Ali: | What novels were the early books that you read, that either influenced you, or made you take up the pen? |
Gayle: | As a child, I read voraciously - everything I could get my hands on, from children’s novels to Campbell’s Soup can labels and comic books. Although words and ideas fascinated me, there was no one to guide me, for which I’m now grateful. This meant I grew up with no prejudices for or against any particular kind of story. It also meant I read not only interesting but boring novels. Still, as long as I could live the story, no matter how tedious it might be to others, I finished the book.
By the time I was ten, I was deep into adult novels. When I wanted to borrow The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee from my uncle’s library because it had the word “murder” in the title (I hadn’t a clue what a G-string was), I overheard my aunt call my mother to tell her it might have sexual content inappropriate for a pre-adolescent. This of course only increased my appetite to read it. My mother was not only an omnivorous reader but a liberal Republican, so she gave her permission. It was my first murder mystery. As it turned out, I found the story far from arresting and to this day can’t figure out why anyone would’ve bothered to publish the book, except that its author was the most famous burlesque dancer of her day. |
Gayle: | A month or so later, I watched my mother reread the mammoth Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, so engrossed she missed a coffee date with girlfriends. When she finished, I picked up the book, testing its weight. She pointed out its enormous length and advised me it was very adult and I’d probably not understand it even if I managed to make it to the end; still, if I insisted, I could give it a try. What a smart woman: Of course, I was intrigued and began reading instantly. Once I got past the repetitive references to Georgia’s rich red earth, I fell in love with the story.
These two choices might indicate I’d turned my back on mystery and was headed into romance. Ultimately, it was true that straight mysteries have held little appeal to me as a writer, but not only the romance in Gone with the Wind caught my attention, so did the savage power struggles, the international influences, the rebellions against heartless overlords both before and after the Civil War, and the sweeping forces of history and culture that had led to this bloody moment in the nineteenth century. Plus, I adored the adventure.
I sound as if I must’ve been a supercilious little brat, but I was shy about this internal life of mine and seldom talked about it. (In fact, I was so wild about books that I inadvertently taught myself English grammar, only because I was curious about how by fitting words together one could create pictures in the mind.) Ultimately, by being allowed to pursue indiscriminately, I became discriminate. By my teen years, I was devouring authors like Dickens and Tolstoy and Mark Twain and, yes, Kurt Vonnegut. |
Ali: | How crucial are the British in the development of the thriller genre? And who do you most admire from the British cabal? |
Gayle: | You Brits were more than indispensable. While the private detective novel is a Yank invention, originally a novel of the proletariat, the spy novel - at least to my mind - arises primarily from your literary soil.
I always go back to Eric Ambler, who often ignored the usual alleys and government offices and placed his clandestine tales daringly into the drawing rooms, the dining rooms, and the neighborhood pubs of not only the working class but the elite. I admired his work enormously, plus of course Graham Greene’s, despite his occasional heavy-handed religiosity. I love you Brits and find you endlessly fascinating - the cloth of velvet over cold steel; there’s a reason you ruled the waves and more large land-masses than any other nation in modern history. In the work of both authors, I found the customary British understatement and good manners and occasional stuffiness well leavened with brutal realities, which made Ambler’s and Greene’s tales not only realistic but chilling.
I admire John le Carre’s books for their authenticity, but to my taste he often didn’t end them satisfactorily. When an author entices, excites, and surprises a reader into sticking with a very long book for hundreds and hundreds of pages, one owes that reader an ending commensurate with all that has gone before. In other words, there is a promise implied in the first seven-eighths or so of a novel. In Le Carre’s case, his endings should be rousing, weighty, and exciting. I’m not suggesting he change the outcome, only that he dramatize and, as we say in Yankland, “stand and deliver”.
As for Helen MacInnes, who was born in Scotland in the early 1900s and became a U.S. citizen in the 1950s, I quote from the dust jacket of The Snare of the Hunter, published in 1974, since it captures her work admirably: “Miss MacInnes has become distinguished as the creator of highly literate, remarkably acute, and supremely exciting novels set against a background of contemporary history. The recently exposed and increasing suppression of writing and thought in the satellite nations behind the Iron Curtain, which Miss MacInnes foresaw from its earliest evidence, provides the powerful motivation for this new novel of irresistible fascination and depth of meaning.”
