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Welcome to Murder Junction, everyone. This week on the show,
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we have a truly special, special guest. We are talking
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to the legendary thriller writer, Sarah Paretsky. Sarah, welcome to
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the show.
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It's great to be here, although it's a little daunting
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to be thought of as a legend. It almost makes
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me feel as though I've died already.
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Well, we've had lots and lots of people who would
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be in that category, and I always do wonder about
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whether or not they're sick of being referred to as legends.
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You know, we've had the likes of Dean Kuntz and
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David Baldacci recently. And, you know, also anyone you can
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think of.
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Well, they really are legends.
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You're being far too modest, Sarah. I mean, we are
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honoured to have you on. And we should let you
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know that, you know, if this goes well, what we
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tend to do is we tend to adopt people as
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our uncles and aunts. So, you know, assuming you don't
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grow tired of us, you could be our Auntie Sarah now.
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We might have to come.
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I would love that. Actually, my next-door neighbor, who's five
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years old, Veda Bhagavatula, I am her Auntie Sarah.
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Well, there you are.
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I married her parents.
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Oh, wow. Are you an ordained Hindu priest?
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No, not at all. The mother or wife was a
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lapsed Catholic, and the Mr. Bhagavatula was a not-too-practicing Hindu,
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and so they thought having a secular... He's a bit
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like me.
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He's a Hindut rather than a Hindu.
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Anyway, my friend who studies Hindu religions gave me, now
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I can't remember the names of the poems, but gave
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me love poems from the 16th century to read from
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at the wedding, so... That's really smart.
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Sarah, we haven't even got to your writing and we're
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already discovering other talents. But let's start a little bit
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with some history. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about
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where you grew up. Tell us a little bit about that.
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Well, I grew up in Kansas, which is smack dab
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in the center of the United States. It's farm country.
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It's prairie country. My family is Jewish. And so we
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were oddities in this very Protestant flat farm country. So
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my upbringing was both extremely normal, middle-class, white, American, and
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also just sort of not quite on the page with
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the rest of the community.
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So you were a bit of a fish out of
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water then, in a way.
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Yes, a bit. my father was the second Jew hired
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in a tenure position at the University of Kansas. And
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at that time, there were real estate covenants that dictated
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where marginal people could live, which was mostly indigenous Indian nations,
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the small number of African Americans who lived there, and
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the even smaller number of Jews who lived there. We
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were supposed to live on the mud flats along the
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Kansas River. And so my parents bought a rickety old
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farmhouse out in the country to just avoid being in
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the mud flats.
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Wow.
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And so this is Kansas. This isn't even the South.
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This was, you know, in parts of Middle America, Midwest.
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Well, you know, when I moved to Chicago, I always
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thought I'd grown up in the North because Kansas was
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on the side of the Union in the Civil War.
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In fact, coming in, never mind all that, but coming
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in as a free state triggered the Civil War. And
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then when I moved to Chicago, I realized I'd grown
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up in the South.
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Well, let's talk about Chicago because you went to university there. And,
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you know, we both write historical fiction, but you've outdone
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us because you have a PhD in history.
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Yes, well, that wasn't the best use of either my
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time or the university's time, but it did happen, yes.
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Why do you say that?
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I don't think that, you know, all of this is
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so boring and trivial now from a great distance, but
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I have four brothers and no sisters. And I think
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I needed to prove to my father that I was
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as smart as my brothers and that I could get
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a PhD. And really, when I was taking my oral
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exams for my entry into the doctoral program, I hid
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in the library reading what mysteries they had on their
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shelves instead of reading the textbooks I was supposed to read.
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So it wasn't a waste of time then.
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Right.
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I was preparing for my life's work. I just didn't know.
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And also, for the record, do all of your brothers
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have doctorates?
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So one's a veterinarian. Two have PhDs. One converted to
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Catholicism and became a Dominican priest, and he has whatever
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degree the Dominicans like to give people.
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But, you know, so you've clearly done better than all
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of them, in my personal opinion, because not only have
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you got the PhD, but you, as we've established our
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religion in the field of detective writing.
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So technically, are you Dr.
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Sarah Paretsky?
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You know, no. I mean... Only if you want to
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take off all your clothes and get up on the
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table for me to examine you.
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Well, that's what David Baldatti offered me.
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He will take you up on that, so be very careful.
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All right, so moving swiftly on. How do we go
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from the PhD to the first VR?
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I have a question before that. What was your thesis on?
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What period in history, what were you focusing on when
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you did your PhD?
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Well, I was focusing on the period leading up to
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the American Civil War and it ended up with the 1830s, 40s, 50s.
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It ended up being a rather intellectual history, but I
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was drawn to it because I first came to Chicago
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when I was 19 to work as a volunteer in
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a program in the civil rights movement. It was the
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summer that Martin Luther King came to Chicago to help
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goad the city. Chicago had its own housing covenants and
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own really horrific racism and discrimination. And finally, the civil
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rights leadership persuaded Dr. King to come, hoping that his
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presence with TV cameras would shame the city into acting
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in ways that they hadn't been able to budge the city.
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So they asked for volunteers to come and work in
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programs in the neighborhoods. And even in the pre-internet era,
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somehow we all knew what was going on around the country.
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I can't remember now how we knew, but I applied.
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So I worked. I was assigned to a program in
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a white immigrant neighborhood, Polish-Lithuanian, to work with kids, to
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soft propaganda, hearts and minds, a different way of living
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in a diverse city than throwing rocks at each other.
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And fortunately in those days they didn't have AK-47s, just rocks.
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But the city just really got into my blood. It's
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why I came back, why I made it my home.
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But also when I started work on a PhD, I
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wanted to learn more, understand more what had brought us from,
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I mean, everyone knows about slavery, but that was before
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we had the kind of writing that we do now,
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like the 1619 project and so on. And so I
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wanted to try to understand the roots of how we'd
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gotten to where we were and then ended up not
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really writing about that, but it remains an interest.
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Did you get to meet, did you meet, um, Dr.
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King?
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No, I, I didn't. I, I heard him when one
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of his, um, speeches, my co-workers and I, a woman
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and a man, and I went to hear him speak
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in a big football stadium in Chicago and then we
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marched with him from there to City Hall where he
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nailed his theses to the mayor's door and emulating Martin Luther.
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The more you talk about it, the less I believe
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what you said about it being a waste. It sounds amazing.
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It sounds just, I mean... it was a seminal moment
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in history and you were part of it and you
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made the change. You changed people and their lives.
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Well, I was, you know, I do think in some
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ways I've had a lucky life to have been born
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when I was and to get to be part of
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things that I was, but my PhD did not do it.
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It was not good. It grew out of that.
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Well, let's move on to your writing career now. And
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before we talk about your latest book, Bad Company, we
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have to talk about the books that you are, you know,
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world famous, world famous for. I'm not sure if I
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can even pronounce this correctly, but I'm going to give
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it a go. So the character that you invented, Victoria, Iphigenia, Vic, VI, Wachowski.
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How close is that? Is that perfect?
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Oh, brilliant.
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Thank you.
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My work here is done.
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I mean, if we were in Poland, she would be Wachowska,
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but we're in America or England. So she's Wachowski.
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Fair enough. So tell us where she came from, because
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you are now, I think, 22 books in. The last
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came out a couple of years ago.
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I mean, any book that.
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Has been as successful and has lasted as long as that,
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any series, it's because the central character is somebody that
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people want to come back to time and time again.
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So tell us about the invention of Warshawski.
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Did you say Warshawski?
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I say Warshawski as if the W were an F.
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It's that soft V, Warshawski.
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Brilliant.
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Warshawski. Come on, Vas, say it.
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No, no, I'm going to let Sarah tell us about her.
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Okay. Well, as I said, you know, I prefer crime
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fiction to reading heavy historical tomes. And so I kept reading.
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I was working as a secretary at the University of
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Chicago and then morphed from that into being a graduate
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student there. But all that time I kept reading crime
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fiction and then Really, as second wave feminism helped me
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and helped other women start analyzing the way that society,
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our parents, the world of literature and so on was
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depicting us, it just started really bothering me that a
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woman in a novel who had a sex life was
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going to be automatically a villain. And, you know, the
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great writers of the so-called golden age, like Dorothy Sayers,
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Lord Peter Whimsey, A woman who's divorced in a whimsy book,
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she just has questionable morals. Even a widow, because it's
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understood that she had sexual experience and it just does
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taint women to have that in their lives. So I
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had quite a few years, really I think eight years,
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of thinking I'd really like to write about a woman
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private eye who turns the tables on Raymond Chandler, but
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But I didn't. I'd write a few pages and nothing
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would happen. And then Orwell in his memoir writes about
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turning 30 and realizing, having this moment of knowing that
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you're not fulfilling your childhood dreams and your time horizon
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is narrowing. And the same thing happened to me that
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goaded me into thinking I really have to write or
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give this up. Like, I'm never going to dance with
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the Bolshoi. I'm never going to be fluent in French
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or even Hindu or Bengali, my childhood dreams. But I still,
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because I'd been writing since I was five, that I
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could still try to write a book. And I was
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working for a multinational company, financial services company. And I
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worked for a really creepy guy who I call Fred
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to save me from libel and slander suits. And I
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was in a meeting in Fred's office looking down at
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Grant Park, which you may know of from TV shows
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showing Chicago. And it was October. Everything was dead. And
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I was listening to him and my lips were saying, gosh, Fred,
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heck of an idea. And my thought balloon was saying,
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you unspeakable, disgusting fowl. Because I didn't know what America
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could produce in the way of unspeakable, disgusting and fowl.
