Killer Surprises

The ubiquitous Ali Karim has a new interview with novelist Alex Kava at Shots. In it, the bestselling author of A Perfect Evil (2000), At the Stroke of Madness (2004), and this year’s A Necessary Evil--the fifth novel featuring FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell--talks about her tendency to hoard books, her make-or-break entry into fiction-writing, her interest in monstrous villains (“I’m fascinated by good and evil and this idea that if all of us are capable of doing evil, what drives some of us to cross that line when the rest of us wouldn’t dare?”), and her take on the role of violence in thriller fiction (“I have what I’d like to believe is a sort of blood-and-guts-meter. If I can’t stand to read it I won’t write it.”). But what struck me most about this exchange was Kava’s answer to a question about how she plots her books.

Q: The fourth Maggie O’Dell thriller, At the Stroke of Madness, was a real tour de force and showed how a writer can misdirect a reader, especially the ending. Without giving too much away, can you tell us how you plot? Do you have a detailed outline or do you let the muse take you in its arms?

A: I almost always know what my ending will be before I start. Now, how I get there is a different journey each time. It’s funny you should mention At the Stroke of Madness, because I had about three-quarters of the manuscript finished when my editor called to see how it was coming. I was behind on deadline for the first time, and even though I knew what my ending would be I had to admit that I didn’t know who the killer was at that point. Which may sound odd but what happened was that several characters were beginning to convince even me that they could be the killer. I heard James Lee Burke once say that he purposely doesn’t write an outline because if he knows where he’s going, chances are his readers will too. I like the idea that my characters can surprise me. Hopefully they’ll surprise my readers, too.

To read the full interview, click here.