To me, her sensibility was profoundly - and importantly - European. Hence her focus on fact, history, and culture. By moving to the United States, she broadened and deepened and became more worldly in the frontier, rough-and-tumble sense. As Bob Ludlum did, and I do today, she observed closely the constantly changing politick, drawing sharp-eyed conclusions from which she created stories that were chillingly predictive. |
Ali: | And the Americans? |
Gayle: |
In my opinion, our contribution was to turn the spy novel into the modern spy thriller. Of course, Robert Ludlum is largely credited with this. He took MacInnes’s broadly appealing, reality-based work to the next level of violence, conspiracy, and adventure without being nearly as good a writer as she. He always said he created melodramas, and I think that’s an accurate assessment not only of his storylines and plotting, but is reflected in his use of excessive and overwrought language.
As you know, Bob’s early work particularly influenced me. Today he receives little credit for his daring not only in changing the form but in bringing to the attention of the public important but little-known aspects of real-life espionage. For instance, during the Cold War he finished a manuscript in which CIA operatives spied and conducted operations domestically, which was illegal. His publisher applied pressure, demanding he change the plot line, claiming readers would not believe anything so farfetched and ultimately appalling. But Bob refused, and the book was published as he had written it. Later during the 1970s, sworn testimony during the Frank Church Hearings before Congress revealed that the CIA had indeed been spying and operating extensively at home for years, and Bob was vindicated.
As for myself, I think I’m a better writer than Bob when it comes to use of language, structure, color, mood, and so forth. In terms of plots and stories, I hold my own but lean toward a briskness that didn’t interest him. Perhaps that is due to a certain impatience in our era. As a writer of melodrama, he was never concerned about the subtleties of characterization, preferring to draw his people with broad strokes, while three-dimensional characters are imperative to my sensibilities, and I work hard to make sure mine are. His women were stock helpmeets; mine are active heroines and adventuresses. After that, comparing us is like comparing apples and oranges. We come from different generations, different times, and are relevant to our particular eras, which is probably why he wrote melodrama and I don’t. The final question is one of timelessness. Is his work timeless? Is mine? That’s for literary historians and readers with long memories to judge. |
Ali: | Talking about your early work, I read that you wrote several books in The Three Investigators series. Would you care to talk about those books and what you learned writing them? |
Gayle: | My son had been reading the Three Investigators books, which at that point were affiliated with the Alfred Hitchcock name, and thoroughly enjoying them. As it turned out, his favorites were written by William Arden, who was really Dennis Lynds, my second husband. It was a complete coincidence, since neither of us knew Dennis at that point, much less that he lived in Santa Barbara.
Writing young adult novels during the late 1980s was yet another way for me to stretch my skills and experiment. Through Dennis I met the editor at Knopf who handled the series, proposed ideas until she finally liked one, and went to work. But when I finished the manuscript, I again ran into tired sexism: She told me, “Boys won’t read books written by girls.” She gave me the choice of the book’s not being published or of hiding my female identity behind initials. At the time, I was writing as Gayle Stone, since it was my name while married to my first husband, and I hadn’t bothered to change it yet. I wanted to write for the series, and I was fed up with fighting the silliness of sexism, so for the three books I wrote in the series, I became G.H. Stone. |
Ali: | And I read that you’re pretty clued up on the topical subject of Weapons of Mass Destruction; so in general terms exactly how common are WMDs in the rogue states or has their existence been exaggerated for political ends? |
Gayle: | For that answer, I recommend you read my next thriller, The Last Spymaster, which I’m supposed to be writing right now. St. Martin’s Press will publish it next year, in May 2005. |
Ali: | So how did you end up married to the crime / mystery writer Dennis Lynds? |
Gayle: | Now that’s a delicious love tale of which I’m personally fond. I’d dropped by the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for a night workshop, and Dennis was the guest speaker. I was just starting to publish short stories, had written an unpublished mainstream novel and an unpublished mystery novel, and was sitting on the floor, gazing up at him. He was an award-winning author with a slew of pseudonyms in the detective field as well as writing under his own name in mainstream fiction. Some of his short stories had been chosen for that select, highly competitive annual blue-ribbon collection: Best American Short Stories.
At that point, I’d been a “scholar” finalist to the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in New England, where I had just been told yet again that no one could write both mainstream fiction and popular fiction and be successful at each, much less combine them. Everybody - and I do mean everybody, from all literary fields, including the so-called intelligentsia and cognoscenti - advised me to give up the lunatic idea. The commonly held “wisdom” was that authors of mainstream did it for love and quality; authors of popular literature (or “commercial fiction” or “pop lit”) did it for money and were, alas, less talented. And never the twain would, could, or should meet. This of course has proved to be one more nonsensical prejudice - Joyce Carol Oates and Norman Mailer have written fine murder mysteries, while Walter Moseley’s and James Lee Burke’s poetic suspense dramas are considered literature.
