Neil Low, a Captain in the Seattle Police Department and mystery writer was kind enough to answer a few questions about his own writing and how/if Christie has had any influence on his writing!
Thank-You Neil!
1. Has Agatha Christie works influenced your writing or stories at all?
As a young police cadet, circa: 1968, I worked the night desk in the South Precinct so that real police officers could work the streets. In the deep drawer of the desk I occupied was an eclectic collection of Ellery Queen magazines and detective novels, including some of the works of Agatha Christie. Their purpose for being there was likely to inspire us would-be police officers on how real detective work was to be done, once we were old enough to work a car. I had pretty much forgotten about reading from this large stash of stories, and then someone whose read my novels asks: “In your first story, Thick as Thieves, did the idea for the Lindbergh connection come from your having read The Murder on the Orient Express, which has strong references to the Crime of the Century?” Although I read the novel and remember the movie particularly well, I didn’t see the connection between Christie’s work and mine. Two novels later, another reader asks: “In Unreasonable Persuasion, did you get your idea for the murder on the Eastern Washington train from The Murder on the Orient Express? Hmm? I don’t know. Let me think about it. Orient Express is more of a cozy mystery, where suspects are gathered into a room (or compartment) and the detective identifies the killer(s) in front of everyone. Mine are different in many ways. I like to think I infuse mine with a healthy dose of Hitchcockian suspense, because he also made movies with murders on trains, and that wasn’t the central theme of my novel anyway. It was more of a tangent that I needed to take care of, but it still begs the question: how much of that was influenced by Agatha Christie? Probably more than I consciously know.
2. Advise often given to new writers is, “Write what you know.” Agatha worked in a hospital during WWI, which gave her critical knowledge of drugs and poisons. How has your job influenced you writing?
My job plays a large role in my writing, particularly when it comes to interviewing suspects, which I became quite good at by practice and sheer numbers. As a commander, I also understand police procedures from top to bottom, and so I understand WHY we do the things we do. My challenge is to not get bogged down with those details and make it a procedural novel, when I’m trying to write a character driven novel that gets more into the personalities of people and why they do what they do. I even like to portray my “bad guys” as fully formed characters that under different circumstances you might want as your neighbor, which is a lot like the real world. I worked undercover Vice for two years, and so I learned to lay low and listen to what was said around me. I couldn’t wear a wire in what I was doing, so I had to write it down later as accurately as I could remember. I found that I could invite more damning information through subtle questioning, when defenses were low. I would later use that information to make my case in court.
My biggest strength right now, as a senior captain, is that I know almost all of the department’s detectives. They’re the ones with the technical expertise now. So, if I don’t know how a hat pin murder might work (Unreasonable Persuasion), I will call the Cold Case detective—or a senior Homicide detective—and ask him. I find they love sharing this information. And since we’re on the subject of poisons with Agatha Christie, my next novel, Theater of the Crime, involves snake venom, which is different than poison. I didn’t know that until I reached that point in the story when it came into play. I needed to find out how it could be delivered effectively to a victim and what the effects were to the human body. Being able to gather accurate information and convey it convincingly is probably my strong point.
3. Agatha Christie is considered to be the Queen of Poisons, due to prevalent usage in her stories, is this something which you run across often in your day job?
Poisons are not prevalent in Seattle area murders—at least not that we are aware of. One that comes to mind was in Auburn and involved a woman, Stella Nickell, who poisoned her husband in 1986 with cyanide laced Excedrin capsules, during the time Tylenol took a beating in Chicago. To cover her crime, Nickell tampered with another box of Excedrin, which led to the death of Susan Snow. Nickell’s husband’s death had been ruled a natural until Snow’s death was linked to Excedrin. The company step forward and offered a $300,000 reward for those responsible, which brought Stella Nickells out of the background to say her husband had also taken Excedrin. Her husband’s body was re-examined and linked to the cyanide poisoning. The focus of the investigation soon centered on Nickell, and the FBI found traces of a foreign matter in the laced capsules, which they knew didn’t come from the manufacturer. They linked it to Stella Nickells, and this is long before any of us heard of C.S.I.. They also found she had forged insurance policies in her husband’s name. It was unbridled greed that did her in. She had gotten plenty from the insurance companies but wanted the reward. Separately, while researching poisons and revenge motives for my work in progress, I found the connection to poisons and venom to be strong in Russian murders committed in Europe.
4. Christie’s characters were often based on brief impressions of people she saw, but she could not create a character on anyone she actually had a conversation with. Are you as a writer able to base characters on real people, are they wholly fictional or a blend of the two?
My characters are composites of people I’ve known, seen, admired, or detested. So unlike Christie, I often have had conversations with the people my characters are based on, while others are completely a flight of fancy. I like strong women, and you will see that especially in Sign of the Dragon with the coming together of the White Dragon and Tiger Lee. You’ll find that even the kidnapped victim in this story has her own strengths, which aren’t just in her beauty. I mentioned earlier that I like to create well-rounded “bad guys” because I’ve found that to be true in life. As a police officer it would be easy to fall into the we versus they approach to dealing with criminals, but as an observer of people I watched time and again when loving, caring families would show up to court to support a family member accused of the most heinous of crimes. Maybe I saw this side of people because I went to the seminary for two years, and unlike in police work, religious ministry is all about forgiveness and giving second chances. I’m not completely in favor of that in every instance—I’m about accountability—but perhaps I’ve found a balance between the two sides in police work and in my writing.
