We are delighted to welcome author Jeffrey Alan Lockwood to Omnimystery News today.
Jeff visited with us last month to give us the origin of his new mystery series, the first book of which is Poisoned Justice (Pen-L Publishing; October 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats), and we asked if we could follow up his most interesting post with a few questions.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the lead character in Poisoned Justice.
Photo provided courtesy of
Jeffrey Alan Lockwood
Jeffrey Alan Lockwood: The main character is Riley. His full name, which he never uses, is Cedric Vladimir Riley — the first name being that of his Irish grandfather and the middle name being that of his father's buddy who died on Guadalcanal in World War II. Teased by school kids, he started going by C.V. Riley (not coincidentally, the name of one of the most famous entomologists in US history) which he then shortened to Riley. He was a San Francisco cop until he went too far in extracting information from a suspect who knew the location of a kidnapped girl. Riley took over his father's extermination business and takes on detective work when the situation is right (the incident that got him kicked off the force also meant that he couldn't have a private investigator's license — so he works entirely "off the books"). He is a hard-boiled character on one hand, but he's deeply devoted to his mother and brother, who are his responsibility after the death of his father.
OMN: Tell us something about Poisoned Justice that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.
JAL: The trio of supporting characters working at Goat Hill Extermination provide vital texture to the story. Riley is old school in many ways, but he is also an unapologetic pragmatist. What matters to him is whether people who work for him are trustable and dedicated. He knows that the world is a gritty, dark and violent place infested with cockroaches, rats and sociopaths. His people need to have one another's backs. So as much as he struggles with the social changes of the 1970s, he is loyal to — and his own crusty way, truly fond of — his office manager and two technicians. And they happen to be a lesbian, an African-American, and a Vietnam vet. They're a motley crew but they look after each other, offer no excuses for the nature of their work ("killing things that need killing"), and enjoy one another's company on Wednesdays at O'Donnell's Pub.
OMN: When starting on a new project, which comes first: the character or the storyline.
JAL: The Riley series emerged from the character. A cop-turned-exterminator provided the raw material for Poisoned Justice and the next book that's well underway. Those working in the field of pest control have a foot in two worlds — and this tension provides the moral ambiguity that is central to the genre of noir. Exterminators exemplify a profoundly human conflict. Their job is to kill in order to reduce misery. I worked in an academic setting as an applied entomologist, developing better methods for controlling rangeland grasshoppers in the West. And I wrote an essay a few years ago about my having been a paid assassin. There's a sense in which a good pest control operator knows his/her target, chooses the weapon that will do the job most effectively and efficiently, and tries to assure that bystanders (human and otherwise) are not harmed. In an important sense, a good exterminator also has much in common with a detective in that it can be a challenge to get to the root of an infestation so that it doesn't return. Pest control, like noir, finds itself in the cracks and crevices, the basements and dumpsters of the world — places that society doesn't want to know about but where a great deal happens to shape events.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
JAL: I begin with lots of free imagining, trying to find a solid story line that will compel the reader and illuminate my characters. Once I have a central concept, then I start making a kind of storyboard that provides the layers and complexities and digressions that make for a good mystery, so that by the end of the book the reader thinks "Aha, that makes sense and I should've seen it coming," which is somewhere between being too obvious and too obscure. After I have the framework, I start outlining chapters so I know what's going to unfold — but, of course, like any journey, I find that things shift around as I start writing. And so, then comes the writing. I find a great deal of freedom to imagine places and dialogue and action when I know the overall purpose of a chapter — and from there I can just let events happen in my mind and do my best to put them on the page.
OMN: How do you go about researching specific plot points of your stories?