Back then, Den was not only living proof that the naysayers were wrong, he was also wonderful to look at, handsome in his tweed jacket and jeans, articulate as hell, and he kept staring at me. Finally, a girlfriend passed me a note as if we were back in high school, asking, “Do you know he’s staring at you?” Hello! One thing led to another, and Den and I have been together ever since. To this day I work very hard to marry literary and thriller fiction in my novels, as Helen MacInnes did decades ago. |
Ali: | So could you tell us a little about his books? And which books you feel are the ones British readers should seek out urgently? |
Gayle: | Please visit Den’s website, www.DennisLynds.com, for a full bibliography, which is terribly impressive. He’s credited with bringing the detective novel into the modern age. He’s won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) as well as the Marlowe Award for his body of work from MWA’s Southern California Chapter.
Den’s best-known creation is Dan Fortune, published under the pseudonym Michael Collins. As a writer, Den is very political and sociological, grand in all respects. I’d particularly suggest Castrato, my favorite novel. It deals insightfully with the problems of the modern male in today’s society. I also highly recommend his several collections of short stories - especially the mainstream collection Talking to the World and the detective collection Fortune’s World. |
Ali: | Talking about family, this seems to be a theme, especially evident in The Coil about family relationships, with Liz Sansborough and her father ‘The Carnivore’, her kidnapped cousin as well as the British connection…..what is it about family that interests you? |
Gayle: |
Everything! Families are a microcosm of the world at large. A reader told me he thought that what “The Sopranos” television show has done in revealing the inner workings of the American mafia, Masquerade and its sequel, The Coil, are doing in revealing the inner workings of international espionage. The truth is, both Masquerade and The Coil chronicle an American and British family of spies and assassins, which didn’t seem particularly unusual to me but in books apparently is. Just as there are families of plumbers and lawyers and school teachers and La Cosa Nostra, there are families of spies. For instance, the CIA’s greatest traitor, Aldrich Ames, was himself the son of a CIA man. |
Ali: | Another theme in your work is how powerful people and conspiratorial groups like the international moguls in The Coil manipulate society, which I read was loosely based on The Bilderberg Group. Would you care to comment? |
Gayle: | As I said, I spent eight years researching The Coil, and most of that time was focused on the Bilderberg Group, which is little known in the United States. I detail the research in my Author’s Note at the end of The Coil. |
Ali: | When you wrote Masquerade, did you foresee that Liz would become a series character? |
Gayle: | Heck, no. Masquerade was a stand-alone novel as far as I was concerned, and I saw no way to take the story further. My editor at St. Martin’s for the Covert-One novels, the great Keith Kahla, however, had loved Masquerade, and he kept asking me about a sequel. I talked with him off and on about it for several years, brainstorming, until at last I had an idea worthy of the project, and then another, and another, until eventually I was able to write The Coil. |
Ali: | I noticed when I spoke to my sources, that you got a great deal of detail right vis-à-vis the modern MI6. Did you have to pull in many favours in your research? |
Gayle: | I’m fortunate to have excellent sources, one of whom is a founding member of the CIA’s counterterrorism unit. He vetted The Coil, for which I’m most grateful. Apparently, my other sources were accurate, and so he changed nothing. Besides human sources - “humint” - I use a lot of public information. It’s amazing what’s available, if you know where to look and are patient. |
Ali: | You also used the correct term for a British bottom - arse,not ass…well done! |
Gayle: | Muchas gracias! |
Ali: | How much travel do you have to do as there is a fair amount of globetrotting in your work? |
Gayle: | With me, it’s not “do you have to”, it’s “would you like to”. Right now, I’m able to do very little travelling, since writing and touring take most of my time. However, my husband and I travelled a fair amount in the 1990s, when he was a guest of honor at a couple of French literary festivals. That took us to Britain, too, from which many of my forbearers came. In fact, the name “Sansborough” (or perhaps “Lonsborough” or some similar spelling - the name is hand written in personal letters so old that the ink has faded, and I can’t quite read it) comes from an ancestor who was, apparently, Lord Sansborough or the Earl of Sansborough.
I’ve tried Burke’s Peerage but found nothing about the name or variants there. I’ve always hoped someone would recognize it and tell me the truth of the following small tale, which has been handed down through my family, another wonderful love story. The basics are that Elizabeth Sansborough fell in love with a stable boy, Thomas Walker, and against her parents’ wishes married him. They disinherited Elizabeth. Thomas took her to the United States, where they settled somewhere in New York state. One of her daughters was named Sarah Walker, who married my great-grandfather, Charles Jay Tice, a Civil War veteran.
