Kevin Flynn is a life-long resident of
the Washington, D.C. area, and served as a violent crime prosecutor in the city
for more than 30 years. His non-fiction book Relentless
Pursuit was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2007; Rock
Creek is his first novel. Kevin
lives with his wife Patrice in Northern Virginia; their two children, Connor
and Megan, are lawyers living in New York City.
(Editor’s Note: One Bite ta a Time is
experimenting with interviews that deal more with the writer than the book. For
more information on Rock Creek as a story, here is the link the Amazon page.)
One Bite at a Time: What’s the deal with Shane Kinnock?
Kevin Flynn: As to the character himself: Shane is flawed and
self-destructive but at the
same time brutally honest – both with himself and
others – and dedicated to his job to the point of obsession. I never went
through in real life what he went through in fictional life. But his sensibilities are my sensibilities,
and his voice is my voice. As you’re no
doubt well aware, writing fiction can be agonizing. But it was a lot of fun to walk Shane into a
scene and have him react to it verbally as I would. He was always my anchor.
As
to the creation of the character: I was a violent crime prosecutor in DC for 35
years. That experience introduced me to a wide array of people, primarily
victims of crime, perpetrators of crime,
and police officers. Those encounters were oftentimes intense, and
fraught. When I first turned to fiction
I was twenty years into that job, and I had already developed a sense for the
complexities of humanity that was deeper, I would submit, than is afforded by
most occupations in life. I knew in my
heart that so-called heroes have flaws, and so-called villains have virtues. In
creating the main characters in this book, especially Shane, I was committed to
each of them being fully developed and not cardboard cutouts. Once I decided to
put this story in 1952, and to have at its center a complicated protagonist
with human failings, his backstory wrote itself: World War II combat veteran,
returned home shellshocked, took a police job but plagued by his past, using
drink to ease his pain, and at the same time trying to move forward, even
incrementally. And the vehicle of his
redemption would be the case that is at the heart of the Rock Creek
story.
OBAAT: Of all the possible topics to write about,
what made you choose this one?
KF: So here’s the origin story.
I wrote a non-fiction book about one of my murder cases and it was
published in 2007. Shortly afterwards a
friend – okay, my agent -- asked what my next book would be: “You must have worked on a high-profile case
that would be a natural basis for the next one.” My first thought was, it took me 10 years to
get this one out to the public, don’t push me to the next one. But my second thought was: In fact, I have worked on a case that drew
national attention. A few years before, a government intern had been killed in
D.C., her body found in Rock Creek Park. A Congressman, her former lover, was a
suspect. The catch was that I couldn’t write about it. The case wasn’t in
court yet. All the details of our investigation were confidential. And I’d come to know the victim’s parents
well, and didn’t want to write any factual account that would seem in any way
to exploit their pain.
But
I came to realize that if I took the basic facts of the case and reset it in
the post-war period as fiction, I had an opportunity to write a far richer
story. I could concoct a backstory for
the fictional victim that wouldn’t track that of the real-life victim, and at
the same time create a better whodunit
with more distinctive characters and a much more original, revelatory account
of the city and its people that I knew so well.
So
I went and ran with it.
OBAAT: As a debut novelist you may be uniquely
qualified to answer some questions for others hoping for publication. Let’s
start with the road to getting Rock Creek published.
KF: Anyone who thinks that
writing is easy isn't familiar with the lines of the Irish poet who said,
"Better to get down on your marrow bones and scrub kitchen pavement."
There's also some exhilaration in the process: a more modern writer has observed,
"I hate writing, but I love having written." This novel took a
particularly torturous path in getting to press. When I started writing it I
had never written fiction, had never even taken a fiction writing course, of
any kind. And it showed. The spine of the story is now as it was then,
the characters were as well-developed, and it featured occasionally moving
turns of phrase. But in retrospect I can
see it was often plodding, none of its scenes opened compellingly, and it
lacked propulsive pace. I couldn't even
get my agent – the same one who had prompted me to go forward with this project
to begin with – to put the book out the publishers. And as frustrating as that
was, he was right: It wasn't ready. I did at least four more drafts – maybe
five, I’ve lost count – before it met with his specs, and he put it out, with
no bites. In 2019 he put me on a path that led to another agent who specialized
in fiction, and ultimately a publisher bought it -- only to go into breach and
leave a trail of abusive communications in his wake. Bottom line: I got my
rights back, and the book is coming out in May 2024. My story may be more strenuous than most, but
my research of anecdotal experiences suggests that it’s not all that aberrational.
