the relationship between readers and stories is the level of engagement. The essence of the relationship between writers and story is the same word – engagement.

Okay – now this sounds simple – as in sure. Right. Engagement. I got it. No problem. But it is really a more complicated series of connections – because it relies on the psychological make-up first of each individual reader and how he or she connects with the situation the characters on the page are thrust into. One of the worst things an author can experience is imagining readers snapping shut their novel and muttering, “that makes no sense…” or, “that couldn’t happen…” or (and this might be the most crippling) “I just don’t believe it. They wouldn’t do that…”.

Whatever that is.

Because every novel requires a reliance on a series of psychological connections. First — the author’s emotional make-up and how his or her understanding of what’s inside them creeps into the characters they create on the page. Without that – no story. Just an aimless plot sadly in search of the people to make it come alive.

Then, second – that link between reader and characters. Keep in mind Annie Wilkes and Paul Sheldon.

And even if so many of my characters are destined for bad ends, it doesn’t mean I don’t understand them deeply and similarly, that my readers don’t understand them just as deeply. Truth is, I love my bad guys as much as I do my good guys. I suspect the same is true for readers.

In a way, writers, readers, and characters on the page are all breathing the same air.

Admittedly, I often feel a twinge of regret when it becomes time for me to do in one of my creations. Sometimes I can hear their complaints. They echo in my office. No one wants to die on the page. But they come to accept it, the same way they accept their role in my story. Often, they can sense the inevitability of their demise early in the plot and so they trudge sadly yet determined towards their ends. Other times, it comes as a surprise, shocking and unexpected. In either case, it is necessary. Beyond necessary. Essential.

When I was young and first discovering words and stories, and the magic of books, frequently a character’s demise pitched me into my own sadness, wondering why did the author have to kill him or her off? I liked them, sometimes I even loved them. They were my friends. They were my companions throughout every chapter. I wanted to see them succeed. Be happy. Find love. Find justice. Win. I wanted them to have a rich life beyond the final pages of the book.

Many characters from memory: Sir Simon de Canterville. Peyton Farquhar. Edmund, Lucy, Susan, and Peter. Robert Jordan.

Those are just a few of dozens. Maybe hundreds.

It was only as I grew, that I recognized the value in dying on the page.

Robert Jordan might only be an invention of the author’s imagination, but even the character instinctively understands his death fighting in Spain is what ultimately gives Hemingway’s story depth and meaning. Both love and politics are chords in his final moments. (Surprisingly, the late and very stoic Gary Cooper captured this elegantly in the film). On the page, he sacrifices himself twice; in the story to bring it to a fitting end, in the memory readers take away from it. So, he carefully sights down the barrel of the machine gun and calmly waits for the inevitable.

And when I read those emotional passages once, twice, a third time wondering whether I would break into tears, or simply feel an ineffable sadness, the same sensation one gets when one loses a close friend to accident or disease or the simple unfairness of life, I saw what Robert Jordan’s death meant. And I acquired an important lesson, critical to the development of any writer:

Be cold-blooded.

You may deeply love someone you’ve created.

Tough.

They still must die.

I did not know, when I first started to read as a child, that being a killer was an integral part of being a writer. That understanding came later. But when I realized this was true, I took my first real step through the gateway to the world of words. And not too many years later, when I typed the final words to my first novel, filled with that unruly combination of hope and anxiety, I understood that for as long as I continued to tell stories, I would always be surrounded by ghosts.

Amherst, Massachusetts
November 2023

Skip Ahead