I like Portland. I like Pinkberry, too, but I wouldn't set a novel there. But why choose Portland as the setting for
Judas Horse, the latest FBI Special Agent Ana Grey mystery, when everybody knows Ana Grey is based in Los Angeles?
Part of it is family history. My mother-in-law lives in Ashland, Oregon and we've spent wonderful visits there, feeding ducks and picking cherries, while the kids were growing up. Our son felt so much at home in all that green that he decided to attend the University of Oregon. For years my husband and I talked about leaving Santa Monica and moving to Portland, for the usual reasons: livability, great food and wine, the outdoors, good folks with their heads on straight. We once spent a weekend riding around with a realtor. That was back when our daughter was in a car seat. She's sixteen years old, and we're still talking about it.
Powell's Books had always been a favorite stop, and I'd marveled at the transformation of the Pearl District ever since I'd started coming up on book tours. In fact, it was during the book tour for the previous Ana Grey novel, Good Morning, Killer, that the idea of using Portland as a setting became irresistible.
But not for the usual reasons.
Setting for a book is crucial. Not only does it create mood, but often suggests how your plot will develop. I travel extensively for every book. To write with authenticity, I need to walk each location where my characters walk, and breathe the same air that they breathe. This probably comes from experience as a TV writer/producer, where scripts often come to life in the process of location scouting ? driving in a van with the director and camera crew, deciding what spot and which angles to use for each scene.
As a novelist, I use the technique of location scouting, but to opposite effect. I have found the half-meditative state of wandering a strange city alone, notebook in hand, provides an openness of mind that allows for associative thought, a cavalcade of ideas and sensory impressions you don't get from straining at a computer. Research for novels has taken me to the Dominican Republic, Vero Beach, Florida, Oklahoma City, Miami, Austin, Washington, D.C., Quantico, Virginia, and every corner of the state of Oregon ? from Corvallis to Bend to Burns ? and most recently, London, Paris, Rome, and Siena, Italy.
Judas Horse, portrays, in hopefully searing detail, the psychological vise of working as an undercover FBI agent. In order to qualify as a UC, you must pass the most brutal training the Bureau offers, which they call "undercover school" ? two weeks of hunger and sleep deprivation at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, until you literally don't know who you are or what time of day it is. Then they drop you into a "life and death" scenario ? and either your "live" or "die." Pass or fail. They can cut you loose and send you home at any time, for the smallest mistake, and you'll never know why ? except that it probably saved your life because you were not equipped to live a lie 24/7.
Once my character, Ana Grey, made it through undercover school (I don't think I'm giving away the plot here), I wanted her to be assigned to an environment where she would truly be an outsider; where her Los Angeles chops wouldn't cut it, and in fact could put her in danger. I came up with the notion that she assume the identity of a down-and-out animal lover and live on a hazelnut farm in rural Oregon (they would sell hazelnut brittle at the Portland Farmer's Market) with a dysfunctional "family" in order to penetrate a cell of domestic terrorists.
To scout out the possibility of centering such a story around Portland, I was able to squeeze in some hasty interviews with law enforcement personnel while on the book tour for Good Morning, Killer. The moment a police officer said, " Portland is a good vice town," I knew it was the right place. A good vice town. Dashiell Hammet couldn't have said it better. The officer went on to describe a town that had everything going for it that a writer could want ? Asian and Russian organized crime, a hefty presence of the KKK, methamphetamine labs, chop shops, and homegrown radical groups such as ALF and ELF which are high on the FBI's list of dangerous extremists. I began to see how the hip, gritty, maritime city of Portland itself would make an intriguing central character.
As if to confirm my hunch, a story broke in The Oregonian while I was there. I remember reading it with amazement in a swell room at the Heathman Hotel, one of those messages sent to you by the Universe. Beautifully written by Maxine Bernstein, the story chronicled the murder of 22-year-old Jessica Kate Williams, street name "Giggles," who had the mental capacity of a 12 year-old. She was part of a violent family of homeless youth who squat under the bridges, forming attachments and living by their own rules. Poignantly, they choose a "father" and "mother" to mete out justice. When Jessica admitted she had lied about another family member, the teenaged "father" decided she must be disciplined. This mentally handicapped girl was led underneath a bridge, where she was stabbed and set on fire. Even hardened cops were sickened when they found the body.
That was the seed for the characterization of the two street kids, Sara and Slammer, who Ana Grey hooks up with when she goes undercover on the hazelnut farm, which is modeled after a real hazelnut farm in Corvallis. Portlanders will recognize other localities, but you'd have to cross the state, as I did, to discover the heart of the book, which lies east of Burns, in the volcanic plains of the high desert, where the wild mustangs run free.
More on that tomorrow.