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And Fred was just, you know, looks like an angel
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in comparison to what we have now. But anyway. I digress. Anyway,
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and I thought, oh, I don't want, you know, Philip
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Marlowe or Sam Spade and drag. I want a woman
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who's like me and my friends doing a job that
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really didn't exist for women when we were growing up
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and facing the kind of harassment and pushback that we
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were facing. But she said what was in the thought
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balloon because she hadn't grown up in Kansas where you
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were supposed to make nice all the time. So I
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went home. And, you know, it was a long, slow process.
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It did not, I'm still a slow thinker, a slow writer,
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but that was where it started.
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Well, there's a lovely description of Vic on, I think
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it's the Wikipedia page, if I can read from it,
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so VI Vic. She's described as a lean athletic brunette
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who runs to keep in shape and does not fear
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physical confrontations, relying on karate and her Smith & Wesson
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semi-automatic pistols. She's hot-tempered, she's sarcastic, fiercely self-reliant. She prefers
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T-shirts and jeans, but sleeps in the nude and can
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dress stylishly if necessary. That's a brilliant description.
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It would seem you would last four minutes in a
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room with that, with Vic, wouldn't you? It'd be a
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good four minutes, wouldn't it? It'd be a good four minutes.
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I'd spend four minutes trying to run out of the room.
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I'm not going to get involved with someone who's got
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a Smith & Wesson and knows karate.
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Well, she doesn't really know karate. She's a street fighter.
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I modeled her. My stepsons had a neighborhood southeast of
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where I live, where all the steel mills used to be.
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And it produced really tough boys and girls. And they
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had a woman friend, young woman from that neighborhood who
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just looked so adorable. She had red hair that hung
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to her knees and she liked to go into bars
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and get guys to buy her drinks. And then if
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they made moves on her, she would beat them up
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because she knew how, because she was a street fighter.
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And I thought, well, that's the neighborhood that VI grew
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up in that, that steel mill neighborhood. And not that
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she would go into bars and beat people up randomly, but,
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but that's what, but. That's so.
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How did you get published? How did the book become published?
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And when did you know you would be a success?
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Oh, I didn't know. Well, I had a fantasy. So
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my first book, I was very lucky. I think I've
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been very lucky all along in ways because I'd written
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about 70 pages and thought, I don't know what I'm doing.
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And then Stuart Kaminsky, who was a crime writer and
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also screenwriter, taught at one of the area universities in Chicago.
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He offered a night school class, and it was called
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Writing Detective Fiction for Publication. It was like Alice in Wonderland,
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eat me. And so I signed up. He liked the
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character a lot. He had some really good advice on language.
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He felt, because I worked in the financial industry, that
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she should specialize in financial crime. And then I finished
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the book, and he sent it to his agents. And
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so it was just great fortune. And Dominic, who still
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represents me, took me on. It took him a year
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to find a publisher, and that was when there were
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a lot of publishers. And my favorite rejection letter was from,
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I think it was Simon & Schuster, but I don't
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remember specifically. But they said, a book set in Chicago
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had regional interest only and not enough people in the
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Midwest read to make it worthwhile to publish a book.
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Oh my God. That's ridiculous. I know. So fly over
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country anyway.
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So this is a indemnity only right back in 1982.
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So you've effectively written 22 books in the series over
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40 odd years on every.
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One, every couple of years.
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That's, that's incredible. And I believe there was a, was
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there not a film version.
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With Kathleen Turner who was the biggest star in the world?
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It alleged to be based on my books. And it
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was called V.I. Warshawski. And when I saw it, I thought,
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what an amazing coincidence. Disney and I both thought of
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a private detective, a woman with the same unusual name.
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Do I detect a note of irony in your voice?
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Did you not have much to do with it? Did
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you not get on with it?
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Well, they would not. I mean, I made comments on
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the script that they weren't interested in. And I did
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00:17:50.099 --> 00:17:52.279
get to be on the set when they filmed on
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location in Chicago. But it it wasn't a good movie
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but it it brought my book to the attention of
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more readers around the world and so that.
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Was Kathleen Turner at the time I mean Romancing Stone
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and Body Heat and all of those films which made
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her world famous War of the Roses huge start to
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get on board.
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For yeah she owed Disney a film and she wanted
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to do the characters so again I have to say
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really lucky for me and just a shame that it
316
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didn't work out well.
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In the days of Netflix and streaming, isn't there a
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series here? I would have thought the streamers would be
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beating a path to your door.
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Well, there's been a lot of interest, but Disney owns
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the rights in perpetuity and doing a deal with them
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turns out not to be so easy. Right. But, you know,
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there's still hope. It's like, you know, 80s is approaching me.
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80 is approaching me like a steam engine with a.
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Huge wave on it. That is nothing. 80 is the
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new 50.
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80 is the new 50.
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Vasim is 107. Oh, okay. Very good.
329
00:19:06.160 --> 00:19:08.099
I look very good for my age. I mean, I
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don't think most agents would do deals in perpetuity these days. No,
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they wouldn't.
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Fair enough.
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All right.
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Let's move on.
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Let's move on.
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00:19:19.190 --> 00:19:22.579
Let's talk about the book that we're promoting now, the
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book that you've just written, Bad Company. Tell me about
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this book, because I had a lot of fun reading it.
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But tell us about it.
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Oh, I'm glad you did. You know, I wasn't sure when... Well,
341
00:19:32.940 --> 00:19:38.359
never mind that, because I'm terminally self-doubting. But I.
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00:19:42.369 --> 00:19:46.420
Lily came to me, and it's a corny, goofy story,
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but it's true. I was in Paris in the summer
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of 19, of 2023, missing a century there. I have
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a friend who really changed abortion politics in the state
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that I live in, turned us from the most anti-abortion
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state in the union to the state where reproductive health
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is the were the premier destination for people who need
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reproductive health care. Terry, his name is.
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He's gay.
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He turned 70. He wanted to celebrate his 70th birthday
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in Paris on Pride Day. And it turns out that
353
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it is really hard to get a room in Paris
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on Pride Day. So I found one in a very
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ancient building in a remote arrondissement with a bed that
356
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I think was up to my nose. Now, in retrospect,
357
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that's what I remember. So I'm trying to get out
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of bed in the morning and my feet don't reach
359
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the floor and I fell out and landed on the floor.
360
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And I thought, as I rubbed my sore hip, I thought,
361
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what would happen to V.I. if she actually got to
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be as old as me, which she won't? And she
363
00:20:51.539 --> 00:20:56.529
needed to be on the run and couldn't. And so really,
364
00:20:57.390 --> 00:21:01.170
in that moment, Lily was born. And just as with V.I.,
365
00:21:02.289 --> 00:21:04.430
I call her that because I had the initials before
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00:21:04.450 --> 00:21:07.809
I ever had a name for her. The initials came
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00:21:07.869 --> 00:21:10.430
to me for VI and Lily came to me for Lily.
368
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And I can't explain why for either one of them,
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but that's where it was. And then I went from
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Paris to London and had dinner with my British editor.
371
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And she thought Lily sounded like, I was thinking of
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00:21:26.940 --> 00:21:29.299
her as on the run from the CIA and Carolyn
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liked that. that idea and wanted a book and I
374
00:21:32.420 --> 00:21:34.920
needed to take a break from VI. I was getting, um,
375
00:21:37.500 --> 00:21:40.730
I think I was getting not stale exactly, but my
376
00:21:40.990 --> 00:21:46.109
anger level was, was interfering with my ability to write creatively.
377
00:21:46.410 --> 00:21:48.430
Tell us a little bit about, give us the elevator
378
00:21:48.470 --> 00:21:50.289
pitch for, for the plot for Bad Company.
379
00:21:51.730 --> 00:21:56.289
Lily spent 40 years with the CIA, But the bulk
380
00:21:56.329 --> 00:22:00.130
of her time was in a Central Asian country called Hialistan,
381
00:22:00.490 --> 00:22:04.750
which is Turkish for imaginary country. So the wonderful thing
382
00:22:04.809 --> 00:22:08.829
about having an imaginary country is that the borders can shift.
