Brian Lutterman's Blog

Less than two years ago, I released a book with a wild, fictional premise. Nightfall told the story of controversial shootings of black citizens by Minneapolis police, unleashing racial violence. In an outlandish twist, Nightfall posited the existence of groups intentionally inciting and exploiting the violence for their own political and criminal purposes. Farfetched, some of my readers said at the time. My character, Pen Wilkinson, watches the mayhem on TV, appalled, grieved, and outraged by what she sees. Just like all of us, in other words, here in the Twin Cities of 2020, reacting to a real situation that turned out not to be so farfetched after all.

I don’t do political posts. My views are ably expressed by any number of people on the Internet. But having written on this subject, I can hardly avoid wading into the minefield once more.

I’m afraid I am not surprised by the Floyd case. When I wrote Nightfall, I also wrote a blog post in which I stressed the need to look beyond individual cases and talk about systemic reform to prevent deadly encounters between police and citizens, especially citizens of color. But the reform never happened, and what we saw in the case of George Floyd is the culmination of festering problems that have not been addressed. What we saw was a white police officer kneeling on the neck of a black citizen in an act of appalling symbolism as well as horrifying violence.

What struck me was the officer’s casual attitude as he committed this heinous act, fully aware of being recorded but utterly unconcerned about consequences. If George Floyd had not died, that attitude might have been completely justified. Following the usual pattern, there might have been protests, drawn-out investigations, firings followed by reinstatements, fierce, politically polarized public debate, and finally a settlement paid to Mr. Floyd, but funded by taxpayers, not the officers.

There is no question that police officers have an incredibly difficult job, one that requires exceptional wisdom and humility as well as courage and quick decision-making. A compelling case can be made for a significant level of job security for these officers, which ordinary private sector employees don’t have. But everyone needs to be accountable. Everyone. You, me, police, politicians, citizens, protesters. And in the case of people authorized to use deadly force, the need is critical. It seems clear that the system designed to hold police accountable is seriously broken.

What should we do to restore accountability and root out racism? This, I think, is the question we ought to be discussing, rather than being sidetracked by pointless, polarized debates. Can we all just agree that violence is wrong, whether committed by police, rioters, or anyone else? Can we agree that we can support the police while insisting they be held accountable? Or that we can support the right to protest without condoning looting and destruction? To me, this doesn’t seem like rocket science. All it takes is discussing an issue on its own merits, without saying “Yes, but what about . . .”

Now, presented with a  no-doubt, unambiguous, caught-on-video act that absolutely everybody can agree was wrong, is this the moment we need? All we have to do, it seems to me, is stick to the subject.

Is NIGHTFALL ripped from the headlines?

Well, maybe clipped out neatly.  I did consciously select the topic of police shootings as the backdrop to the book, but I didn’t envision the launch coming a month before a Minnesota gubernatorial election. A double dose of Real World.

Brian Lutterman answers questions about his forthcoming book, NIGHTFALL.

Q: Why police shootings as a subject for your book?

A: Because I’m an idiot.  Who else would tackle an incendiary topic like that?

Q: Seriously.

A:  First and foremost, because I believed police shootings could form the basis for a compelling story. I didn’t set out to further a political or social agenda.

Q: But you do get into political and social issues.

A: Oh, yes.

Q: So where do your sympathies lie?

A:  That’s the same question Pen has to confront in the book. Everybody is after her to take sides.  I think you have to look at it two ways: First, there are individual cases.  “Taking sides” in an individual case, based on information from the media, is hazardous in the extreme. We can develop opinions as to whether the process in a given case is fair or not, but we have a legal process. At some point, we have to rely on the prosecutors, attorneys, judges, and juries.

Q: So that’s it? The public has nothing to say?

