Art Bell is the author of the new novel What She's Hiding. He also has written the memoir Constant Comedy. He developed and launched the Comedy Channel and served as president of Court TV. He lives in Park City, Utah.
Q: What inspired you to write What She’s Hiding, and how did you create your character Henry?
A: I was in high school when I got hooked on noir. The first noir books I read--Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op and The Maltese Falcon--started my love affair with noir. The more I read, the more I thought about what attracted me to the genre.
When I decided to write a novel, I wanted to have some of the characteristics of the best noir novels: a morally ambiguous protagonist, snappy dialogue, and a dangerous world where violence was always just around the corner.
So many great noir novels are, at their core, love stories and often unrequited love stories and I’m pleased Henry’s love life became an important part of What She’s Hiding.
Another inspiration was Harry Crews’ famous essay “The Violence That Finds You.” If we’re lucky, we get through life without facing mortal danger, but as Crews pointed out, sometimes we have no choice.
So that’s where I started—an average guy gets into trouble and, for the first time in his life, has to deal with the threats to himself and the people he loves and the violence that follows.
As for Henry, he kind of invented himself. I knew only a few things about him when I began writing.
I knew he was an excellent lawyer who didn’t like practicing law. I’m not a lawyer but when I was president of Court TV, I worked with plenty of lawyers who would rather be on television than practice law, so I had a handle on that.
I knew that Henry had an ex-wife he never got over who was about to drag him into some horrible mess.
And I knew he loved New York City.
These were the basics that shaped him initially, and I just kept filling in the blanks as I wrote.
For example, I found out Henry had an ironic sense of humor, and that was important because it shaped so much of the dialogue.
Q: The writer Jon Lindstrom called the book “a raucous, twisty, dangerous, and often hilarious trip through NYC's under, and over, world.” What do you think of that description?
A: There’s so much I like about that description. The novel is a trip through New York City, so much so that I came to think of the city as another character in the book.
How Henry navigates the underworld while living in the “overworld” (I love invented words, don’t you?) is at the heart of what drives the story.
As for the other descriptors, I’m glad he found it twisty because twists help make good stories and effective thrillers.
As for “often hilarious,” I appreciate mysteries and thrillers that include some humor, and I’ve found that not all of them do. As I learned from my years at Comedy Central, laughter is part of life and comedy often emerges during the least funny situations.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I had no idea when I started the novel where it would go or how it would end. The idea of plotting it with index cards, outlines, and timelines didn’t appeal to me.
But by the time the story was pretty far along, I realized that writing the ending would require at least some advanced planning. When I finished the book, I was pleased that I didn’t need to go back and rewrite anything to accommodate how I’d ended it.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I started by brainstorming (with myself) a list of 75 or so possible titles. Some were phrases from the book that I thought were cool, and some described something about the story. None worked. My publisher suggested we should go with something simple.
Late in the book, Henry wonders what his ex-wife is hiding, and that became “What She’s Hiding.” Sounds easy, but it took a lot of work to get there. For me, the title captures the essence of Henry’s ex-wife, Leslie, who hid her past from everyone including herself.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m writing the second book in the What She’s Hiding series that will chronicle Henry’s subsequent adventures in New York City.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: This is my first novel, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed writing it. The experience was much different from writing my memoir, Constant Comedy: How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor, except for this—I made sure every scene in both books was fun to read.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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