383
00:22:08.869 --> 00:22:13.170
Sometimes it's bordering Iran, sometimes Iraq, sometimes Russia. So as
384
00:22:13.250 --> 00:22:15.910
the plot needs it, the borders change. And it's a
385
00:22:15.970 --> 00:22:21.029
mountainous country. Lily lost her heart both to the country,
386
00:22:21.049 --> 00:22:25.049
the clans. and then to a man who was briefly
387
00:22:25.069 --> 00:22:29.789
the head of the Hayali government. He died in a coup.
388
00:22:29.849 --> 00:22:36.009
She was transferred to India as quickly as possible because
389
00:22:36.069 --> 00:22:38.130
she shouldn't have been involved with him to begin with.
390
00:22:38.190 --> 00:22:45.880
That was a firing offense. But she was a creative,
391
00:22:46.059 --> 00:22:49.900
inventive gatherer of intelligence who just always rubbed her bosses
392
00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:53.480
the wrong way. And so she was kind of forced
393
00:22:53.500 --> 00:22:57.119
to take early retirement. She doesn't like it. And then
394
00:22:57.240 --> 00:23:01.000
she gets a magazine article in the mail that says
395
00:23:01.079 --> 00:23:06.789
she's responsible for major environmental damage to the high Alliston countryside.
396
00:23:07.430 --> 00:23:09.529
And she thought, I love that country. I love the mountain.
397
00:23:09.589 --> 00:23:12.069
I love the people. And so she's going to, she's
398
00:23:12.089 --> 00:23:14.769
going to clear her name. And in the process of
399
00:23:14.829 --> 00:23:18.099
trying to clear her name, she really rubs the CIA
400
00:23:18.140 --> 00:23:21.359
the wrong way. And, um, So the book is very
401
00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:25.279
much her trying both to clear her name and to
402
00:23:25.339 --> 00:23:29.599
keep from being killed by the company. In the book,
403
00:23:29.900 --> 00:23:33.269
the CIA is known as the company. And I think
404
00:23:33.450 --> 00:23:35.630
when I think of the title, I think bad company,
405
00:23:35.670 --> 00:23:39.009
like bad doc. What a bad company you are.
406
00:23:39.849 --> 00:23:42.430
You won't be the first to accuse the CIA of
407
00:23:42.490 --> 00:23:46.579
not being completely corrupt. Lovely. Abia, you had a question.
408
00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:49.059
Yeah, I just want to pick you up on, you
409
00:23:49.079 --> 00:23:52.000
mentioned anger there. You were in a state of anger
410
00:23:52.019 --> 00:23:54.650
and there's a lot to be angry about right now.
411
00:23:54.660 --> 00:23:57.880
There's a lot of people who are angry. From this
412
00:23:57.940 --> 00:24:01.809
side of the Atlantic, it sort of seems that America
413
00:24:01.849 --> 00:24:07.109
is really, really polarised. I got an email yesterday, last night,
414
00:24:07.250 --> 00:24:11.410
from an American reader of my new book, basically shouting
415
00:24:11.509 --> 00:24:15.779
at me. because I mentioned a fictitious American president twice
416
00:24:15.839 --> 00:24:19.000
in the book and there's one chapter. And he took
417
00:24:19.039 --> 00:24:21.720
me to task about that because he thought it was
418
00:24:21.819 --> 00:24:27.549
anti-Trump and he'll never read my work again. And it was,
419
00:24:27.650 --> 00:24:31.089
it was odd because the book has a few references
420
00:24:31.150 --> 00:24:35.730
to an American president, but it's set in Mumbai. What
421
00:24:35.789 --> 00:24:39.009
is going on in America? And, and, Is there hope?
422
00:24:40.130 --> 00:24:41.849
What is the ending of this? How do we get
423
00:24:41.869 --> 00:24:42.430
out of this?
424
00:24:43.799 --> 00:24:46.299
Yes, I wish I had a good answer to that.
425
00:24:46.319 --> 00:24:50.460
I mean, every day there's a new assault on our
426
00:24:50.740 --> 00:24:55.420
civil liberties and the economy. And it's just, I'm so
427
00:24:55.779 --> 00:25:01.950
baffled by why he's allowed to do, cut the swath
428
00:25:01.990 --> 00:25:07.250
of destruction that he is. But at the same time,
429
00:25:08.680 --> 00:25:12.220
The majority of the country at this point, sadly, is
430
00:25:12.279 --> 00:25:16.039
not rising up to protect the Constitution, but the economic
431
00:25:16.119 --> 00:25:20.269
issues are galvanizing a lot of opposition to what he's
432
00:25:20.329 --> 00:25:24.470
doing and how he's doing it. Our big fear right
433
00:25:24.529 --> 00:25:29.980
now is the November 3rd elections because he's making noises
434
00:25:30.059 --> 00:25:33.660
about sending armed troops to polling places to intimidate people
435
00:25:33.700 --> 00:25:36.859
to keep them from voting, especially in.
436
00:25:38.900 --> 00:25:42.970
Contest it where the election may be close. I don't
437
00:25:43.009 --> 00:25:47.490
know if you're familiar with Project 2025, but it was
438
00:25:47.549 --> 00:25:54.650
the blueprint that the Heritage Foundation created for really the
439
00:25:54.710 --> 00:25:59.259
destruction of every part of our country. The First and
440
00:25:59.319 --> 00:26:03.619
Fourth Amendments are in their crosshairs, freedom of speech, freedom
441
00:26:03.660 --> 00:26:08.609
of assembly. It lays out, it's 900 pages, it lays
442
00:26:08.750 --> 00:26:15.549
out everything that is happening right now. And three states
443
00:26:15.609 --> 00:26:21.809
in particular, Florida, Texas, and Missouri, have been laboratories since
444
00:26:21.809 --> 00:26:26.309
2016 on executing these policies. So they were there for
445
00:26:26.349 --> 00:26:32.109
people to see. This just, I felt so impotent I
446
00:26:32.150 --> 00:26:34.789
felt so voiceless. I mean, you think I'm a legend,
447
00:26:34.829 --> 00:26:37.990
but nobody cares what... I mean, what I have to
448
00:26:38.049 --> 00:26:43.359
say doesn't reach many people and it doesn't affect them. So,
449
00:26:43.380 --> 00:26:46.640
you know, I wrote to... I mean, I had correspondence
450
00:26:46.700 --> 00:26:49.920
with someone at The Atlantic magazine, which is allegedly a
451
00:26:49.960 --> 00:26:54.529
progressive left-leaning publication. And they said, oh, no, this was
452
00:26:54.589 --> 00:26:58.509
just a joke. Nobody was going to actually execute these things.
453
00:26:59.569 --> 00:27:03.259
And so then I started... in my small way, a
454
00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:09.400
weekly action letter. This was before Biden had dropped out
455
00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:11.619
of the race. And I thought, okay, it looks like
456
00:27:11.680 --> 00:27:15.079
he's going to be rolled out like a pastry, but
457
00:27:15.099 --> 00:27:16.779
I'm not going to lie down in the street to
458
00:27:16.819 --> 00:27:21.059
be rolled out with him. And I still, I don't
459
00:27:21.099 --> 00:27:24.059
send it out weekly, but twice a month, things that
460
00:27:24.119 --> 00:27:28.660
you can do, concrete things you can do. And so
461
00:27:29.039 --> 00:27:31.950
I'm in touch with people who are who have bigger
462
00:27:31.990 --> 00:27:35.930
voices acting on a bigger stage. I get ideas for
463
00:27:36.009 --> 00:27:40.940
what we can do and all of it's anodyne, you know, letters, protests.
464
00:27:41.380 --> 00:27:45.539
And so it spills over into my writing because I
465
00:27:46.460 --> 00:27:49.140
can't separate the two. And yet I want to tell
466
00:27:49.220 --> 00:27:53.299
stories and I like to tell stories. I do a
467
00:27:53.339 --> 00:27:55.900
lot of writing just to entertain myself. I write stories
468
00:27:55.980 --> 00:27:58.720
that will never be published just because it's something that
469
00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:02.380
cropped up that I think, is interesting, and I want
470
00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:07.720
to write about it. But with VI, in the early days,
471
00:28:07.740 --> 00:28:12.019
you know, the state of Illinois, where American states have
472
00:28:12.519 --> 00:28:15.759
more power, they don't have power anywhere equal to the
473
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:19.740
federal government, but they have more power than many, like
474
00:28:20.099 --> 00:28:23.240
the European, like the German Lenda, for instance, or I
475
00:28:23.259 --> 00:28:24.900
don't know about the English counties.
476
00:28:24.980 --> 00:28:28.509
But Certainly more than the English count, certainly a lot more.
477
00:28:29.029 --> 00:28:34.230
More than Scotland has, I would say. California certainly does. Yeah.
478
00:28:34.809 --> 00:28:39.750
So my state, we have a history of corrupt governors.