A: Hardly.  On another level, there are policy considerations. These are issues the public should be involved in, and there are definitely things that can be done to improve the situation.  You have to ask, systemically, what can we do to prevent these tragic and sometimes outrageous incidents? How can we improve community outreach and understanding? How can we make sure everybody is held accountable? How can we improve police training? How can we improve police interactions with the mentally ill?  Too often, we confuse these two levels of discussion, and of course it’s the individual cases that trigger the most emotion.

Q: So how does NIGHTFALL treat these issues?

A: These issues are not the story. They’re the backdrop.  They’re part of the story.  I look at how people react when they get involved in these controversies.  I also look at how the community as a whole reacts to police shootings. But I also look at a darker side of the entire picture.

Q: Which is?

A: NIGHTFALL looks at how the community divisions, prejudices, and passions associated with police shootings can be exploited by the unscrupulous.  There is a pretty heinous plot going on in the book, something that I hope will never happen in real life. But there is no question that in the real world, tragic incidents are cynically exploited all the time, by people with a personal, social, or political agenda.

Is NIGHTFALL ripped from the headlines?

Well, maybe clipped out neatly. I did consciously select the topic of police shootings as the backdrop to the book, but I didn’t envision the launch coming a month before a Minnesota gubernatorial election. A double dose of Real World.

I’ve answered some questions about NIGHTFALL (set for launch in late September) below:

Q: Why police shootings as a subject for your book?

A: Because I’m an idiot. Who else would tackle an incendiary topic like that?

Q: Seriously.

A: First and foremost, because I believed police shootings could form the basis for a compelling story. I didn’t set out to further a political or social agenda.

Q: But you do get into political and social issues.

A: Oh, yes.

Q: So where do your sympathies lie?

A: That’s the same question Pen has to confront in the book. Everybody is after her to take sides. I think you have to look at it two ways: First, there are individual cases. “Taking sides” in an individual case, based on information from the media, is hazardous in the extreme. We can develop opinions as to whether the process in a given case is fair or not, but we have a legal process. At some point, we have to rely on the prosecutors, attorneys, judges, and juries.

Q: So that’s it? The public has nothing to say?

A: Hardly. On another level, there are policy considerations. These are issues the public should be involved in, and there are definitely things that can be done to improve the situation. You have to ask, systemically, what can we do to prevent these tragic and sometimes outrageous incidents? How can we improve community outreach and understanding? How can we make sure everybody is held accountable? How can we improve police training? How can we improve police interactions with the mentally ill? Too often, we confuse these two levels of discussion, and of course it’s the individual cases that trigger the most emotion.

Q: So how does NIGHTFALL treat these issues?

A: These issues are not the story. They’re the backdrop. They’re part of the story. I look at how people react when they get involved in these controversies. I also look at how the community as a whole reacts to police shootings. But I also look at a darker side of the entire picture.

Q: Which is?

A: NIGHTFALL looks at how the community divisions, prejudices, and passions associated with police shootings can be exploited by the unscrupulous, especially with an election coming up soon. There is a pretty heinous plot going on in the book, something that I hope will never happen in real life. But there is no question that in the real world, tragic incidents are cynically exploited all the time, by people with a personal, social, or political agenda.

That’s right, free. On February 12-16th, the Downfall ebook will be available absolutely free on my page at Amazon.com. It’s my way of thanking readers who have bought Windfall or Freefall, or the Downfall paperback edition. It’s also a way of introducing new readers to the Pen Wilkinson series (by the way, the fourth installment in the series, tentatively entitled Nightfall, is due out this fall).

So, help yourself. Tell your friends. Read the highly-acclaimed book that started it all.

Possibly the two unluckiest people in the known universe were the characters played by Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers in a 1980’s television show called Hart to Hart. This insufferably cute couple, an industrialist and his wife, had the misfortune of stumbling onto a murder, extortion attempt, kidnapping, or other crime each and every week of the show’s five-year existence. They were not law officers, private investigators, medical examiners, lawyers, or professionals of any kind. They were just . . . unlucky. A similar fate befell Jessica Fletcher, the fictional mystery author, who randomly encountered a weekly murder that victimized the luckless, and dwindling, population of Cabot Cove, Maine.

