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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 31 |
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STEVE MARTINI  |
Lawyer-turned-author
revs up new thriller
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
In his new courtroom thriller "Double Tap" (Putnam, $26.95), author Steve Martini gives his defense lawyer hero Paul Madriani a really tough assignment--defending a highly-decorated soldier against a murder charge that's all tangled up with government secrets and lies.
It seems nobody wants Madriani sticking his nose into any of that stuff, including even his client. What stuff are we talking about? Well, let's say it's a secret government deal that involved tapping into the private computer records of millions of Americans. And everywhere Madriani turns, he's told he can't go there because it involves "national security."
If you're thinking what I'm thinking, then you're probably saying, "Hey, it's about time something like this came out." I mean, it sounds real enough to be the next great scandal of the Bush administration, where "national security" seems to cover a multitude of sins.
It wouldn't be too bold a leap to suggest Martini may have another bestseller in "Double Tap," his latest in a long series of Paul Madriani legal thrillers that began with "Compelling Evidence" in 1992. It has that "ripped from the headlines" feel about it, loaded with the factual detail that has become a trademark of Martini's mystery novels.
"This book is about two years late," Martini said last week at a book-signing at Village Books in Bellingham, WA, where he's the most famous local author. "It involved lots of research."
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new thriller from Steve Martini |
Martini, 59, a self-admitted "technocrat," needed to develop a tremendous amount of knowledge about computers and computer files to give his story the realistic feel and credibility he wanted. Once he completed his extensive research, though, he says the writing went rather quickly and his real problem was bringing his story to a halt each day.
"At times I was working 15-16 hours a day," he said. "I had to take a pill to sleep or else I'd lie awake all night, still working on it."
Martini comes from the tradition of the lawyer-turned-writer, which dates back to the early 1930s and Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels. The group has swelled in numbers since the 1980s and Martini openly cites the influence of Scott Turow ("Presumed Innocent," "Burden of Proof," etc.), who touched off a new boom in lawyer/writers in the late 1980s. Martini now ranks high among his brethren, including John Grisham, Linda Fairstein, Kate Flora and many more.
Before becoming a lawyer, Martini was a journalist, working as a reporter covering California state government for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper. In both his former professions, he gathered copious information and was used to the sort of research he now does routinely to give his novels realistic backgrounds.
His first novel, "The Simeon Chamber" (1988) didn't feature San Diego defense lawyer Paul Madriani, but the first one that did, "Compelling Evidence" (1992) became a bestseller. A string of other hot books followed, including "Prime Witness," "Undue Influence" and "The Judge."
Martini learned an author can do pretty much what he wants if he writes books that sell well and are "stand alone" novels without a continuing character. Once he decided to go with Madriani as his hero, he was qualified as a "series" mystery novelist and that's when he discovered there are "rules" that apply to the series format.
"The publisher liked the idea of having short titles with just two words," says Martini, who's grown a short white beard lately and wore a short-sleeved beach-style shirt to his Bellingham signing.
Consequently, Martini has had to toss out a few titles he liked because they didn't fall under that "two words" limit, which has governed all his books from 1992 on.
Early in his literary career, Martini also was discovered by filmmakers. CBS turned "Undue Influence" into a 1996 miniseries and NBC made "The Judge" into a 2001 miniseries. I asked Martini if he was satisfied with the two adaptations of his novels.
"Well, an author is never really completely happy with them," he said. "The screenplays are written by someone else and a whole lot of people are involved in the process, so you have these different points of view about things."
For example, Martini said the author's concept of his hero often turns out quite differently when others fold their concepts into the project. With the two films made from his books so far, that was pretty obvious. The 1996 CBS version of Paul Madriani was actor Brian Dennehy, a tall, stout man of middle years, while the 2001 NBC Madriani was actor Chris Noth from "Law & Order" and "Sex in the City." Though Madriani was older in "The Judge" than he was in "Undue Influence," Noth is younger, trimmer and more "urban" looking than the older, heavier Dennehy.
Being a lawyer, Martini probably was a little better prepared to deal with film producers than the average writer. For one thing, he successfully negotiated "possessory" titles for both the film versions of his books, meaning his name became part of the official title, i.e. "Steve Martini's 'The Judge.'"
"That means every time the movie is shown anywhere, you're getting a million dollars worth of publicity," said Martini.
Martini said the TV versions did prompt a lift in sales for the two novels, but he says the current conventional wisdom is that such "tie-ins" no longer produce any big boom in sales and publishers aren't really all that interested in movie or TV tie-ins to their books.
With his first novel, Martini wrote without an outline, letting the story develop as he worked on it. Result: The first book took him four years to write. He now works with an outline and from the philosophy that, "If the author doesn't know how his book is going to turn out, he's in trouble."
The book jacket blurb about Martini is rather sparse, saying only that he lives "in the Pacific Northwest." Around Bellingham, though, he's a major celebrity. His former upstairs office in a grand old turn of the century building in the "old town" Fairhaven district of the city still attracts attention because the current occupant has retained the rather "special" lettering on the window, which says "Law Offices of Spade & Archer." It refers, of course, to the partners who shared an office in Dashiell Hammett's great mystery classic, "The Maltese Falcon."
Martini's rich sense of humor also is present if you visit his website at www.stevemartini.com. To benefit a favorite charity, he'll sell you a copy of any of his older books, which are shipped in a black pin-striped box, sealed with Steve's signature in gold foil and stuffed with "shredded manuscript from the rough drafts of Steve's books while supply lasts." The gift boxes also include a black coffee mug bearing the "Madriani at Midnight" logo, a package of biscotti, an autographed paperback novel and an eight-ounce package of "Madriani blend" coffee "to keep you reading til the wee hours of the morning."
Pretty clever, right? And he writes darn good books, too.
©2005 by Ron Miller.
The book cover illustration is courtesy of Putnam. The Steve
Martini photo is by Daniel Sheehan and is courtesy of the author's
website. This column first posted Aug. 1, 2005.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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