479
00:28:40.890 --> 00:28:42.809
In the years that I've lived here, we've sent four
480
00:28:42.849 --> 00:28:46.170
governors to prison for committing fraud, and I voted for
481
00:28:46.230 --> 00:28:49.269
three of them. I probably would have voted for the
482
00:28:49.329 --> 00:28:51.950
fourth if I'd been old enough to vote when he
483
00:28:51.990 --> 00:28:57.759
was running. So And Chicago has a history of corruption,
484
00:28:57.779 --> 00:29:00.539
and there's always been this kind of relationship between the
485
00:29:00.599 --> 00:29:05.779
state's attorney, the chief prosecuting office, the police, and a
486
00:29:05.819 --> 00:29:11.500
lot of money changes hands, judges. So getting justice in
487
00:29:11.539 --> 00:29:15.400
Chicago has always been challenging, but when I was first writing,
488
00:29:15.819 --> 00:29:22.670
we had a really robust and extremely skilled press, both
489
00:29:22.690 --> 00:29:29.500
print and television and radio. And if you were committing
490
00:29:29.700 --> 00:29:34.630
these kinds of crimes and the elected authorities and the
491
00:29:34.670 --> 00:29:37.509
judicial authorities weren't going to intervene because of all their
492
00:29:37.950 --> 00:29:43.200
sweetheart deals, the press would expose you and shine a spotlight.
493
00:29:43.240 --> 00:29:48.240
And many of these governors in prison would still be fat, dumb,
494
00:29:48.279 --> 00:29:50.779
and happy without the media.
495
00:29:50.799 --> 00:29:54.819
And that has been hollowed out. The fourth estate is
496
00:29:54.880 --> 00:29:56.220
a shadow of what it used to be.
497
00:29:56.339 --> 00:29:59.269
Exactly. And so that's what So I'm working on my
498
00:29:59.309 --> 00:30:01.289
books and I'm thinking, I mean, it was true with
499
00:30:01.329 --> 00:30:05.569
Bad Company too, but specifically with VI because she's right
500
00:30:05.670 --> 00:30:10.200
there where the crime is on the streets and in
501
00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:13.259
the boardrooms. So trying to find a way to bring
502
00:30:15.420 --> 00:30:18.970
there is no there's no law anymore in a way
503
00:30:19.009 --> 00:30:21.569
in this country i mean there's laws that affects ordinary
504
00:30:21.650 --> 00:30:25.089
people on the streets but there's not laws so i
505
00:30:25.130 --> 00:30:27.690
needed to take a break from vi and.
506
00:30:28.150 --> 00:30:32.819
And sorry the book is out now bad company yeah
507
00:30:33.279 --> 00:30:35.039
i read a proof version so it's just about to
508
00:30:35.099 --> 00:30:37.579
come out fine we normally finish by asking you what
509
00:30:37.619 --> 00:30:38.900
you're working on next.
510
00:30:39.640 --> 00:30:42.660
So I'm under contract to write a new book in
511
00:30:42.680 --> 00:30:45.819
the VI series. And that is what I am working
512
00:30:45.980 --> 00:30:49.619
on right now. The girl detective has just come across
513
00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:54.579
a very dead young man in a snow drift next
514
00:30:54.619 --> 00:30:57.069
to Lake Michigan. And she says that she's trying to
515
00:30:57.109 --> 00:31:00.809
make her way across this park to the lake. She
516
00:31:00.890 --> 00:31:05.650
says if John Krakauer had ever experienced a Chicago park
517
00:31:05.710 --> 00:31:08.880
next to the lake, In January, when the hawk is
518
00:31:08.960 --> 00:31:12.039
blowing across the water, he would have thought Everest was
519
00:31:12.079 --> 00:31:12.660
pretty tame.
520
00:31:12.680 --> 00:31:15.539
That's a brilliant way to.
521
00:31:15.819 --> 00:31:19.990
That's poetic. Brilliant. No, Sarah, another question, though. Are we
522
00:31:20.009 --> 00:31:21.430
going to see you over here at all?
523
00:31:21.970 --> 00:31:26.009
Well, I'm hoping, actually, to come not for the launch here,
524
00:31:26.049 --> 00:31:28.230
but the paperback will be out May 5th, and I'm
525
00:31:28.269 --> 00:31:29.390
hoping to come then.
526
00:31:29.549 --> 00:31:30.539
Oh, that will be wonderful.
527
00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:33.059
And I hope I can see my nephews when I'm here.
528
00:31:33.079 --> 00:31:35.579
Absolutely. Auntie Sarah, we're going to have to look after you.
529
00:31:35.599 --> 00:31:37.660
Stay in touch. Let us know when you're coming.
530
00:31:37.940 --> 00:31:39.970
Your publishers will know who we are because they sent
531
00:31:40.009 --> 00:31:41.269
me the book. So if they want us.
532
00:31:41.230 --> 00:31:42.509
To come along.
533
00:31:42.890 --> 00:31:43.799
We will look after you.
534
00:31:43.809 --> 00:31:46.869
We will come along and we will lighten up the
535
00:31:46.910 --> 00:31:49.589
room with nonsense. It's been wonderful chatting to you.
536
00:31:49.710 --> 00:31:53.400
Abia, can you lead us out? Well, I mean, that
537
00:31:53.420 --> 00:31:55.980
brings us to the close of another episode. Once again,
538
00:31:56.160 --> 00:31:58.099
if you have liked the show, can we ask you
539
00:31:58.140 --> 00:32:01.549
to leave a review, sign up for regular episodes. And
540
00:32:01.569 --> 00:32:06.420
on your favorite podcast app. And please do spread the word. Basim,
541
00:32:06.619 --> 00:32:11.960
it looks like we have added another person to our family.
542
00:32:12.640 --> 00:32:15.420
And it makes me very, very happy. If we are
543
00:32:15.460 --> 00:32:17.900
going to have Auntie Sarah here, I think we need
544
00:32:17.940 --> 00:32:20.150
to visit the Windy City and see her at some point.
545
00:32:20.170 --> 00:32:21.809
Oh, my God. I'd love to show you.
546
00:32:21.829 --> 00:32:24.650
There you are. We will do that. To be fair,
547
00:32:24.670 --> 00:32:24.930
to be fair.
548
00:32:24.990 --> 00:32:26.670
And then walk from the Obama Center.
549
00:32:27.700 --> 00:32:30.930
Oh, yes, the new stupid duper Obama Center. Yes, to
550
00:32:30.970 --> 00:32:33.950
be fair, after Abbie has eaten beans, they usually call
551
00:32:33.990 --> 00:32:37.150
his house the Windy City.
552
00:32:37.170 --> 00:32:39.869
I can't believe you're laughing at that, Auntie Sarah. Oh,
553
00:32:39.930 --> 00:32:44.029
my goodness. All right. On that rather windy note, ladies
554
00:32:44.049 --> 00:32:46.150
and gentlemen, we have been your friends, the Red Hot
555
00:32:46.170 --> 00:32:48.869
Chili Writers on Murder Junction. See you next time.
1
00:00:04.019 --> 00:00:07.219
Welcome to Murder Junction, everyone. This week on the show,
2
00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:11.019
we have a truly special, special guest. We are talking
3
00:00:11.039 --> 00:00:15.269
to the legendary thriller writer, Sarah Paretsky. Sarah, welcome to
4
00:00:15.310 --> 00:00:15.630
the show.
5
00:00:16.570 --> 00:00:19.989
It's great to be here, although it's a little daunting
6
00:00:20.030 --> 00:00:21.789
to be thought of as a legend. It almost makes
7
00:00:21.829 --> 00:00:23.329
me feel as though I've died already.
8
00:00:24.089 --> 00:00:26.660
Well, we've had lots and lots of people who would
9
00:00:26.699 --> 00:00:29.000
be in that category, and I always do wonder about
10
00:00:29.039 --> 00:00:33.560
whether or not they're sick of being referred to as legends.
11
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You know, we've had the likes of Dean Kuntz and
12
00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:40.630
David Baldacci recently. And, you know, also anyone you can
13
00:00:40.649 --> 00:00:40.859
think of.
14
00:00:40.869 --> 00:00:42.329
Well, they really are legends.
15
00:00:42.549 --> 00:00:46.890
You're being far too modest, Sarah. I mean, we are
16
00:00:46.990 --> 00:00:50.250
honoured to have you on. And we should let you
17
00:00:50.289 --> 00:00:52.200
know that, you know, if this goes well, what we
18
00:00:52.229 --> 00:00:54.679
tend to do is we tend to adopt people as
19
00:00:54.840 --> 00:00:58.380
our uncles and aunts. So, you know, assuming you don't
20
00:00:58.420 --> 00:01:01.039
grow tired of us, you could be our Auntie Sarah now.
21
00:01:01.060 --> 00:01:01.880
We might have to come.
22
00:01:01.899 --> 00:01:05.780
I would love that. Actually, my next-door neighbor, who's five
23
00:01:05.819 --> 00:01:10.319
years old, Veda Bhagavatula, I am her Auntie Sarah.