Such is the plight of pretty much every amateur detective in crime fiction. Readers of cozy mysteries have never minded such improbabilities. When innkeepers, chefs, scrapbookers, needlepoint ladies, and bookstore owners, to name only a few occupational types, routinely encounter and solve murders that stump the police, fans of these mysteries accept without question their heroes’ regular encounters with homicide, a horrific experience most of us will never have. Why, then, does this phenomenon bug me so much?

In part, I suppose it’s because thrillers are somehow supposed to be more “realistic” than cozies. They’re generally grittier and more graphic. They try not to be “cozy.” And so, after I wrote my first thriller, Bound to Die, which featured an amateur sleuth, I retired the character. That was really unnecessary, people told me. Nobody would care if Tori McMillan just happened to become embroiled in another world-shaking conspiracy. Maybe people were right. But it bugged me; I sort of hate it when that happens.

Years later, I had a similar decision to make with respect to my series character, Pen Wilkinson. Readers liked Pen enough (and so did I) that I quickly decided to feature her in a series. The plausibility of future encounters with bad guys was bolstered by her new job as an assistant US attorney, in which she regularly prosecutes criminals. But I’ve felt the need for her to branch out from work-related cases, particularly given my preference for corporate-themed stories. And that has brought me face to-face with the irritating Cabot Cove problem again. My solution? I’ve decided to face the situation head-on, and to embrace Pen’s propensity to become involved in sticky situations. In fact, it will become a major issue for her, and a point of contention with those close to her.

News Test

I lost my car keys the other day. For many people, that’s a ho-hum, everyday event. For me, it was a traumatic milestone, a really big deal. I never lose my car keys. But these days, as I approach the dawn of my seventh decade, it’s just another in an unwelcome series of “firsts.” Forgetting names. Forgetting past events. Forgetting, as my editors continually remind me, how to place a comma, although that’s an ability I arguably never had. My own aging process is something I can’t control. But must I subject my fictional characters to the same indignities?

My protagonist, Pen Wilkinson, is thirty-six years old. It’s hard for me to think of her getting older. In some ways, aging might make her less interesting. You generally don’t expect a young woman to need a wheelchair, and as she gets older, that situation won’t be quite as unique. And yet, for any interesting character, aging seems to me not only desirable but inevitable.  Aging is universal; for a character to be relevant, he or she has to share in that experience. A good character will acquire wisdom through experience. And ideally, that’s what we want the reader to do with the experience of reading..

That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m forced to age Pen in real time. That’s what Robert B.Parker decided to do with Spenser. When a year passed between the release of Parker’s books, Spenser, Hawk, and Susan would also be a year older, so that at the time of Parker’s death, Spenser had to be nearing seventy. That’s an age when his physical exploits were becoming less realistic. And there wasn’t much Parker could do to change course; he had tied his characters’ ages  to historical people and events, such as Spenser’s fictional fight with a real-life Jersey Joe Walcott, whose last real fight took place in 1953, or Hawk fighting with the French in their war in  Indochina, which ended in 1954.. An extreme example of this problem was Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury and Melrose Plant. Grimes (a great author, by the way) painted herself into a corner by recalling Jury’s childhood during the World War II blitz in London. Tied to that fixed event, Jury would have had to be well into his seventies for Grimes’s later novels, past the retirement age for Scotland Yard detectives, and far beyond a realistic age for some of his romantic ventures. Lee Child has avoided this problem in part by going back in time to recount some of Jack Reacher’s adventures as a younger man.

I don’t want Pen to get old anytime soon. I’d like her to be young enough to retain some idealism, enthusiasm, and energy. I’d like to have her retain some physical ability, limited though it is. She still faces possible decisions about marriage or children. Accordingly, I’m aging her only a few months at a time, at least for now. Eventually that will have to change. But that’s part of the beauty of being an author: You can stop time itself.