The families I watched in court would talk about what a great son, father, brother, uncle this accused suspect could be—when not on drugs or drunk, etc.—so before long I started to see this as a possibility in people who committed crimes and it made sense. From there I learned that people do what they do for reasons which makes sense to them at the time they did them. Those reasons may not make any sense to you or me, but they made sense to them in the moment, although that sense for them could be psychopathic. And although I’ve dealt with many career criminals, I’ve never found anyone to be bad or evil for the pure sake of being evil. There was always something they wanted immediately: a goal, an object, or a person that might be the forbidden fruit the rest of us would leave alone, but they wanted this gratification, whether it be an instant or well-planned short-cut to happiness.
5. When Agatha Christie wrote her book, The Body In The Library, this idea was already a cliché in detective fiction. Have you ever been tempted as writer to place one there and during your day job, have you ever heard of this actually occurring?
Writing a cozy mystery about my work place would be difficult—because I work in an environment full of cops who carry guns and are suspicious in nature. It certainly would be a challenge, especially since we have cameras and microphones everywhere. We can check up on our employees’ movement around city buildings by their proximity identification cards—at least where they had to clear through security doors, and we can track their vehicles. And as the Night Commander I can authorize cell phone pingings, life you’ve seen on C.S.I.. It would be nearly impossible for a police detective to go undetected—pun intended. But now that you’ve sown the seeds for thought, this might be a fun one to write. I could stage it in the Chief’s inner sanctums, and we know that the suspect would have to be one of the disgruntled high commanders with a certain bit of knowledge I cannot share here. To make it my story and not Christie’s, I’m already planning an escape…
6. There is a long tradition of amateur detectives, like Miss Marple, working with an investigator to solve a crime. Is this something which actually happens, or does it work better in that pages of a book?
I was half way through my NO answer, saying this only happens in books, when I remembered back to my gang detective days. I was Seattle’s first gang detective, and when I made sergeant and came back to take over the unit that I had helped develop, they had just such an amateur sleuth working with them to solve crimes. (G.N.) was a school intervention specialist with no police authority, and I quickly found him to be the best possible resource on gang behavior in and around schools. My detectives were using him exclusively, and I think that 75% or more of their crime solving leads came from him. G.N. solved or help solve countless home invasion robberies, assaults, burglaries, and car prowls up and down the West Coast, while racking up a huge cell phone fee (old school prices then). He worked tirelessly, but there was the danger he didn’t have a police commission and might incur liability for himself, the department, or the school district. I went to Human Resources and got him an application to become a Reserve Police Officer, which he became. This is actually the course I would recommend to others who are interested in helping out their local agency. Later, I saw where the LA County Sheriff also utilized a civilian as a gang expert, and he traveled with them to seminars to lecture on collecting gang data, computers being his area of expertise.
7. Over the years there have been a number of fictional investigators who have been roped into solving a mystery while traveling and /or on vacation. Has your expertise ever been required in a situation like this?
I have never been roped into solving a mystery while traveling or on vacation. I did get involved in a lake rescue, where I swam out and recovered a “tired swimmer” at Lake Chelan, towing him back to shore, many years ago, but that’s about as close to police or public service work as it gets for me. I’m not aware of any other officers getting involved in solving mysteries while on days off, and part of that may be because the department has an official policy that discourages us from doing police work outside of our work hours and duty assignments. There’s always the taint that the work might be motive driven; i.e., the employee has a grudge he wants to arrest a neighbor or borther-in-law for, which could lead to misconduct complaints, etc.
As I’m saying this, one of my all-time favorite movies is In the Heat of the Night where Sidney Poitier plays Detective Virgil Tibbs, traveling home, via Sparta (fictionalized), Mississippi, when he’s confronted as a Black man with cash in his pocket at the railroad station by Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger). Years later I cannot fathom how Detective Tibb’s Philadelphia boss authorized and encouraged him to help out in a racist, backwater town like that. Seattle helps other local agencies out a lot, but there’s always the thought that somehow, someday, they might repay us. I can’t see how Sparta could repay Philadelphia. Other than that, it was a fabulous movie, the plot worked, and it won several academy awards. It makes for great fiction.
8. Any final words?
For final thoughts, I thought I’d include a couple of quotes from Agatha Christie on brevity: “You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.” And “The disadvantage of the dictaphone is that it encourages you to be much too verbose. There is no doubt that the effort involved in typing or writing does help me in keeping to the point. ”
As I put the wraps on my sixth novel, I keep the thought in mind that the simplest thought “is always the most likely,” and by that I try not to stray into areas of the improbable when it comes to solving crimes or assigning motives to my characters. Likewise, with Christie’s reference to the effort involved in typing/writing helping her keep to the point, I get asked why I don’t use a speech recognition device. I don’t because to me the typing is very much a part of my writing process. It’s how I wrote my detective cases and statements for so many years, and it still works for me. Hopefully, I’m more economical with my words this way, because it’s human nature to find the efficiency in labor.
Agatha Christie was a true pioneer in mystery writing, and every would-be writer would serve him or herself well by reading several of her stories.
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