24
00:01:10.799 --> 00:01:11.540
Well, there you are.
25
00:01:12.200 --> 00:01:13.469
I married her parents.
26
00:01:14.329 --> 00:01:17.790
Oh, wow. Are you an ordained Hindu priest?
27
00:01:18.810 --> 00:01:23.810
No, not at all. The mother or wife was a
28
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lapsed Catholic, and the Mr. Bhagavatula was a not-too-practicing Hindu,
29
00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:36.510
and so they thought having a secular... He's a bit
30
00:01:36.530 --> 00:01:37.030
like me.
31
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He's a Hindut rather than a Hindu.
32
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Anyway, my friend who studies Hindu religions gave me, now
33
00:01:45.359 --> 00:01:47.920
I can't remember the names of the poems, but gave
34
00:01:47.959 --> 00:01:51.620
me love poems from the 16th century to read from
35
00:01:51.640 --> 00:01:55.290
at the wedding, so... That's really smart.
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Sarah, we haven't even got to your writing and we're
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already discovering other talents. But let's start a little bit
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00:02:02.450 --> 00:02:05.590
with some history. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about
39
00:02:05.650 --> 00:02:07.430
where you grew up. Tell us a little bit about that.
40
00:02:08.909 --> 00:02:11.889
Well, I grew up in Kansas, which is smack dab
41
00:02:11.930 --> 00:02:14.810
in the center of the United States. It's farm country.
42
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It's prairie country. My family is Jewish. And so we
43
00:02:19.780 --> 00:02:28.770
were oddities in this very Protestant flat farm country. So
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my upbringing was both extremely normal, middle-class, white, American, and
45
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also just sort of not quite on the page with
46
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the rest of the community.
47
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So you were a bit of a fish out of
48
00:02:43.620 --> 00:02:45.120
water then, in a way.
49
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Yes, a bit. my father was the second Jew hired
50
00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:55.120
in a tenure position at the University of Kansas. And
51
00:02:55.469 --> 00:03:03.610
at that time, there were real estate covenants that dictated
52
00:03:03.750 --> 00:03:09.530
where marginal people could live, which was mostly indigenous Indian nations,
53
00:03:10.169 --> 00:03:13.289
the small number of African Americans who lived there, and
54
00:03:13.330 --> 00:03:15.849
the even smaller number of Jews who lived there. We
55
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were supposed to live on the mud flats along the
56
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Kansas River. And so my parents bought a rickety old
57
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farmhouse out in the country to just avoid being in
58
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the mud flats.
59
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Wow.
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And so this is Kansas. This isn't even the South.
61
00:03:30.099 --> 00:03:33.370
This was, you know, in parts of Middle America, Midwest.
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Well, you know, when I moved to Chicago, I always
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thought I'd grown up in the North because Kansas was
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on the side of the Union in the Civil War.
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In fact, coming in, never mind all that, but coming
66
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in as a free state triggered the Civil War. And
67
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then when I moved to Chicago, I realized I'd grown
68
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up in the South.
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Well, let's talk about Chicago because you went to university there. And,
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you know, we both write historical fiction, but you've outdone
71
00:03:59.509 --> 00:04:01.870
us because you have a PhD in history.
72
00:04:03.430 --> 00:04:09.490
Yes, well, that wasn't the best use of either my
73
00:04:09.530 --> 00:04:13.909
time or the university's time, but it did happen, yes.
74
00:04:14.449 --> 00:04:15.110
Why do you say that?
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I don't think that, you know, all of this is
76
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so boring and trivial now from a great distance, but
77
00:04:25.490 --> 00:04:30.430
I have four brothers and no sisters. And I think
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I needed to prove to my father that I was
79
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as smart as my brothers and that I could get
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a PhD. And really, when I was taking my oral
81
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exams for my entry into the doctoral program, I hid
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in the library reading what mysteries they had on their
83
00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:51.939
shelves instead of reading the textbooks I was supposed to read.
84
00:04:52.100 --> 00:04:53.990
So it wasn't a waste of time then.
85
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Right.
86
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I was preparing for my life's work. I just didn't know.
87
00:04:58.610 --> 00:05:01.290
And also, for the record, do all of your brothers
88
00:05:01.350 --> 00:05:02.569
have doctorates?
89
00:05:04.529 --> 00:05:09.509
So one's a veterinarian. Two have PhDs. One converted to
90
00:05:09.589 --> 00:05:13.230
Catholicism and became a Dominican priest, and he has whatever
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00:05:13.850 --> 00:05:15.970
degree the Dominicans like to give people.
92
00:05:17.029 --> 00:05:19.990
But, you know, so you've clearly done better than all
93
00:05:20.029 --> 00:05:22.470
of them, in my personal opinion, because not only have
94
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you got the PhD, but you, as we've established our
95
00:05:25.350 --> 00:05:28.329
religion in the field of detective writing.
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So technically, are you Dr.
97
00:05:30.470 --> 00:05:31.509
Sarah Paretsky?
98
00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:38.290
You know, no. I mean... Only if you want to
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take off all your clothes and get up on the
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table for me to examine you.
101
00:05:43.189 --> 00:05:45.610
Well, that's what David Baldatti offered me.
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00:05:45.930 --> 00:05:48.509
He will take you up on that, so be very careful.
103
00:05:48.709 --> 00:05:51.589
All right, so moving swiftly on. How do we go
104
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from the PhD to the first VR?
105
00:05:58.019 --> 00:06:00.800
I have a question before that. What was your thesis on?
106
00:06:00.839 --> 00:06:03.639
What period in history, what were you focusing on when
107
00:06:03.660 --> 00:06:04.149
you did your PhD?
108
00:06:05.310 --> 00:06:08.779
Well, I was focusing on the period leading up to
109
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the American Civil War and it ended up with the 1830s, 40s, 50s.
110
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It ended up being a rather intellectual history, but I
111
00:06:20.569 --> 00:06:23.870
was drawn to it because I first came to Chicago
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00:06:23.949 --> 00:06:28.230
when I was 19 to work as a volunteer in
113
00:06:28.269 --> 00:06:31.509
a program in the civil rights movement. It was the
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00:06:31.550 --> 00:06:34.509
summer that Martin Luther King came to Chicago to help
115
00:06:34.769 --> 00:06:39.879
goad the city. Chicago had its own housing covenants and
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00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:46.980
own really horrific racism and discrimination. And finally, the civil
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00:06:47.040 --> 00:06:50.939
rights leadership persuaded Dr. King to come, hoping that his
118
00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:54.439
presence with TV cameras would shame the city into acting
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00:06:54.480 --> 00:06:57.189
in ways that they hadn't been able to budge the city.
120
00:06:57.850 --> 00:07:00.470
So they asked for volunteers to come and work in
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00:07:00.509 --> 00:07:05.029
programs in the neighborhoods. And even in the pre-internet era,
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00:07:05.069 --> 00:07:08.389
somehow we all knew what was going on around the country.
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00:07:08.430 --> 00:07:11.930
I can't remember now how we knew, but I applied.
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00:07:12.370 --> 00:07:15.730
So I worked. I was assigned to a program in
125
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a white immigrant neighborhood, Polish-Lithuanian, to work with kids, to
126
00:07:20.870 --> 00:07:24.209
soft propaganda, hearts and minds, a different way of living
127
00:07:24.269 --> 00:07:26.899
in a diverse city than throwing rocks at each other.
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And fortunately in those days they didn't have AK-47s, just rocks.
129
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But the city just really got into my blood. It's
130
00:07:37.149 --> 00:07:39.500
why I came back, why I made it my home.
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00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.100
But also when I started work on a PhD, I
132
00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:51.579
wanted to learn more, understand more what had brought us from,
133
00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:55.620
I mean, everyone knows about slavery, but that was before
134
00:07:55.699 --> 00:07:58.439
we had the kind of writing that we do now,
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00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:01.139
like the 1619 project and so on. And so I
136
00:08:01.199 --> 00:08:05.149
wanted to try to understand the roots of how we'd
137
00:08:05.189 --> 00:08:08.410
gotten to where we were and then ended up not
138
00:08:08.470 --> 00:08:11.129
really writing about that, but it remains an interest.
139
00:08:11.410 --> 00:08:14.540
Did you get to meet, did you meet, um, Dr.
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00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:14.779
King?
141
00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:19.579
No, I, I didn't. I, I heard him when one
142
00:08:19.620 --> 00:08:25.240
of his, um, speeches, my co-workers and I, a woman
143
00:08:25.279 --> 00:08:27.560
and a man, and I went to hear him speak
144
00:08:27.620 --> 00:08:30.759
in a big football stadium in Chicago and then we
145
00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:33.440
marched with him from there to City Hall where he
146
00:08:33.940 --> 00:08:42.570
nailed his theses to the mayor's door and emulating Martin Luther.
147
00:08:42.730 --> 00:08:45.370
The more you talk about it, the less I believe
148
00:08:45.409 --> 00:08:48.629
what you said about it being a waste. It sounds amazing.