This isn’t the post I set out to write.  I had hoped to talk about my appreciation for all the support I received from Gary Schulze and Pat Frovarp during their ownership of the Once Upon a Crime bookstore in Minneapolis.  I still plan to do that, but it will have to wait.  Today, shockingly, I need to write about Gary’s passing at the age of sixty-six.  He was a true friend to all fans and writers of crime fiction, especially those in Minnesota, but more importantly, he was an outstanding human being.

I met Gary right after I wrote my first book, in 2002.  He and Pat had just bought the store, and they held the first of four book launch parties for me that fall.  In the years that followed, my visits to Once Upon a Crime were among the best things about being a mystery author.  Gary was always armed with a good anecdote about the authors, famous and obscure, who appeared at the store, and invariably recommended more books than I could possibly read.  He was a man who radiated kindness and good humor, and he maintained that demeanor through the long years of his battle with leukemia.  We’ll miss you, Gary.

From our It’s About Time file: “Justice Department Sets Sights on Wall Street Executives.”  Attorney General Lynch recently instructed federal prosecutors to concentrate more on prosecuting individual executives, rather than just their employers, for financial crimes, and to pressure Wall Street firms to turn over evidence about their employees’ misconduct.  That this new policy should warrant a headline speaks volumes about the nature of prosecutions for corporate crime since the 1980’s.

Crime fiction provides the chance to right wrongs–to neatly tie up loose ends, and to punish the guilty.  But real life is messy, and no portion of it is messier than corporate crime. In crime novels, the bad guys get their comeuppance.  In the real-life world of corporate crime, there is no guarantee of justice.  In fact, the odds of even being prosecuted are dismally low, perhaps lower than those for violent crimes.  According to researchers at Syracuse University, prosecutions of white-collar crimes are at a twenty-year low, down more than thirty-eight percent from 1995.  This decline has come under the management of not only a traditionally pro-business Republican administration, but two Democratic presidents.  Moreover, it comes in the face of the massive financial shenanigans that produced the Great Recession.  In contrast to the savings and loan scandals of the 1980’s, which generated over a thousand felony convictions, prosecutions following the recent recession have been limited to low-level mortgage fraud cases, and the overall rate of white-collar prosecutions has continued to decline.

Prosecutors can point to a number of large-dollar civil settlements in financial cases, particularly those involving foreign currency and interest rate manipulation.  These are typically deferred-prosecution deals in which no one admits fault or goes to jail.  When it comes to actually punishing and deterring crime, however, establishing fault and going to jail may be the entire point.  Even before the recent policy change, prosecutors were acknowledging that they may need to tear up deals with big banks such as UBS and Barclays, who are showing signs of committing repeat offenses.  And why not?  With no threat of jail, and any fines coming from the pockets of shareholders rather than individual bankers, what do wrongdoers have to lose?  Nor has the threat of more onerous regulation had much effect.  Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein likened regulation to “. . . background noise . . . So it is a fact of life, but no choice, no problem. It’s something that we have to deal with.”  Lloyd sounds scared to death, doesn’t he?

Whatever the reasons for the government’s lack of aggressiveness, there is no indication that the culture of greed that caused the problems has in in any way changed. Just ask former United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek, who was terminated for bribing a public official.  The company then severely reprimanded, with the company turning him out into the street and bringing its own civil action against him.  Well, actually that didn’t happen.  Jeff was rewarded with a severance package of over $20 million.  Far from cooperating in the prosecution of its crooked executives, companies typically make all that darned inconvenience and hassle worth their while.  

Perhaps the latest change in policy by the Justice Department will have an impact.  But those of us who are cynical about the effects of lobbying and campaign contributions are not holding our collective breath.  For wrongdoers in Corporate America, it’s likely to be business as usual.  And for writers of corporate thrillers, it’s an embarrassment of riches..