Dark Eye (57 page)

Guess I won’t be going to L.A. after all.

No writer can ever tackle anything so large and daunting as a novel without getting a lot of help, and I’m certainly no exception. I want to thank everyone who helped me during the time I spent creating Susan and Darcy’s world and who assisted with the enormous research required to bring the characters to life.

The United States is currently in the midst of an autism epidemic-and no one knows why. Autism Spectrum Disorders have increased over 500 percent in the last decade; the Department of Education reported an 18 percent increase in those seeking special services for autism from 2003 to 2004. In 2004, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an Autism Alert to the nation’s pediatricians in an effort to improve data collection to try to determine the cause of this epidemic and to aid in earlier diagnosis. I want to give special thanks to perhaps the leading pioneers in autism research, Ivar Lovaas and Bernard Rimland. Lovaas pioneered the use of behavioral intervention, which has been incredibly useful to many parents trying to recover a child who seemed lost to this neurological disorder. Rimland pursued biomedical research and, as a result, has produced a therapeutic protocol that many parents believe significantly assisted, or even cured, their children. Both approaches are most effective when instituted in the child’s life as early as possible. (In case you’re wondering, the only reason Rimland is not mentioned in the book is because his protocol would not have existed when Darcy was a child.) Those wanting to know more about Lovaas and his Institute for Early Intervention should visit www.lovaas.com. Those seeking more information about Rimland and the Autism Research Institute should visit www.AutismResearchInstitute.com or consider attending one of his periodic DAN (Defeat Autism Now) conferences (www.DANconference.com). Parents reeling from the shock of this diagnosis and wondering where to begin would do well to read
Let Me Hear Your Voice
by Catherine Maurice, the inspiring story of one parent’s successful battle against this strange and terrifying disorder.

It would be impossible to write a book about a criminal behaviorist without becoming familiar with the work of the two best-known names in the field: John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood. Douglas developed criminal profiling techniques during his twenty-five years with the FBI and subsequently wrote fascinating books based on his experiences, such as
Mindhunter
and
The Anatomy of Motive.
Hazelwood built on and expanded his work; his psychological insights are perhaps the best recorded in his book
Dark Dreams.
I also must thank my friend Dave Johnson for his insight and information about the inner life of a police station and those who work there. If the characters in this book do not always behave as model police officers, however, it’s not Dave’s fault; it’s because these characters, like most people I know, are not perfect.

And those who want to know more about card counting and other blackjack techniques developed at MIT and elsewhere may wish to read
Bringing Down the House
by Ben Mezrich, and the classic
Beat the Dealer
by Edward Thorp. If you’re thinking card counting will allow you to go to Vegas and get rich quick, though, please think again.

I also want to thank the many fellow writers who agreed to read an early draft of this book, indulging my friendship, not to mention my insecurity about a book I knew was a departure from my previous work. Many thanks to Jodie Nida, John Wooley, K. D. Wentworth, James Vance, and my wife, Kirsten. The worst of it is, the only compensation they received was having characters in the book named after them. But at least none of their namesakes were tortured by poisonous leeches.

Very special thanks to my agent, Dan Strone, who believed in this book from the start, and my long-standing friend and editor, Joe Blades, who supported this effort just as he has everything else I’ve tried for the past fifteen years. No writer could possibly be more fortunate than I’ve been.

I invite readers to send me their thoughts via email at
^{[email protected]}
. You can also visit my website at www.williambernhardt.com.

As the academician in the book says, Edgar Allen Poe’s contributions to American literature are enormous, and if you haven’t read any of his work, this might be a good time to start. Just don’t take it too seriously, okay?

– WILLIAM BERNHARDT

WILLIAM BERNHARDT is the author of many novels, including
Primary Justice, Murder One, Criminal Intent, Death Row,
and
Hate Crime.
He has twice won the Oklahoma Book Award for Best Fiction, and in 2000 he was presented with the H. Louise Cobb Distinguised Author Award “in recognition of an outstanding body of work in which we understand ourselves and American society at large.” A former trial attorney, Bernhardt has received several awards for public service. He lives in Tulsa with his wife, Kirsten, and their children, Harry, Alice, and Ralph. Readers can e-mail him at
^{[email protected]}
or visit his website at www.williambernhardt.com.