149
00:08:48.850 --> 00:08:52.110
It sounds just, I mean... it was a seminal moment
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00:08:52.169 --> 00:08:54.220
in history and you were part of it and you
151
00:08:54.250 --> 00:08:57.379
made the change. You changed people and their lives.
152
00:08:57.419 --> 00:09:00.039
Well, I was, you know, I do think in some
153
00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:02.120
ways I've had a lucky life to have been born
154
00:09:02.179 --> 00:09:03.980
when I was and to get to be part of
155
00:09:04.100 --> 00:09:08.450
things that I was, but my PhD did not do it.
156
00:09:08.590 --> 00:09:11.269
It was not good. It grew out of that.
157
00:09:11.309 --> 00:09:15.529
Well, let's move on to your writing career now. And
158
00:09:15.549 --> 00:09:18.340
before we talk about your latest book, Bad Company, we
159
00:09:18.389 --> 00:09:21.490
have to talk about the books that you are, you know,
160
00:09:21.529 --> 00:09:25.750
world famous, world famous for. I'm not sure if I
161
00:09:25.769 --> 00:09:27.590
can even pronounce this correctly, but I'm going to give
162
00:09:27.629 --> 00:09:34.419
it a go. So the character that you invented, Victoria, Iphigenia, Vic, VI, Wachowski.
163
00:09:35.059 --> 00:09:36.559
How close is that? Is that perfect?
164
00:09:36.639 --> 00:09:37.259
Oh, brilliant.
165
00:09:37.379 --> 00:09:37.679
Thank you.
166
00:09:37.720 --> 00:09:38.360
My work here is done.
167
00:09:38.379 --> 00:09:41.259
I mean, if we were in Poland, she would be Wachowska,
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but we're in America or England. So she's Wachowski.
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Fair enough. So tell us where she came from, because
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you are now, I think, 22 books in. The last
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came out a couple of years ago.
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I mean, any book that.
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Has been as successful and has lasted as long as that,
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any series, it's because the central character is somebody that
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people want to come back to time and time again.
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So tell us about the invention of Warshawski.
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Did you say Warshawski?
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I say Warshawski as if the W were an F.
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It's that soft V, Warshawski.
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Brilliant.
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Warshawski. Come on, Vas, say it.
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No, no, I'm going to let Sarah tell us about her.
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Okay. Well, as I said, you know, I prefer crime
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fiction to reading heavy historical tomes. And so I kept reading.
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I was working as a secretary at the University of
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Chicago and then morphed from that into being a graduate
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student there. But all that time I kept reading crime
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fiction and then Really, as second wave feminism helped me
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and helped other women start analyzing the way that society,
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our parents, the world of literature and so on was
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depicting us, it just started really bothering me that a
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woman in a novel who had a sex life was
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going to be automatically a villain. And, you know, the
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great writers of the so-called golden age, like Dorothy Sayers,
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Lord Peter Whimsey, A woman who's divorced in a whimsy book,
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she just has questionable morals. Even a widow, because it's
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understood that she had sexual experience and it just does
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taint women to have that in their lives. So I
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had quite a few years, really I think eight years,
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of thinking I'd really like to write about a woman
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private eye who turns the tables on Raymond Chandler, but
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But I didn't. I'd write a few pages and nothing
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would happen. And then Orwell in his memoir writes about
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turning 30 and realizing, having this moment of knowing that
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you're not fulfilling your childhood dreams and your time horizon
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is narrowing. And the same thing happened to me that
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goaded me into thinking I really have to write or
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give this up. Like, I'm never going to dance with
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the Bolshoi. I'm never going to be fluent in French
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or even Hindu or Bengali, my childhood dreams. But I still,
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because I'd been writing since I was five, that I
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could still try to write a book. And I was
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working for a multinational company, financial services company. And I
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worked for a really creepy guy who I call Fred
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to save me from libel and slander suits. And I
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was in a meeting in Fred's office looking down at
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Grant Park, which you may know of from TV shows
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showing Chicago. And it was October. Everything was dead. And
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I was listening to him and my lips were saying, gosh, Fred,
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heck of an idea. And my thought balloon was saying,
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you unspeakable, disgusting fowl. Because I didn't know what America
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could produce in the way of unspeakable, disgusting and fowl.
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And Fred was just, you know, looks like an angel
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in comparison to what we have now. But anyway. I digress. Anyway,
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and I thought, oh, I don't want, you know, Philip
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Marlowe or Sam Spade and drag. I want a woman
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who's like me and my friends doing a job that
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really didn't exist for women when we were growing up
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and facing the kind of harassment and pushback that we
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were facing. But she said what was in the thought
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balloon because she hadn't grown up in Kansas where you
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were supposed to make nice all the time. So I
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went home. And, you know, it was a long, slow process.
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It did not, I'm still a slow thinker, a slow writer,
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but that was where it started.
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Well, there's a lovely description of Vic on, I think
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it's the Wikipedia page, if I can read from it,
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so VI Vic. She's described as a lean athletic brunette
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who runs to keep in shape and does not fear
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physical confrontations, relying on karate and her Smith & Wesson
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semi-automatic pistols. She's hot-tempered, she's sarcastic, fiercely self-reliant. She prefers
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T-shirts and jeans, but sleeps in the nude and can
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dress stylishly if necessary. That's a brilliant description.
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It would seem you would last four minutes in a
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room with that, with Vic, wouldn't you? It'd be a
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good four minutes, wouldn't it? It'd be a good four minutes.
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I'd spend four minutes trying to run out of the room.
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I'm not going to get involved with someone who's got
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a Smith & Wesson and knows karate.
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Well, she doesn't really know karate. She's a street fighter.
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I modeled her. My stepsons had a neighborhood southeast of
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where I live, where all the steel mills used to be.
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And it produced really tough boys and girls. And they
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had a woman friend, young woman from that neighborhood who
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just looked so adorable. She had red hair that hung
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to her knees and she liked to go into bars
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and get guys to buy her drinks. And then if
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they made moves on her, she would beat them up
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because she knew how, because she was a street fighter.
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And I thought, well, that's the neighborhood that VI grew
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up in that, that steel mill neighborhood. And not that
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she would go into bars and beat people up randomly, but,
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but that's what, but. That's so.
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How did you get published? How did the book become published?
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And when did you know you would be a success?
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Oh, I didn't know. Well, I had a fantasy. So
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my first book, I was very lucky. I think I've
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been very lucky all along in ways because I'd written
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about 70 pages and thought, I don't know what I'm doing.
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And then Stuart Kaminsky, who was a crime writer and
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also screenwriter, taught at one of the area universities in Chicago.
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He offered a night school class, and it was called
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Writing Detective Fiction for Publication. It was like Alice in Wonderland,
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eat me. And so I signed up. He liked the
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character a lot. He had some really good advice on language.
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He felt, because I worked in the financial industry, that
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she should specialize in financial crime. And then I finished
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the book, and he sent it to his agents. And
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so it was just great fortune. And Dominic, who still
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represents me, took me on. It took him a year
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to find a publisher, and that was when there were
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a lot of publishers. And my favorite rejection letter was from,
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I think it was Simon & Schuster, but I don't
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remember specifically. But they said, a book set in Chicago
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had regional interest only and not enough people in the
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Midwest read to make it worthwhile to publish a book.
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Oh my God. That's ridiculous. I know. So fly over
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country anyway.
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So this is a indemnity only right back in 1982.
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So you've effectively written 22 books in the series over
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40 odd years on every.
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One, every couple of years.
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That's, that's incredible. And I believe there was a, was
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there not a film version.
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With Kathleen Turner who was the biggest star in the world?
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It alleged to be based on my books. And it
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was called V.I. Warshawski. And when I saw it, I thought,
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what an amazing coincidence. Disney and I both thought of
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a private detective, a woman with the same unusual name.
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Do I detect a note of irony in your voice?
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Did you not have much to do with it? Did
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you not get on with it?
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Well, they would not. I mean, I made comments on
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the script that they weren't interested in. And I did
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get to be on the set when they filmed on
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location in Chicago. But it it wasn't a good movie
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but it it brought my book to the attention of
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more readers around the world and so that.
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Was Kathleen Turner at the time I mean Romancing Stone
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and Body Heat and all of those films which made
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her world famous War of the Roses huge start to
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get on board.
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For yeah she owed Disney a film and she wanted
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to do the characters so again I have to say
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really lucky for me and just a shame that it
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didn't work out well.
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In the days of Netflix and streaming, isn't there a
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series here? I would have thought the streamers would be
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beating a path to your door.
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Well, there's been a lot of interest, but Disney owns
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the rights in perpetuity and doing a deal with them
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turns out not to be so easy. Right. But, you know,
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there's still hope. It's like, you know, 80s is approaching me.
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80 is approaching me like a steam engine with a.
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Huge wave on it. That is nothing. 80 is the
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new 50.
