Q&A with J. Lee

 

 

J. Lee is the author of the new novel The Reluctant Reckoner. His other novels include The Deadly Deal. He lives in the Chicago area.  

 

Q: What inspired the plot of The Reluctant Reckoner, and how did you create your character Mark Richter? 

 

A: I first conceived of the idea that an innocent accountant might get sucked into a dangerous game of fraud due to his or her expertise many years ago. 

 

The idea dawned on me that there is an expertise in technical professions (e.g. accounting, engineering, computer programming, etc.) that could make people a target. 

 

They can be an unwilling gatekeeper to something dangerous and illegal, and since they are not typically very combative people (at least in my experience), they wouldn’t necessarily know how or even want to fight back. At that time, I just thought that was an interesting concept. 

 

Then, I became a victim of identity theft and saw firsthand how sophisticated some of the perpetrators can be and much of a challenge they can create for their victims. After that experience, I revisited that storyline and took its conceptualization a step further to finalize a plot. 

 

As for Mark, what I like about him is that he’s just that: an innocent accountant. I started with that as a baseline and then tried to make him as interesting as a “typical” accountant might be, starting with family and working my way up.  

 

Q: How would you compare Mark with your previous protagonists? 

 

A: He’s definitely a lot “cleaner” (so to speak) than my previous protagonists. In The Hubley Case and The Silent Cardinal, the protagonist Ben Siebert was a former Marine specially trained to handle such situations who had some egg on his face leading back to his military days. He often colored outside the lines and felt very comfortable in that space. 

 

David Centrelli, the protagonist in The Deadly Deal, had no such military training, but he did have an ugly past that made him especially susceptible to blackmail. He was quite a bit grayer than even Ben. 

 

But Mark…Mark’s truly the lovable guy who doesn’t deserve what is happening to him in The Reluctant Reckoner. 

 

Mark has made mistakes and has his flaws, we all have and do, but they are tied to his personal relationships and family. In the eyes of the law, he’s squeaky clean. 

 

I made him that way because to me, it would make him that much more of an obvious target for the antagonists to go after. It felt very realistic to me that they would hone in on a guy like Mark…far more than any other protagonist of mine.  

Q: The Midwest Book Review said of the book, “Readers will become thoroughly engrossed in a plot that shimmers with tension, revelation, unexpected twists and turns, and a foray into questions, dubious answers, and tests of trust.” What do you think of that description? 

 

A: I am extremely grateful that Midwest Book Review liked it so much. In some ways, it’s very rewarding and redeeming to have a third-party professional validate my work. In others, it inspires me to keep working hard and hope other readers feel the same. 

 

Side note: every time a review comes in for one of my books, I have a bit of trepidation. I know going in that reviewers need to be honest; their credibility is based on objectivity and there’s no guarantee they’re going to like what it is I’ve written. So, to put it mildly, I definitely breathed a sigh of relief when that one came in.  

 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you? 

 

A: I conducted a fair amount of “big picture” and “nitty gritty” research that I have recently broken down for Writer’s Digest in a guest article. 

 

I try hard to drive authenticity into the scenes, settings, plot, and characters for all my books, and The Reluctant Reckoner was certainly no different. Lots of in-person and web-based research went into this one… 

 

There was one big surprise. As I mentioned, I was the victim of identity theft, so I knew that a) people are always trying to steal our information and b) to a degree they are succeeding, resulting in the infamous “year of free credit monitoring” that all the large organizations offer up when there’s a data breach that may compromise your information (as if that is equitable). 

 

What surprised me, however, as I researched this book, was just how far behind the bad guys perpetrating these crimes it seems the good guys trying to stop it will always be. It made me pause.  

 

Q: How does your writing career intersect with your other work? 

 

A: My background is in engineering and I spend most of my time dealing with customers, internal projects, deadlines, financials, corporate processes, and various other dealings that are strictly business related. 

 

Thus, suspense novels based on theoretical high-level concepts with imaginary people don’t have a lot of direct overlap with the nine-to-five, but I will say this: we’re all the sum of our own experiences and that’s what we tend to write. 

 

There are certainly character traits that I pull from people I work with, locations I travel to that get selected for a setting, and the chance to interact with a variety of people that work in the same setting as many of the characters in my novel, so I try to take advantage of as much overlap as I can. 

 

But outside of examples such as that, it often feels like two completely different worlds that I very consciously separate both in my mind and my calendar. I even block the time off to keep them separate and straight. Writing is writing and work is work.  

 

Q: What are you working on now? 

 

A: Thanks for asking! While I don’t want to give away too much too soon – and it’s all subject to change anyway as I plow ahead – I have two stories in the works that are very exciting to me. 

 

One is another standalone novel set some 30 years ago in a small Southern Illinois town, and the other is a return to Ben Siebert where we get to learn about all the fun stuff he’s been up to. They’re both mystery/suspense novels and they’re both a lot of fun to mess around with when I get the time to do so.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with J. Lee.