STELLA ASKS SECOND OLDEST QUESTION IN WRITING UNIVERSE

STELLA: Sheesh, Elizabeth, I've got finger-cramps from turning the pages so fast. I have a sneaky feeling you've got an inside edge when you write a cling-to-your-seat story like THE WRONG HOSTAGE. Listen up! Quit cleaning the Glock (I already swiped the clip) and gimme some straight answers. I know you, and I know Evan was a crime reporter for years. Just how much of THE WRONG HOSTAGE is real?

ELIZABETH: Well, Evan and I have never had a child kidnapped, thank God. But if you’re asking about the book’s backdrop, it’s all quite real. Even though it has been a long time since Evan traded in his journalistic hat for that of a novelist, we still follow doings along the border with Mexico. Our information on what’s really happening (as opposed to what major media outlets call news) comes from many sources, including people “on the ground.”

STELLA: I knew it, insider information. In THE WRONG HOSTAGE the tunnel under the border plays a big part in the plot. It's real, isn't it? Come on, you can tell me.

ELIZABETH. The earliest tunnel I ever heard about was from Don Quick, then with the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). We roasted cabrito and nopales over a campfire, he taught me how to use his hand gun, and pronounced me good enough to hit a man at twenty feet.

Then he showed Evan and me a lonely little house on the desert, just on the California side of the border. In the 19th century, when the contraband was Chinese immigrants and ten-tael tins of opium, a tunnel ran from beneath the house to a cave on the Mexican side. Quick knew about it because his father had been a Customs agent who rode horseback through the desert in search of bootleggers from Mexico.

The fact that the tunnel Evan and I imagined for THE WRONG HOSTAGE was actually discovered a few months ago—in the precise place we imagined it would be!—just proves that truth is at least as strange as fiction.

STELLA: Don Quick? Of course, Amanda's dad. What about St. Kilda Consulting? Is that real?

ELIZABETH: (groan....no relation at all!) St. Kilda is our creation, but it’s based on what’s happening in the real world. One of the FBI agents who once worked with Evan left the FBI and started his own kidnap/ransom insurance business, because he saw how difficult it was for American corporations to protect their employees outside the U.S.

Other people Evan worked with have gone on to think tanks, started their own advice/security businesses, etc. In the Post Cold War world, gigantic just doesn’t get most jobs done. Many non-combat jobs in war zones go to private contractors, from feeding soldiers, to electronics maintenance (and operation) of high-tech weapons, and even the training of Iraqi policemen. Some companies are run by former special forces personnel. Many are run by former government employees from the military services to the CIA, FBI, and any other agency that requires expertise in the shifting reality of geopolitics and transnational crime.

I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to find that one or more private businesses such as St. Kilda exists. Whether we know it or not, we need them.

STELLA: No arguments from me. And the love story grips in all the right ways--just as I would expect. Joe Faroe is a classic Lowell hero--strong and vulnerable, smart and yet dumb as only a guy can be about women, and sexy. Did I mention sexy?

ELIZABETH: What can I say? No love, no story. Not for this woman. Faroe demanded a special heroine, one who could go toe-to-toe with him, yet touch him with her own vulnerability, her own needs. Grace Silva is a great match for Faroe—even if neither one wants to admit it!

STELLA: THE WRONG HOSTAGE is for sale tomorrow 6/13. If you break a toe running an errand (to the bookstore) and have to take a couple of days off to recover, we'll all understand. Buy a copy for your doctor in exchange for a letter of excuse to your boss--you need quality reading time!