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80 is the new 50.
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Vasim is 107. Oh, okay. Very good.
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I look very good for my age. I mean, I
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don't think most agents would do deals in perpetuity these days. No,
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they wouldn't.
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Fair enough.
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All right.
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Let's move on.
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Let's move on.
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Let's talk about the book that we're promoting now, the
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book that you've just written, Bad Company. Tell me about
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this book, because I had a lot of fun reading it.
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But tell us about it.
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Oh, I'm glad you did. You know, I wasn't sure when... Well,
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never mind that, because I'm terminally self-doubting. But I.
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Lily came to me, and it's a corny, goofy story,
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but it's true. I was in Paris in the summer
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of 19, of 2023, missing a century there. I have
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a friend who really changed abortion politics in the state
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that I live in, turned us from the most anti-abortion
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state in the union to the state where reproductive health
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is the were the premier destination for people who need
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reproductive health care. Terry, his name is.
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He's gay.
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He turned 70. He wanted to celebrate his 70th birthday
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in Paris on Pride Day. And it turns out that
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it is really hard to get a room in Paris
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on Pride Day. So I found one in a very
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ancient building in a remote arrondissement with a bed that
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I think was up to my nose. Now, in retrospect,
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that's what I remember. So I'm trying to get out
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of bed in the morning and my feet don't reach
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the floor and I fell out and landed on the floor.
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And I thought, as I rubbed my sore hip, I thought,
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what would happen to V.I. if she actually got to
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be as old as me, which she won't? And she
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needed to be on the run and couldn't. And so really,
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in that moment, Lily was born. And just as with V.I.,
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I call her that because I had the initials before
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I ever had a name for her. The initials came
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to me for VI and Lily came to me for Lily.
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And I can't explain why for either one of them,
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but that's where it was. And then I went from
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Paris to London and had dinner with my British editor.
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And she thought Lily sounded like, I was thinking of
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her as on the run from the CIA and Carolyn
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liked that. that idea and wanted a book and I
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needed to take a break from VI. I was getting, um,
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I think I was getting not stale exactly, but my
376
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anger level was, was interfering with my ability to write creatively.
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Tell us a little bit about, give us the elevator
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pitch for, for the plot for Bad Company.
379
00:21:51.730 --> 00:21:56.289
Lily spent 40 years with the CIA, But the bulk
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of her time was in a Central Asian country called Hialistan,
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00:22:00.490 --> 00:22:04.750
which is Turkish for imaginary country. So the wonderful thing
382
00:22:04.809 --> 00:22:08.829
about having an imaginary country is that the borders can shift.
383
00:22:08.869 --> 00:22:13.170
Sometimes it's bordering Iran, sometimes Iraq, sometimes Russia. So as
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the plot needs it, the borders change. And it's a
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mountainous country. Lily lost her heart both to the country,
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the clans. and then to a man who was briefly
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the head of the Hayali government. He died in a coup.
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She was transferred to India as quickly as possible because
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she shouldn't have been involved with him to begin with.
390
00:22:38.190 --> 00:22:45.880
That was a firing offense. But she was a creative,
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inventive gatherer of intelligence who just always rubbed her bosses
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the wrong way. And so she was kind of forced
393
00:22:53.500 --> 00:22:57.119
to take early retirement. She doesn't like it. And then
394
00:22:57.240 --> 00:23:01.000
she gets a magazine article in the mail that says
395
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she's responsible for major environmental damage to the high Alliston countryside.
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And she thought, I love that country. I love the mountain.
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I love the people. And so she's going to, she's
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going to clear her name. And in the process of
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trying to clear her name, she really rubs the CIA
400
00:23:18.140 --> 00:23:21.359
the wrong way. And, um, So the book is very
401
00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:25.279
much her trying both to clear her name and to
402
00:23:25.339 --> 00:23:29.599
keep from being killed by the company. In the book,
403
00:23:29.900 --> 00:23:33.269
the CIA is known as the company. And I think
404
00:23:33.450 --> 00:23:35.630
when I think of the title, I think bad company,
405
00:23:35.670 --> 00:23:39.009
like bad doc. What a bad company you are.
406
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You won't be the first to accuse the CIA of
407
00:23:42.490 --> 00:23:46.579
not being completely corrupt. Lovely. Abia, you had a question.
408
00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:49.059
Yeah, I just want to pick you up on, you
409
00:23:49.079 --> 00:23:52.000
mentioned anger there. You were in a state of anger
410
00:23:52.019 --> 00:23:54.650
and there's a lot to be angry about right now.
411
00:23:54.660 --> 00:23:57.880
There's a lot of people who are angry. From this
412
00:23:57.940 --> 00:24:01.809
side of the Atlantic, it sort of seems that America
413
00:24:01.849 --> 00:24:07.109
is really, really polarised. I got an email yesterday, last night,
414
00:24:07.250 --> 00:24:11.410
from an American reader of my new book, basically shouting
415
00:24:11.509 --> 00:24:15.779
at me. because I mentioned a fictitious American president twice
416
00:24:15.839 --> 00:24:19.000
in the book and there's one chapter. And he took
417
00:24:19.039 --> 00:24:21.720
me to task about that because he thought it was
418
00:24:21.819 --> 00:24:27.549
anti-Trump and he'll never read my work again. And it was,
419
00:24:27.650 --> 00:24:31.089
it was odd because the book has a few references
420
00:24:31.150 --> 00:24:35.730
to an American president, but it's set in Mumbai. What
421
00:24:35.789 --> 00:24:39.009
is going on in America? And, and, Is there hope?
422
00:24:40.130 --> 00:24:41.849
What is the ending of this? How do we get
423
00:24:41.869 --> 00:24:42.430
out of this?
424
00:24:43.799 --> 00:24:46.299
Yes, I wish I had a good answer to that.
425
00:24:46.319 --> 00:24:50.460
I mean, every day there's a new assault on our
426
00:24:50.740 --> 00:24:55.420
civil liberties and the economy. And it's just, I'm so
427
00:24:55.779 --> 00:25:01.950
baffled by why he's allowed to do, cut the swath
428
00:25:01.990 --> 00:25:07.250
of destruction that he is. But at the same time,
429
00:25:08.680 --> 00:25:12.220
The majority of the country at this point, sadly, is
430
00:25:12.279 --> 00:25:16.039
not rising up to protect the Constitution, but the economic
431
00:25:16.119 --> 00:25:20.269
issues are galvanizing a lot of opposition to what he's
432
00:25:20.329 --> 00:25:24.470
doing and how he's doing it. Our big fear right
433
00:25:24.529 --> 00:25:29.980
now is the November 3rd elections because he's making noises
434
00:25:30.059 --> 00:25:33.660
about sending armed troops to polling places to intimidate people
435
00:25:33.700 --> 00:25:36.859
to keep them from voting, especially in.
436
00:25:38.900 --> 00:25:42.970
Contest it where the election may be close. I don't
437
00:25:43.009 --> 00:25:47.490
know if you're familiar with Project 2025, but it was
438
00:25:47.549 --> 00:25:54.650
the blueprint that the Heritage Foundation created for really the
439
00:25:54.710 --> 00:25:59.259
destruction of every part of our country. The First and
440
00:25:59.319 --> 00:26:03.619
Fourth Amendments are in their crosshairs, freedom of speech, freedom
441
00:26:03.660 --> 00:26:08.609
of assembly. It lays out, it's 900 pages, it lays
442
00:26:08.750 --> 00:26:15.549
out everything that is happening right now. And three states
443
00:26:15.609 --> 00:26:21.809
in particular, Florida, Texas, and Missouri, have been laboratories since
444
00:26:21.809 --> 00:26:26.309
2016 on executing these policies. So they were there for
445
00:26:26.349 --> 00:26:32.109
people to see. This just, I felt so impotent I
446
00:26:32.150 --> 00:26:34.789
felt so voiceless. I mean, you think I'm a legend,
447
00:26:34.829 --> 00:26:37.990
but nobody cares what... I mean, what I have to
448
00:26:38.049 --> 00:26:43.359
say doesn't reach many people and it doesn't affect them. So,
449
00:26:43.380 --> 00:26:46.640
you know, I wrote to... I mean, I had correspondence
450
00:26:46.700 --> 00:26:49.920
with someone at The Atlantic magazine, which is allegedly a
451
00:26:49.960 --> 00:26:54.529
progressive left-leaning publication. And they said, oh, no, this was
452
00:26:54.589 --> 00:26:58.509
just a joke. Nobody was going to actually execute these things.