JAL: My writing life started in the world of non-fiction, so I'm a rather meticulous researcher. Sure, I use the internet, but my most important research is in the settings where events transpire in the book. So, I've taken several trips to San Francisco, where I also visited with some frequency as a kid in the 1970s because my parents adored the city. I have first-hand experience with the pest control industry, which is Riley's context. As an entomologist at the University of Wyoming, I worked closely for years with industry representatives including sales and R&D folks, aerial applicators, Weed & Pest councils, and — of course — the people whose land was infested. I also worked extensively with those who were opposed to insecticide use — from environmental groups, to conservation organizations, to beekeepers. I spent my summers in the field directing operations to test new methods — one of which reduced costs by 75% while maintaining >90% efficacy and is now the standard approach across the West.
OMN: How involved were you with the cover design of Poisoned Justice?
JAL: Writing is my passion, but I have deep appreciation for other art forms. Riley is a lover of classical music — a cultured exterminator being a character with enchanting dissonance. So, when it came to the cover for Poisoned Justice I chose work with a gifted artist, Conor Mullen. The aesthetic sensibility that we pursued is the vivid cover art of pulp fiction that evokes sensuality and violence through darkly enchanting implication. A cover has to immediately draw the eye and convey a sense of the story — to set the hook for a prospective reader. Our strategy was to incorporate highly recognizable, even iconic, shapes to convey the place (San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge), the characters (a woman's hand bedecked with diamonds), and the plot (a vial of poison and a silhouette of marijuana leaves). And so, maybe Francis Bacon put it best, if somewhat unintentionally: "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."
OMN: What kinds of books do you enjoy reading for pleasure?
JAL: I started out as a scientist by falling in love with non-fiction, history and natural science — and I was enchanted by Loren Eiseley, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold. Much of science is like a detective story — and a good scientific publication is similar to a lawyer making a case to a jury. Mysteries and scientific research engage the imagination. In particular, I was drawn to the genre of noir. Film noir emerged full-fledged after WWII — and it was a time in which people had come to understand that the world was very complicated, the heroes did not invariably prevail, that moral decisions were not simple, that sometimes good people did bad things to make the world a better place, that we were not invariably in control of our lives and happenings, and that we turned our eyes away from dark places at our own peril. As a fiction writer, I continued my inclination to understand the classics. So I devoured the great stories by authors such as, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Ross Macdonald, Patricia Highsmith — you know, the usual suspects. And then I moved onto writers like Lawrence Block, Joseph Wambaugh, Sara Paretsky, along with other contemporary masters of mystery and noir.
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Jeffrey Lockwood grew up in New Mexico and spent youthful afternoons enchanted by feeding grasshoppers to black widows in his backyard. This might account for both his scientific and literary affinities. He earned a doctorate in entomology and worked for 15 years at the University of Wyoming, where he became a world-renowned assassin, developing a method for efficiently killing billions of insects (and few bystanders). This contact with death drew him into questions of justice, violence, and evil. He metamorphosed into an appointment in the department of philosophy and the program in creative writing. Pondering the dark side of humanity and the creepy side of insects led him to the realm of the murder mystery.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at JeffreyLockwoodAuthor.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook.
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Poisoned Justice by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood
A Riley the Exterminator Mystery
Publisher: Pen-L Publishing
When an activist ecology professor is found dead in his hotel room, the police chalk it up to natural causes, but his wealthy and fiery widow is convinced it's foul play. She needs someone who can operate behind the scenes — in the dark cracks and gritty crevices of San Francisco. Riley the exterminator fits the bill.
Riley's career as a police detective was cut short when do-gooders saw him beat information out of a child kidnapper. Now running his father's pest control business, Riley pursues two-legged vermin on the side. Turned out an ex-con can be licensed as an exterminator but not a private eye.
Winged ants and dead flies at the death scene suggest something's amiss to a man who knows insects. The dead professor's students, each harboring a secret, reveal that their environmentalist mentor had plans to take down the pesticide industry. But he needed cash for the operation — and that put him on a collision course with a most unusual drug lord.
When Riley's investigation unexpectedly reveals that the drugs that poisoned his own brother might be connected to the professor's death, extermination is in order. But he'll need to join forces with an intoxicating South African beauty — a reluctant ally, armed with lethal poison.
— Poisoned Justice by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood
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