We are delighted to welcome author Robert J. Ray to Omnimystery News today.
Robert's seventh Matt Murdock mystery is Murdock Rocks Sedona (Camel Press; November 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to spend some time with him talking about the series.
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Omnimystery News: What would you put in a biography for Matt Murdock?
Photo provided courtesy of
Robert J. Ray
Robert J. Ray: Matt Murdock is an Army brat. His dad was a Sergeant Major. Murdock is smart. He talks slow, but he moves fast. Always trying to be funny, and sometimes people laugh.
He falls in love like a diver off the big board.
He learned his soldiering skills in the Army.
Two tours, the first in Southeast Asia, when he rescued MIA's from prison camps.
The second tour was in Germany, where he fell in love with a lanky German lass, who left him for a Cadillac dealer in Long Beach.
In the first four books, Murdock solves crimes in SoCal.
He has a bachelor pad over the Silver Surfer diving shop on the pier in Newport Beach.
In book five, Murdock Cracks Ice, he falls in love with Hana Lakota, an artist from Seattle.
In book six, Murdock Tackles Taos, Murdock falls in love with Helene Steinbeck, a writer with one book.
In book seven, Murdock Rocks Sedona, he's still with Helene Steinbeck.
Has Murdock settled down at last?
OMN: Tell us a little more about your writing process.
RJR: I start with a place and a crime: objects, buildings, vehicles, smells and temperature. Temperature gives me wardrobe and a hint at income. Income gives me lifestyle. I nail down four main characters: Killer, Victim, Sleuth, and Catalyst. I write the opening. The victim is dead. The body gets discovered. The murder gets reported. Murdock gets no help from the cops — he's on his own.
I write 100 pages very fast, blocking in modular scenes: Crime Scene, Discovery of the Corpse, Reporting the Crime, Sleuth Onstage, Object Link, Witness Interview, Victim's Lair, Suspect Interrogation. (More on Modular Scenes in The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery, co-authored with Jack Remick.) I build a character chart early because that coughs up subplots. If I start my subplots early, the rewrite sings.
Part of the first 100 pages is sketching two climaxes, maybe three. Will the novel end where it began, like Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep? Will it journey to a new place, like Gorky Park, which opens in Moscow and ends across the sea in New Jersey?
Another chunk of the first 100 pages is Character Work. Not only lifestyle stuff like domicile and income and vehicle and wardrobe, but also deep dives into back story in search of motive, which drives the agenda from Page One. At 100 pages, I write the climax again. With the climax locked down, I can write the key scenes, starting with the First Encounter — the meeting between killer and sleuth. After writing First Encounter, I write the other key scenes:
• Page One and After gets me to Plot Point One.
• Midpoint locks down the middle of Act Two with scene-sequence.
• Scene-Sequence gets me to Plot Point Two.
• Objects and motives and discoveries lay the approach to the Climax.
To lock down the structure, I write a Cut-To, taking my cue from films and screen-writers, skimming the surface to get the feel for structure: what comes next? What comes after that? If an important character enters talking stupid or acting weak, I lay out a scene-list for that character's subplot. If the character is not sharp enough, I rewrite every scene in that subplot.
OMN: Into which genre would you place this series?
RJR: Murdock is a Private Eye, a detective for hire. Like Travis McGee, Murdock helps people. His profession of snooper-detective lands him in the shadows of film noir and hard-boiled fiction. I came of age with film noir — Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Alan Ladd — the studied darkness of the mystery landscape.
Genre came to us from the Greeks: epic, comedy, tragedy, lyric poetry. Genre helps publishers group readers and sales. ushered in the Gothic romance, a new genre, with The Castle of Otranto. Publishers use genre to corral readers into target customers. When you buy a book on Amazon, the book genie types a message: If you liked Book 1-A, you will adore Book 2-A. Generic groupings set the online cages for Goodreads, where genre starts with "10th century" and ends some hundreds of genres later, with "zombies".