In Masquerade and The Coil, Elizabeth Sansborough and Sarah Walker are cousins. If anyone recognizes any of this story, I’d appreciate their getting in touch through my website. My family and I sure would like to know. |
Ali: | Did you find it bizarre that back in your book The Paris Option you wrote about the links between the Basque ETA and madmen of Al-Quaeda, while in The Hades Factor you had a virus threat not dissimilar to SARS. How creepy is that? |
Gayle: | I know, it’s interesting. Still, a large part of my job is to pay attention to the world. I subscribe to three newspapers a day and a slew of news magazines each month.
Another of my good calls was in Mesmerized, where I predicted the existence of a high-level mole in the FBI. I discovered I was right just weeks before Mesmerized was published, when the FBI arrested Robert Hanssen and unveiled him as the worst traitor in not only its history but in America’s. That’s when I knew I’d even guessed his first name correctly.
Events such as these are in the air for those of us who are looking. I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t occasionally hit very close to home. And as you may remember from my answer to an earlier question, I consider this sort of predictive quality one of the hallmarks of the best, most relevant thrillers. |
Ali: | You have now written three Covert-One books with Robert Ludlum, the last being The Altman Code. How did this come about? |
Gayle: | When Masquerade was published, reviewers and readers began calling me the female Robert Ludlum. I felt honored, because I had such respect for his work. Apparently, Bob heard about it and read Masquerade, interested in what the “competition” was doing. I find this terribly amusing and sweet, since I was just starting out and he was a literary icon. He continued to read my work, since he admired it (bless him), and when he decided to start an adventure series - his first deliberate series, not an inadvertent one like the Bourne series - he wanted a collaborator. He felt that we would mesh well, and an emissary phoned me, asking whether I’d be interested.
Bob was a delight, a real gentleman. As you can imagine, I’m asked many, many questions about him and our work together. Finally out of desperation I wrote at some length about it, which you can find on a special webpage called simply “Robert Ludlum” on my website: www.GayleLynds.com |
Ali: | I heard that the fifth one, The Lazurus Vendetta, is to be written by Robert Ludlum and Keith Ferrell, so I assume that you will now only work on your own books? |
Gayle: | Originally, I’d thought I could do the Covert-Ones at the same time as I wrote my own novels, but I found that I’m not nearly as superhuman as I’d hoped. When I jumped over to be with Keith at St. Martin’s, he pointed this out and suggested I devote myself to my own work. Besides, I make more money on my own books, although I forgot that for a while. (We writers often become so involved in the work that the money fades in importance - as long as we can pay our bills, that is.) In any case, it’s time someone else had the fun and the challenge of writing the Covert-Ones. |
Ali: | Some people amongst our intelligentsia do not consider the thriller genre to be “literary” enough when compared to ‘general fiction’? Would you care to comment? |
Gayle: | Well, from my viewpoint, the best of popular fiction is often literary, and the most popular of literary fiction usually can also be categorized in one genre or another. A weak book is still a weak book no matter how it’s labeled. Who knows - perhaps in the future that will be a genre, too. Can you imagine the sweaty consternation of some marketing department at the thought of marketing a book deliberately as weak? |
Ali: | With the success of The Coil, I’ve heard that you have European rights sold in many countries. Will we be seeing you in the UK anytime soon? |
Gayle: | In Britain, my own novels have been published for quite some time by HarperCollins, while the Covert-Ones are with Orion. Every time I visit your country I have an instant sense of being at home. The connection feels deep, almost atavistic, probably because I’m descended from so many English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish families. I suspect my telling you that being published in Britain is important to me is unsurprising. As for what the future holds, who knows? Ah, the suspense!
Thus far, The Coil has been sold to Germany, France, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Romania. My international agent, Danny Baror, tells me he’ll close deals for it soon in other countries, too.
As it turns out, my husband and I will be in Europe in the second half of October, because my great Netherlands publisher, Rienk Tychon of Luitjingh-Sijthoff, is flying me to Amsterdam to help publicize the company’s launch of The Coil. I’m curious about what it will be like to undergo the two days of consecutive press interviews they’re planning for me, which I suspect will be both political and challenging. On other days, I’ll research scenes for future books. And finally - a great joy - my new French publisher, Ariane Fasquelle of the legendary Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, will train from Paris to Amsterdam for a weekend lunch, our first meeting. I’m excited about all of this, especially since by then I’ll have finished writing my next book and will be more than ready for a new adventure. |
Ali: | Thank you for your time and we hope to see you in the UK! |
Gayle: | It’s been a pleasure, Ali. You always ask marvelous and provocative questions. I can’t wait to visit London again! |
Gayle Lynds has kindly donated two signed copies of The Coil to the first two Shots readers who can answer the following question :-
