Today the Pens welcome thriller writer Reece Hirsch, whose debut novel THE INSIDER came out in May. Publishers Weekly called the novel "fast-paced and film-ready" and said the "tough, ambitious characters will keep fans of legal thrillers on the edge of their seats."
Reece lives right here in Northern California with the rest of us, so we're happy to have him in our Pens-tourage. (Like that? I just came up with it!! :)
The recent Supreme Court decision lifting Chicago’s handgun ban demonstrated once again that we are a nation obsessed with our firearms. The same goes for mystery and crime writers. If a handgun ban were to be imposed upon our genre, we would all be out of business. With that in mind, I compiled the following tally of weapons used in my debut legal thriller THE INSIDER, while trying to avoid spoilers.
Page 3. The weapon: concrete pavement after a fall from the roof of the Embarcadero Four building in San Francisco. Attacker: Unclear. Victim: Attorney Ben Fisher. Body count: 1.
Page 47. The weapon: a wineglass to the head. Attacker: Russian mobster Yuri. Victim: Corporate attorney Will Connelly, my protagonist. Body count: 0.
Page 73. The weapon: car cigarette lighter. Attacker: Unclear. Victim: Attorney Ben Fisher. Body count: 0 (this occurred before Ben hit the pavement on page 3, but we don’t learn about it until page 73).
Pages 83-87. The weapon: a box-cutter. Attacker: Russian mobster Nikolai. Victim: Will Connelly. Yes, Will is having a bad week, but the body count is still: 0.
Pages 225-233. The weapons: unspecified pistols. The shooters: Russian mobsters Nikolai and Yuri and a team of law enforcement agents led by Department of Justice Special Agent Joan Fisk. The setting: the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. Body count: 2.
Page 312. The weapons: unspecified pistols. The shooters: Two Russian mobsters in Puma track suits and four Department of Justice agents. The setting: Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco. Body count: 3.
Pages 313-321: The weapons: first, it’s unspecified pistol versus unarmed person, followed by screwdriver versus hammer. Participants: Will and a bad person who shall remain nameless. Body count: 1.
As the above tally indicates, I’ve written a legal thriller, but not a courtroom drama. This count does not include: (1) brandishing of guns, (2) threatened use of guns and (3) use of fists.
I know that there are certain readers who love nothing better than to catch a mystery/crime author in a firearms error. If you say that a particular handgun has a safety, it had better have a safety or you’re going to be receiving some e-mails.
I bypassed that issue a bit in THE INSIDER because my story is told from the perspective of Will Connelly, a young corporate lawyer in a big San Francisco law firm. Will is no Reacher-esque action hero with a connoisseur’s appreciation of the damage that can be done with a particular handgun and ammunition. When Will handles a gun, he just notices how cold and heavy it feels in his hand. When someone points a gun at Will, he’s doesn’t notice whether it’s a Ruger or a Smith & Wesson, he just thinks about how to avoid getting killed. Putting much more detail about the make and caliber of weapons wouldn’t have been consistent with the limited-third-person point-of-view that I was using.
Like Will Connelly, I’m a lawyer who doesn’t engage in much gunplay in my everyday life. However, I know that, as a thriller writer, I’m going to need to up my firearms IQ soon because I’m working in a genre that favors a body count.