Genre is a shortcut for authors, but beware the career consequences. A woman at a group book-signing event asked what was my genre and I said, Sex and Violence, ma'am. And she walked away. But that was decades ago, in another country, and I felt duly chastised.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
RJR: Oh, boy, memories. I read every Hardy Boy book. They drove a roadster, I wanted a roadster. As a teen, I read books on smoke-jumpers and pirates, searching for a career sparked by adventure. My sense of brevity came from comic books — those action boxes, those thought bubbles in Batman, Daredevil, Blackhawk (the original A-Team), Terry and the Pirates. The Dragon Lady became my model for les femmes fatale — and when I was sixteen, I read From Here to Eternity and knew I would someday be a writer.
OMN: Create a Top Five list for us on any topic.
RJR: Top Five Crime/Suspense/Thriller Writers:
• John Sandford — his Lucas Davenport stuff is funny, clever, well-structured, never stops moving. His Virgil Flowers stuff is even funnier.
• Robert B. Parker — Spenser's dialogue is world-class, and here's another funny guy.
• James M. Cain — my favorite Cain book is Serenade. What a ride. Cain's books made great films noir.
• Daniel Silva — his spy-protagonist, Gabriel Allon, draws on the woodsman-cowboy hero-archetype based on Natty Bumppo, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, Men of the West.
• John D. MacDonald — his hero, Travis McGee, gave me the model for Matt Murdock, without the houseboat.
OMN: What kind of feedback have you received from readers?
RJR: The keynote for getting or receiving feedback is Writer Beware. If you want feedback with love, you will get slammed against the library wall.
In San Diego, a long time ago, I was in a writer's critique group, where biting criticism left blood on the floor, and one day I got a letter from a member of the group — a smart man, well-educated — about Bloody Murdock, published three years earlier, and in his letter the man told me how to rewrite my novel (he could not remember the title) and make it better, more accessible, more reader-friendly, he said — one of those impossibly bland editorial directives when it was too late, and I wrote him back, saying, hey buddy, the book's been out three years, and there won't be another edition after the paperback, so what's up with you? No answer. A year later, the guy died.
OMN: What's next for you?
RJR: Short answer: a world-class forehand.
Explanation: At the ripe old age of 80 I started playing tennis again, after a 20-year layoff, and bought a new stick. I grew up with wood racquets named after the Tennis Gods of the time — Don Budge, Jack Kramer, Rod Laver — then switched to metal in the 1980s. But these new racquets are made of boron, with additives like Kevlar, fiberglass, copper, titanium, and tungsten. My new racquet hits like a slingshot grafted onto a medieval catapult.
With this new stick in my paw, an old person like me deserves a new forehand. A forehand with a whippy wrist and wrap-around follow-through, like you see on the TV, right?
Oh, the joys of learning. On Tuesday I stumble around the court in Senior Drill and Play. On Thursday I take Ball Machine, four forehands in a row — none of them feel Modern — then four backhands, all in a row.
But I'm bringing new life to old muscles, my footwork is better, my brain sizzles with the heat of geometric competition — finding the sides of the ball, hitting the clock-face, delivering the perfect forehand shot that lifts the yellow orb across the net, still arcing, then nestling down in the opposite court — what magic there be in simplicity and synchronized body movement! — and so far I've only fallen twice. And I'm blogging about tennis at 80.
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For more information about the author, please visit his website at RobertJRay.com and his author page on Goodreads.
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Murdock Rocks Sedona by Robert J. Ray
A Matt Murdock Murder Mystery
Publisher: Camel Press
Wealthy investors in Sedona, Arizona, are dropping like flies — more accurately, lead weights. They are falling down staircases and off mountainsides, decks, and hiking trails. With so many similar "accidents," the victims had to have been pushed. Other than their wealth and weakness for beautiful young women, what the falling men had in common was a financial interest in Sedona Landing, a historic hotel in Oak Creek Village. They also shared a long history with the chief investor, billionaire Axel Ackerman. Fearing that he too will plunge to his death, Ackerman hires Matt Murdock and Helene Steinbeck to investigate.
During his climb to the top of the heap, Ackerman crushed scores of rivals and broke many hearts. The culling of his "Crew" of investors is clearly personal. So who among this crowded field of enemies would orchestrate such a byzantine scheme of revenge? To keep their client safe, Matt and Helene will have to be on their best game. Too bad their last case in Taos took such a heavy toll, particularly on Helene, and caused a rift in their fragile bond.
— Murdock Rocks Sedona by Robert J. Ray