OBAAT: Did you hire an editor to review your
manuscript before publishing?
KF: Yes. I actually worked the process a bit in
reverse. Most published authors go the
route of: Write book, get agent, have
book sold to publisher, publisher edits book.
My route was: Write book, get
editor, get agent, have book sold to publisher.
(Leaving out all of the rancorous after- business with the last
publisher, which came to the water’s edge of litigation.)
In crass financial terms: My specific story suggests that if an unknown
writer has a book and has been unsuccessful in obtaining a notable agent – an
essential part of the process of securing a contract from a notable publisher –
he or she should retain an editor to polish their manuscript before sending it
out again.
But far more importantly, from an artistic
point of view: Every writer needs an
editor, case closed. F. Scott Fitzgerald
and Ernest Hemingway had Max Perkins, and that’s just the most prominent of the
examples that could be cited.
My humble opinion: Anyone who’s writing for publication should
be aspiring to be the best writer who’s ever written. When Hemingway was asked about what his
ambition was as a writer he responded with something along the lines of, “To be
the heavyweight champion of the world, of course.” And one last quote here – a long-lost post on
Substack – “Good writing is in the writing, great writing is in the revising.”
OBAAT: You are a relatively rare creature, a DC
native with family roots in Washington. How did that affect the stimulus and
writing of Rock Creek?
KF: I have to say that I quarrel
a bit with the premise. The common
observation is that this is a transient area – and certainly the political
class in D.C. proper is – but I would submit that the population of the DMV as
a whole is no more transient than most U.S. urban areas are (outside the most
provincial, my personal examples being Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston). But I get the point. And as to the question, did my status as a
D.C. native affect the stimulus and writing of Rock Creek, the answer
is: in every way imaginable.
I wanted to write a book that combined the two
parts of the D.C. that I knew from childhood
on – capital of the free world, and small town
-- in a way that would introduce it to the public at large, or at least the
reading public, so they would see it fresh.
I said earlier that when I embarked on fiction writing I was deficient
in some ways, lack of formal training being most prominent. But from trial lawyering I had one thing
going for me, among others. To try a
case to a jury is to tell a story to them, a story that is tethered in truth
and authenticity. And every good story
is grounded in a place, and I had the setting of Rock Creek nailed down
before I even had characters to move about in it.
OBAAT: Which authors are the greatest influences
on your work, and how or why have they been so influential?
KF: Here’s the incongruity. I’ve written a book that’s characterized as a
combination of mystery thriller and historical fiction. But I’ve rarely if ever read mystery
thrillers, and I’ve never read – at least in my living memory – any work of
historical fiction.
As to historical fiction, there are classics
out there – Memoirs of Hadrian, and going back aways, the Gore Vidal
books and The Year of the French – haven’t gotten to them. They all join my ranks of Great Books on My
Bookshelf That Remain Unread. I hope to
someday read more in the genre, especially the Hadrian book. But I can definitively say that they in no
way influenced my writing of this book.
Likewise mystery thrillers, but for different
reasons. With my work life being what it
was, I avoided mystery and crime books, not to mention all true crime TV
series. Put simply: I was living it, why would I delve back into
it when I got home? Where was the escape
in that?
On the positive side. My primary writing activity for the last 35
years – notwithstanding the book that’s being published now, and the book that
was published in 2007 – has been in writing opening statements and closing
arguments as a prosecutor. In that realm
– the realm of making words flow and sentences that sing, in a way that move
people – my influences have remained static through the years: Fitzgerald,
Hemingway, Camus, Roth.
OBAAT: What are you up to next?
KF: I don’t know.
