“You’ve got the vacation house on Fire Island, you’ve got two boats moored in Oyster Bay, you’ve got—”
“I don’t need a fucking inventory. I need a number.”
“Basically your entire net worth. Eight hundred sixty thousand dollars. Plus my hundred fifty back…. And I want it in the next week. Oh, and you pay his bill too.” Shelby nodded toward the private eye.
“I’m good,” the man said. “But very expensive.” He finished the scone and brushed the crumbs onto the sidewalk.
Shelby leaned forward. “One more thing: my watch.”
Schaeffer stripped off the Rolex and tossed it to Shelby.
The couple rose. “So long, Detective,” the tourist said.
“Love to stay and talk,” Mrs. Shelby said, “but we’re going to see some sights. And then we’re going for a carriage ride in Central Park before dinner.” She paused and looked down at the cop. “I just love it here. It’s true what they say, you know. New York really is a nice place to visit.”
AFTERWORD TO “AFRAID”
I’d like to put on my professor’s tweed jacket for a moment and welcome you to Fear 101, also known as “How to scare the socks off your readers in a few easy lessons.” I’m going to offer some brief comments on how I incorporate fear into my writing.
I’m a suspense writer, not a philosopher or a psychiatrist. I’m concerned with fear only as it relates to storytelling. I’ve written “Afraid” to illustrate five essential fears that I regularly work into my writing. I’ll also share several rules that enhance the effects of those fears in my audience.
The first of the five is our fear of the unknown. Throughout the story “Afraid” Marissa never knows exactly what’s going to happen (and neither do we readers). At the beginning Antonio says, “It’s a surprise,” and I sustain the uncertainty established by that sentence for as long as I can. Marissa didn’t know where they were going, what the old woman meant, who Lucia really was, what Antonio was doing at the house in Florence, what was in the wine cellar…. In fact, she realizes — too late — that she didn’t really know Antonio at all.
Second is the fear we experience when others are in control of our lives — that is, we fear being vulnerable. Marissa is a shrewd businesswoman, intelligent and strong, and yet I’ve taken away all her resources. In “Afraid” Antonio is the driver and Marissa is solely a passenger, both literally and figuratively. At the end of the story, she’s nearly naked, in a remote country home, without a cell phone or weapon, trapped in a sealed cell, at the complete mercy of a madman with a knife, and nobody even knows where she is. Can you be any more vulnerable than that?
The third fear is others’ lacking control of themselves. When people play by society’s rules, we are less afraid of them. When they don’t, we are more. Psychopaths like Antonio have no control over their behavior so we can’t reason with them, and they’re not governed by laws and ethics. The fear is greatest when the lack of control is within someone we’re close to. A random murderer or other criminal is bad enough but when people we know and are intimate with start acting strange and in threatening ways, we are particularly terrified. That’s why I made my two characters lovers.
The fourth fear I use in my writing is our own lack of self-control. I mention the inexplicable drive to throw ourselves off a bridge or cliff — an urge that we’ve all experienced in one form or another. Marissa fears giving in to this specific impulse but in my story I use the impulse as a metaphor for a broader fear: of her loss of self-control with regard to Antonio. I also ply Marissa with drugs to further weaken her self-restraint.
The fifth fear is actually a broad category, which I call the icons of terror. These are the images (often clichés) that make us afraid either because they’re imprinted into our brains or because we have learned to fear them. Some of the icons I used in this story are:
The harbinger of evil (in Florence, the old woman with the jaundiced eyes, and the twin boys).
The religious motifs and violent imagery in the tapestry Marissa was looking at when they met.
The poison ring that Antonio bought for Marissa.
The echos of evil associated with a particular locale (the Monster of Florence — a real serial killer, by the way — and the fictional torture/killings on the highway between Florence and Siena).
The dead boy.
Dolls. (Sorry, Madame Alexander, but they can be just plain creepy.)
The isolated, gothic setting of the vacation house.
