"...I GREW AS A WRITER TO MAKE IT WORK.": BLIND TO MIDNIGHT'S REED FARREL COLEMAN

Reed Farrel Coleman's second book to feature Nick Ryan, a "fixer" in the NYPD, looks at the city and it's emotions both communal and in its individual citizens when two cases, one assigned by his mysterious handler, Joe, and the other personal involving the murder of an old cop friend, end up tied to a cold case that occurred on 9/11. It's works as both a great action cop thriller and meditation on the city. Reed talked with us about capturing all these sides of his story.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: I know you've tried before to use this unsolved crime in one of your books and there has been some trial and error. What unlocked it for Nick Ryan's second book?

REED FARREL COLEMAN; Sometimes, you have an idea for a book and either you don’t have the chops to write it or you haven’t let it stew long enough to make it sustain a novel. When I first conceived of my novel GUN CHURCH, I hadn’t developed technique enough to pull it off properly. It took several more years for me as I grew as a writer for me to make it work. The book won the Audie for Best Original Material for an Audio Book. If I had written it when I first conceived of it, it wouldn’t have won anything and might not have gotten published. Same here. The incident that BLIND TO MIDNIGHT  begins with happens on 9/11. What I realized was not enough time had passed. When I first tried exploring the subject.  I wasn’t ready for it and it wasn’t ready for me. I think one of the things that makes a good writer is knowing when the time is right. And when I sat down to begin BTM, I knew the time was right.

S.M.: Ryan works on three different cases in this book. Besides the plot threads, did you find anything else they share?

R.F.C.: Although the three plot threads seem divergent, they are actually tied together by more than proximity. All three have their roots in the past. As Faulkner famously once said, “The past is never dead, it isn’t even past.” One of the major themes of my work is that violence, even violence of the distant past, resonates in the future. That is true with all three of the cases in BTM. In my Moe Prager novel EMPTY EVER AFTER, I wrote that there are victims of the Holocaust yet to be born. I believed it then and I believe it now.

S.M.: One of the thematics of the book deals with how war molds people. A lot of Nick's memories come from his time as a soldier. How had that time molded him?

R.F.C.: Nick was an NYPD detective before he enlisted. As such, he went to war with his personal code of behavior and his understanding of right, wrong, and of justice. The war changed all that. He learned that right, wrong, and justice can’t be defined by a set of regulations or even a preconceived personal code of ethics. War, particularly the murder of a local girl, cried out for action regardless of the rules and norms. He brought that experience home with him. His understanding of right and wrong and the constraints society puts on one’s actions are different now after the experience of war.

S.M.: The action passages in this book are effective in a different way than they are in most "hero books" in the sense you get more of a feel of Ryan's interior thoughts than just his reactions, yet it doesn't affect the pace or visceral impact. How do you approach that balance?

 R.F.C.: I once worked on a project with someone who believed that a person is what they do. I have never believed that. For me, a person is more than his or her job or career. Another actor/director I knew was interested in acquiring the rights to my Gus Murphy books. When I asked him why he was interested, he said that he had never read a book that mixed so well and realistically a character’s professional and personal life. Oddly, this is the same approach I take with action sequences. For me, it is not enough to show what’s going on, but how the character in question feels about what’s happening. It’s that balance that I keep in mind. I have a loud internal voice and I imbue my characters, when I can, with a loud enough internal voice for the readers to hear. 

S.M.: I'm always impressed how you convey a real, lived in feel to the lives of police and former police like Robert Daly or JImmy Breslin, but you're not a former officer or journalist. How do research this and apply it to your writing?

R.F.C.: In all things, in all characters, it’s about how they see the world and how they feel about it. So, when I hang out with cops or carpenters or doctors, yeah, I’m interested in their stories. But what I’m listening for is the parts where they tell me how they felt about what was happening, how they saw their situations. I’m not interested in repeating cop stories, as entertaining and harrowing as they can be. My characters seem authentic because of what they feel and how they filter the world. I’ve written about good cops and bad cops, but I’ve never received any complaints from cops about how I write them. 

S.M.: I don't know how much of your intention in the writing Blind To Midnight was to do this, but I couldn't help but be confronted with how my feelings and memories of 9/11 have become more ethereal as it moves from current events into history and that doesn't seem right. For a New Yorker as yourself, is it a different struggle?

R.F.C.: It’s just different for us New Yorkers as it is for residents of Oklahoma City. When it happens to you or in your town, it’s more personal. For me, 9/11 was especially heartfelt because I worked at 1 World Trade Center for a year in 1980 and I was on the observation deck with my wife and kids two weeks before 9/11. No New Yorker who lived through that day can experience a cloudless blue sky without it evoking memories of 9/11. Thankfully, I didn’t lose anyone that day, but I knew people whom did. The year that followed was horrible, just horrible.