453
00:26:59.569 --> 00:27:03.259
And so then I started... in my small way, a
454
00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:09.400
weekly action letter. This was before Biden had dropped out
455
00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:11.619
of the race. And I thought, okay, it looks like
456
00:27:11.680 --> 00:27:15.079
he's going to be rolled out like a pastry, but
457
00:27:15.099 --> 00:27:16.779
I'm not going to lie down in the street to
458
00:27:16.819 --> 00:27:21.059
be rolled out with him. And I still, I don't
459
00:27:21.099 --> 00:27:24.059
send it out weekly, but twice a month, things that
460
00:27:24.119 --> 00:27:28.660
you can do, concrete things you can do. And so
461
00:27:29.039 --> 00:27:31.950
I'm in touch with people who are who have bigger
462
00:27:31.990 --> 00:27:35.930
voices acting on a bigger stage. I get ideas for
463
00:27:36.009 --> 00:27:40.940
what we can do and all of it's anodyne, you know, letters, protests.
464
00:27:41.380 --> 00:27:45.539
And so it spills over into my writing because I
465
00:27:46.460 --> 00:27:49.140
can't separate the two. And yet I want to tell
466
00:27:49.220 --> 00:27:53.299
stories and I like to tell stories. I do a
467
00:27:53.339 --> 00:27:55.900
lot of writing just to entertain myself. I write stories
468
00:27:55.980 --> 00:27:58.720
that will never be published just because it's something that
469
00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:02.380
cropped up that I think, is interesting, and I want
470
00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:07.720
to write about it. But with VI, in the early days,
471
00:28:07.740 --> 00:28:12.019
you know, the state of Illinois, where American states have
472
00:28:12.519 --> 00:28:15.759
more power, they don't have power anywhere equal to the
473
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:19.740
federal government, but they have more power than many, like
474
00:28:20.099 --> 00:28:23.240
the European, like the German Lenda, for instance, or I
475
00:28:23.259 --> 00:28:24.900
don't know about the English counties.
476
00:28:24.980 --> 00:28:28.509
But Certainly more than the English count, certainly a lot more.
477
00:28:29.029 --> 00:28:34.230
More than Scotland has, I would say. California certainly does. Yeah.
478
00:28:34.809 --> 00:28:39.750
So my state, we have a history of corrupt governors.
479
00:28:40.890 --> 00:28:42.809
In the years that I've lived here, we've sent four
480
00:28:42.849 --> 00:28:46.170
governors to prison for committing fraud, and I voted for
481
00:28:46.230 --> 00:28:49.269
three of them. I probably would have voted for the
482
00:28:49.329 --> 00:28:51.950
fourth if I'd been old enough to vote when he
483
00:28:51.990 --> 00:28:57.759
was running. So And Chicago has a history of corruption,
484
00:28:57.779 --> 00:29:00.539
and there's always been this kind of relationship between the
485
00:29:00.599 --> 00:29:05.779
state's attorney, the chief prosecuting office, the police, and a
486
00:29:05.819 --> 00:29:11.500
lot of money changes hands, judges. So getting justice in
487
00:29:11.539 --> 00:29:15.400
Chicago has always been challenging, but when I was first writing,
488
00:29:15.819 --> 00:29:22.670
we had a really robust and extremely skilled press, both
489
00:29:22.690 --> 00:29:29.500
print and television and radio. And if you were committing
490
00:29:29.700 --> 00:29:34.630
these kinds of crimes and the elected authorities and the
491
00:29:34.670 --> 00:29:37.509
judicial authorities weren't going to intervene because of all their
492
00:29:37.950 --> 00:29:43.200
sweetheart deals, the press would expose you and shine a spotlight.
493
00:29:43.240 --> 00:29:48.240
And many of these governors in prison would still be fat, dumb,
494
00:29:48.279 --> 00:29:50.779
and happy without the media.
495
00:29:50.799 --> 00:29:54.819
And that has been hollowed out. The fourth estate is
496
00:29:54.880 --> 00:29:56.220
a shadow of what it used to be.
497
00:29:56.339 --> 00:29:59.269
Exactly. And so that's what So I'm working on my
498
00:29:59.309 --> 00:30:01.289
books and I'm thinking, I mean, it was true with
499
00:30:01.329 --> 00:30:05.569
Bad Company too, but specifically with VI because she's right
500
00:30:05.670 --> 00:30:10.200
there where the crime is on the streets and in
501
00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:13.259
the boardrooms. So trying to find a way to bring
502
00:30:15.420 --> 00:30:18.970
there is no there's no law anymore in a way
503
00:30:19.009 --> 00:30:21.569
in this country i mean there's laws that affects ordinary
504
00:30:21.650 --> 00:30:25.089
people on the streets but there's not laws so i
505
00:30:25.130 --> 00:30:27.690
needed to take a break from vi and.
506
00:30:28.150 --> 00:30:32.819
And sorry the book is out now bad company yeah
507
00:30:33.279 --> 00:30:35.039
i read a proof version so it's just about to
508
00:30:35.099 --> 00:30:37.579
come out fine we normally finish by asking you what
509
00:30:37.619 --> 00:30:38.900
you're working on next.
510
00:30:39.640 --> 00:30:42.660
So I'm under contract to write a new book in
511
00:30:42.680 --> 00:30:45.819
the VI series. And that is what I am working
512
00:30:45.980 --> 00:30:49.619
on right now. The girl detective has just come across
513
00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:54.579
a very dead young man in a snow drift next
514
00:30:54.619 --> 00:30:57.069
to Lake Michigan. And she says that she's trying to
515
00:30:57.109 --> 00:31:00.809
make her way across this park to the lake. She
516
00:31:00.890 --> 00:31:05.650
says if John Krakauer had ever experienced a Chicago park
517
00:31:05.710 --> 00:31:08.880
next to the lake, In January, when the hawk is
518
00:31:08.960 --> 00:31:12.039
blowing across the water, he would have thought Everest was
519
00:31:12.079 --> 00:31:12.660
pretty tame.
520
00:31:12.680 --> 00:31:15.539
That's a brilliant way to.
521
00:31:15.819 --> 00:31:19.990
That's poetic. Brilliant. No, Sarah, another question, though. Are we
522
00:31:20.009 --> 00:31:21.430
going to see you over here at all?
523
00:31:21.970 --> 00:31:26.009
Well, I'm hoping, actually, to come not for the launch here,
524
00:31:26.049 --> 00:31:28.230
but the paperback will be out May 5th, and I'm
525
00:31:28.269 --> 00:31:29.390
hoping to come then.
526
00:31:29.549 --> 00:31:30.539
Oh, that will be wonderful.
527
00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:33.059
And I hope I can see my nephews when I'm here.
528
00:31:33.079 --> 00:31:35.579
Absolutely. Auntie Sarah, we're going to have to look after you.
529
00:31:35.599 --> 00:31:37.660
Stay in touch. Let us know when you're coming.
530
00:31:37.940 --> 00:31:39.970
Your publishers will know who we are because they sent
531
00:31:40.009 --> 00:31:41.269
me the book. So if they want us.
532
00:31:41.230 --> 00:31:42.509
To come along.
533
00:31:42.890 --> 00:31:43.799
We will look after you.
534
00:31:43.809 --> 00:31:46.869
We will come along and we will lighten up the
535
00:31:46.910 --> 00:31:49.589
room with nonsense. It's been wonderful chatting to you.
536
00:31:49.710 --> 00:31:53.400
Abia, can you lead us out? Well, I mean, that
537
00:31:53.420 --> 00:31:55.980
brings us to the close of another episode. Once again,
538
00:31:56.160 --> 00:31:58.099
if you have liked the show, can we ask you
539
00:31:58.140 --> 00:32:01.549
to leave a review, sign up for regular episodes. And
540
00:32:01.569 --> 00:32:06.420
on your favorite podcast app. And please do spread the word. Basim,
541
00:32:06.619 --> 00:32:11.960
it looks like we have added another person to our family.
542
00:32:12.640 --> 00:32:15.420
And it makes me very, very happy. If we are
543
00:32:15.460 --> 00:32:17.900
going to have Auntie Sarah here, I think we need
544
00:32:17.940 --> 00:32:20.150
to visit the Windy City and see her at some point.
545
00:32:20.170 --> 00:32:21.809
Oh, my God. I'd love to show you.
546
00:32:21.829 --> 00:32:24.650
There you are. We will do that. To be fair,
547
00:32:24.670 --> 00:32:24.930
to be fair.
548
00:32:24.990 --> 00:32:26.670
And then walk from the Obama Center.
549
00:32:27.700 --> 00:32:30.930
Oh, yes, the new stupid duper Obama Center. Yes, to
550
00:32:30.970 --> 00:32:33.950
be fair, after Abbie has eaten beans, they usually call
551
00:32:33.990 --> 00:32:37.150
his house the Windy City.
552
00:32:37.170 --> 00:32:39.869
I can't believe you're laughing at that, Auntie Sarah. Oh,
553
00:32:39.930 --> 00:32:44.029
my goodness. All right. On that rather windy note, ladies
554
00:32:44.049 --> 00:32:46.150
and gentlemen, we have been your friends, the Red Hot
555
00:32:46.170 --> 00:32:48.869
Chili Writers on Murder Junction. See you next time.