The windowless cell.
Blood.
Various phobias (Marissa’s claustrophobia, for instance).
Darkness.
The occult (the flowers and cross left by the stream).
These are just a few of the hundreds of icons of terror that can be used to jangle readers’ nerves.
Finally I wish to mention two more rules I keep in mind when creating fear.
One, I enhance the experience of horror by making sure that my characters (and therefore my readers) stand to lose something important if the threatened calamity comes to pass. This means the people in my stories — the good characters and the bad — must be fleshed out and must themselves care about losing their lives or about suffering some loss. Marissa wouldn’t be afraid if she didn’t care about living or dying, and readers wouldn’t be afraid for her if they didn’t care about her as a character.
Two, I always remember that my job as a suspense writer is to make my audience afraid but never disgusted or repulsed, as happens when there’s graphic gore or violence against, say, children or animals. The emotion that fear engenders in thriller fiction should be cathartic and exhilarating. Yes, make your readers’ palms sweat, and make them hesitate to shut the lights out at night — but at the end of the ride make sure they climb off the roller coaster unharmed.
--ooo000ooo--
“A Dish Served Cold” previously appeared online in Amazon Shorts, May 2006.
“Born Bad” previously appeared in Dangerous Women, edited by Otto Penzler (Mysterious Press, 2005).
“Chapter and Verse” previously appeared in Greatest Hits, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Carroll and Graf, 2005).
“The Commuter” previously appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1998.
“Copycat” previously appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 2003, and A New Omnibus of Crime, edited by Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert (Oxford University Press, 2005).
“Double Jeopardy” previously appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September/October 1997.
“Interrogation” previously appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1996, and Law and Order, edited by Cynthia Manson (Berkley Prime Crime, 1997).
“A Nice Place to Visit” previously appeared in Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block (Akashic Books, 2006).
“Ninety-eight Point Six” previously appeared in Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by the author (Berkley Prime Crime, 2003).
“The Poker Lesson” previously appeared in Men from Boys, edited by John Harvey (Heinemann, London, 2003).
“Surveillance” appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 2002, and The World’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, 4th Edition, edited by Ed Gorman and Marty Greenberg (Forge, 2003).
“Tunnel Girl” appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 2005.
“The Westphalian Ring” appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September/October 2004, and The Adventure of the Missing Detective, edited by Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg (Carroll and Graf, 2005).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A former journalist, folksinger and attorney, Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one best-selling author. His novels have appeared on a number of best-seller lists around the world, including The New York Times, the Times of London and the Los Angeles Times. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into 25 languages. The author of twenty-two novels, he’s been awarded the Steel Dagger and Short
Story Dagger by the British Crime Writers’ Association, is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader’s Award for Best Short Story of the Year and is a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He’s been nominated for six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, an Anthony Award and a Gumshoe Award. His book A Maiden’s Grave was made into the HBO movie Dead Silence starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. His most recent books are The Cold Moon, The Twelfth Card, Garden of Beasts and Twisted: Collected Stories.
His next novel will be The Sleeping Doll, published in 2007.
And, yes, the rumors are true, he did appear as a corrupt reporter on his favorite soap opera, As the World Turns. Readers can visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.
ALSO BY JEFFERY DEAVER
The Cold Moon*
The Twelfth Card*
Garden of Beasts
Twisted: Collected Stories
The Vanished Man*
The Stone Monkey*
The Blue Nowhere
The Empty Chair*
Speaking in Tongues
The Devil’s Teardrop
The Coffin Dancer*
The Bone Collector*
A Maiden’s Grave
Praying for Sleep
The Lesson of Her Death
Mistress of Justice
Hard News
Death of a Blue Movie Star
Manhattan Is My Beat
Hell’s Kitchen
Bloody River Blues
Shallow Graves
A Century of Great Suspense Stories (Editor)
A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor)
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Introduction)
* * *
*Novels featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs
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