I know a secret is the twelfth thriller in the series surrounding detective Jane Rizzoli and pathologist-anatomist Maura Isles. Writer Tess Gerritsen reached an audience of millions with it, but longs for more.
As the protagonists of Tess Gerritsen's thrillers, detective Jane Rizzoli and pathologist Maura Isles have been through quite a bit by now. Yet they are startled by the state in which they find murdered young woman Cassandra Coyle: her eyes have been cut out of their sockets and placed in her hands. Coyle made horror films, so it is suspected that this act has something to do with her films. But Coyle is not the only one to be murdered, and her former schoolmate Holly, around whom the book revolves, suspects it might have something to do with the disappearance of a former classmate and a secret she has been carrying with her since that time.
Based on a news story
As ever, Gerritsen has herself and her characters solving quite a puzzle.
Which part or characters did you struggle with the most?
'With Martin Stanek, the man who spent years unjustly in prison for child abuse and the disappearance of the girl Lizzie. I based it on a news story in my hometown of San Diego. In the late 1980s, a man, Dale Akiki, was accused of child abuse. Akiki was a devout Christian and provided Sunday school within his church. Because of Noonan syndrome, he had an abnormal appearance, but the children loved him.'
'One day, a mother accused him of molesting her child. The police launched an investigation and more and more children, including three- and four-year-olds, answered 'yes' when asked if he had molested them too. The stories became increasingly absurd: he took us on a boat and killed a shark. He killed a giraffe. Killed babies. Still, the court decided to arrest him. He spent two years in jail awaiting trial. Eventually, he was acquitted. The woman from whom the original suspicion came turned out to be mentally ill. And you saw in the interrogations how insinuating the questioning of the children was.'
Anger
'Two years of his life were wasted - much shorter than my character Martin's - and he would have been behind bars for the rest of his life, even though he was innocent. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be falsely accused of such things and spend 20 years of your life in prison for something you didn't do. The hardest part was making the reader feel Martin's anger and bitterness, but also maintaining sympathy for him while at the same time leaving the question of whether or not he is guilty in the middle. That was a challenge.'
And Holly?
'Holly was mostly fun. I found it interesting to get inside the head of a sociopath and see the world as she sees it. She doesn't care about good or bad, she just wonders if something is good for her. And has learned how to behave in this world and feign her emotions. That makes her a bit scary - not someone you want to have as a friend. No one will identify with her, so that made it easier; the reader doesn't need to feel sympathy for her, just interest.'
Staring at the ceiling
'I never quite figured out the plot in advance, so it wasn't until three quarters of the book that it dawned on me how the punchline was coming together. Is knew Holly knew something, but what and how much, I only discovered towards the end of the book. This is almost always the case, by the way. I always get stuck and don't know how to proceed. Then I lie on the sofa staring at the ceiling, I go for endless walks and car rides. And then suddenly I get a eureka moment, like a flash of light in my brain. Aha, that's the solution! Although my books certainly deal with social issues, for me it is primarily about solving the puzzle'.
Doesn't solving that get easier after 30 books?
"No, but that experience does give me confidence that I will come out and everything will come together."
After so many books, are Jane and Maura a vehicle for storytelling, or are there still things about their character or background you want to explore?
''I am at the point with this book where I could quit. All the questions I had about them have been answered. This book contains happy endings for different characters. I have no plans for an issue 13 yet, at the moment I am working on a completely different book. I'll see if anything else comes along. But this might also be the right time to end this series.'
Sixty
'I would like to do something different, write a book about a woman my own age. In many thrillers, beautiful young women are the heroine. But how would such a woman fare when she is around 60?"
Although it is a taboo subject among writers, you have never made a secret of the fact that you are writing the Rizzoli & Isles series mainly because it became so popular.
,,When I wrote the first book about Rizzoli and Isles, sales skyrocketed. And my publisher noticed that too. I am not ashamed to admit that I write market-oriented. The stand alones are the books I like to write, the others are the books my readers want. But I am 64 now and have maybe 20 more good creative years ahead of me in which I can write the books I want. I have enough financial security to be able to take risks, so if I don't do it now, it might not be possible."
Will they be literary novels or thrillers?
'I want to write a medical-historical novel about the history of anaesthesia, because it is incredibly interesting, complete with a court case surrounding its invention and great rivalry between doctors and scientists. But now I am working on something else that people don't expect me to do: a ghost story, about a woman who has a relationship with a ghost who turns out to be an evil being. So it will be a thriller, though.'
Biscuits
What continues to fascinate you about murder and violence? A puzzle does not necessarily have to be violent.
'I once told about Uncle Michael, a friend of our family and a very nice man whom I trusted completely. I was eighteen, but had known him all my life. One day he turned out to have killed his sister-in-law and went to jail. I can still remember that. On the day he had killed her, he came to our house to bring biscuits. He acted perfectly normal, was cheerful as ever. The next day he was arrested. Thirty years later, I was asked to write an article on the matter and through that I discovered that on that particular day I could not have been home at all, because I had college.'
'As it is in I know a secret revolves around false testimony and memories, so too was this a false memory - because my mother talked about it so often for years, I remembered that day as if I had been there myself. If I had been questioned in court, I would have stated convincingly that I had been at his visit. You can never trust memories completely; it is very easy to manipulate and distort them.'
Hooray for dna.
'Certainly, forensics offers more guidance. But I think I always kept asking myself: how could I have overlooked the fact that Michael could have committed murder? Why did he do it? My books ultimately all revolve around that: finding out what is going on behind the face that looks so normal and innocent. Everyone has secrets and keeps their true selves hidden. Wouldn't it be terrifying if we could hear each other's thoughts? Then you might suddenly discover that people you love are thinking monstrous things.'
I know a secret is published by The House of Books, €19.99.
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