Switch (42 page)

Q:
  
Why didn't you go with that?

A:
 
I felt that, though it would be a very cruel act, it wouldn't be that difficult for the murderer to set up. I wanted something even more fiendish, difficult and complex. I remember considering two murders, one on each coast, again with the heads switched. Of course this would have been almost impossibly difficult since the killer would have to transport the heads cross country. In the end I came up with a head switch between a young woman living on the Upper East Side and another living on the Upper West Side.
 
I liked that cross-town idea a lot. It kept the story in Manhattan, and allowed me to play with women who were opposites: a high-class call girl and a teacher at a fancy private school.

Q:
 
The
madonna
-whore thing?

A:
 
That's what the detectives think at first, but of course it turns out to be a lot more complicated. Still, the difference between the victims is very important. I wanted this to be a totally psychological crime,
 
one that
Janek
would have to solve psychologically. He would have to figure out what the killer was trying to say. Personally, I'm not interested in crime solving forensic techniques, the kind of stuff you see on CSI. I like psychological crimes.

Q:
 
Is this the first
Janek
novel?

A:
 
Actually
Janek
appears first in an earlier book
, Peregrine
. He's a major character there, but not THE major character. He's also somewhat different. In
Switch
, I kept some of his qualities from
Peregrine
, eliminated others, then fully fleshed him out.
Switch
is very much
Janek's
book. He's the dominant character, as he is in the other two novels in the series,
Wallflower
and
Mirror Maze
, and in the seven TV movies broadcast on CBS in which he was portrayed by the actor, Richard
Crenna
.

Q:
 
How do you feel about those TV movies?

A:
 
I think the first two, both four-hour miniseries, were excellent. I had nothing to do with
Doubletake
except as author of the source material, but I felt the teleplay and the production were top-notch. I wrote the second four-hour,
Internal Affairs
(not to be confused with a movie with the same title starring Richard
Gere
; we sold them our title) as an original teleplay, and I was quite pleased with how it came out. The other five were all two-hour shows, and they were filmed in Toronto simulating New York. I was involved with several of them as writer and/or story provider. I think those five range from okay to quite good.
Crenna
gave excellent performances in all of them. But as the budgets got reduced, there were too many compromises. I remember wishing the
Janek
movies had been as good as the movies in the British series
Prime Suspect
. Regretfully, they weren't.

Q:
 
It's kind of odd that there were more
Janek
movies than
Janek
novels.

A:
 
I went along with the movies, because that was fun, but I didn't want to be the kind of writer who's saddled for life with a series character. Some authors have done well with that kind of
 
career, and I was advised several times that that was the route to wealth and fame. But I didn't want to restrict myself to
Janek
. I felt that I said all I had to say about him in the three novels I wrote. I had other literary projects in mind, other areas I wanted to explore. I like
Janek
a lot but feel that if I had continued with him the books would have become less good. I find that often with series characters created by writer colleagues. The first couple of novels are excellent, then you get the impression they're just churning them out. I didn't want to do that and I guess I've paid a career cost for that decision. But no regrets.

Q.You
mentioned wanting to keep the novel in New York.

A:
 
That was very important to me. I wanted the city, particularly Manhattan, to be a major “character.” I worked hard on capturing the city as seen through
Janek's
eyes. I was living there while I wrote the
Janek
books, and I had definite feelings and perceptions about it, so
whereever
I could, I painted in images and vignettes, sometimes just a line or two, to etch out the city, giving
Janek
a milieu the reader could see, hear, feel, taste and smell.

Q:
 
You say you're not interested in forensics, but you seem to know a lot about police work.

A:
 
I hung out with several NYPD cops during those years. Went out on patrol with them, hung around the precinct house, stuff like that. I was living in Greenwich Village, so I knew the Sixth Precinct pretty well. I was very interested in depicting the lives of cops, the great variety of types who go into that kind of work, their pride, needs, anxieties, reactions. I tried with the other detective characters (Sal, Aaron, Stanger, Howell) to show different facets of what it's like to be a New York cop. But most of all I wanted to explore the psycho-moral drama of
Janek's
life, the things he cared about, his obsessions, his approach to his work, how far he'd be willing to go to make a case. And in Switch he goes very far.

Q:
 
There's a loneliness about him.

A:
 
Yes...and a loneliness about the other characters too. The victims,
 
especially Mandy, are lonely people. The killer is lonely. As is Caroline Wallace. I liked working with that, especially in the love affair between
Janek
and Caroline. The way they fulfill one another is for me that's one of the strongest things in the novel.

Q:
 
I notice you don't call it a mystery.

A:
 
I don't think of myself as a mystery writer. I don't care about puzzle clues and things like that. I came to crime fiction from an ambition to write real novels, books with deep characterizations and a strong sense of place, combined with the kind of strong narrative drive you get in a murder story. I like really good novels set in the worlds of crime and espionage. Most so-called mysteries don't do much for me.

Q:
 
In the book there're several mentions of switched heads being a great case, and at the end when
Janek
solves it there's a line of patrol cars filled with cops assembled to show respect for his achievement. He goes down the line shaking hands, taking his bows so to speak.

A:
 
I believe in the notion of a great case as a career goal for a serious detective. I got to know an NYPD detective, Ed
Zigo
, who'd cracked the Son of Sam case, and he felt great pride on account of that. At the end of Switch, when
Janek
phones Carmichael to deliver a great case to him (bringing down the Chief of Detectives of New York City, no less!) he says: “You're going to be famous, you lucky
lucky
cop.” I think in every profession there are people who become great, who
seize
an opportunity which may fall to them, a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity, and embrace it. That's what happens to
Janek
when he's assigned switched heads. He takes the case and solves it and by so doing proves his greatness to his colleagues and to himself. At the end of Switch I wanted to capture that exhilaration.

Q:
 
You post a Ross Macdonald quote at the start of the novel. Is that the key to the novel?

A:
 
Certainly, to use Macdonald's words,
 
the novel is about cases that cleave “down through the strata of the past.”
Janek
must go deep into the past to solve both switched heads and the
DiMona
-Wallace-Hart case. I put in that quote partly as an homage to Ross Macdonald, whom I regard as one of the greatest of the “old master” crime fiction writers, and also to signal a level of ambition to my readers. I set out to write a really deep detective novel and wanted my readers to know that going in. It's for them to say whether I achieved my goal.