Interview: Murder by The Book

Deadly Donation, by Lorne Tepperman

An Interview with the author by

David Stover, Publisher, Rock’s Mills Press; formerly,

President, Oxford University Press, Canada

DS: Congratulations on your new book, Lorne. It’s your first novel, and I’m wondering why you wrote a novel after fifty years of writing academic books about the real world. What finally led you to write a work of fiction, a book about an imaginary world?

LT: It’s true my novel is about an imaginary murder, an imaginary victim, an imaginary murderer, and an imaginary heroine, Rachel Tile. But the things that happen in this book are real. They happen in the real world every single day. The book is that real!

DS: Okay, but if the book is so real, why use a novel to tell that story? Why not tell the story in a factual way, the way you’ve been doing throughout your academic life?

LT: David, it’s because more people read novels than read academic books, and I want to get my story into people’s heads. I want them to understand how the world is working today – how their world is working – and what makes that a  problem. You know, stories about imaginary events and imaginary characters often pack more impact than factual stories. As an author, I can tell the story exactly the way I want to. I believe that people will think about the world differently after they read this book.

DS: Your main character in the book, Rachel Tile, is a woman, though you are not a woman. Was it hard to tell your story from a woman’s point of view? And why did you decide to do it this way?

LT: I had at least three main reasons for making the lead character, Rachel Tile, a woman and have her tell the story. First, I thought it would be fun and interesting – a challenge -- to tell the story through the voice of a forty-year old woman criminologist. Second, I realized that having a female lead character would interest most of the people who read mystery books today; they’re mainly women, I think. Third and equally important, women make great crime investigators. For instance, women are more socially skillful than men, on average, so they make better interrogators. They’re better listeners than men. And, regrettably, many men still ignore or discount women – don’t pay them much attention, except as sexual objects. That also gives women an advantage when they study people and try to find out what they’re about.

DS: When you were writing this book, did you worry that some readers – especially women readers – would criticize your use of a woman’s voice for this book? Or that they would find flaws in the way you had done it?

LT: Of course I worried about that. In fact, my cousin, the famous novelist Joy Fielding, told me I was walking on dangerous ground by doing this. She said that male authors -- men generally -- didn’t know much about how women thought or acted, so they did a bad job writing about women. This warning made me very careful in writing this novel. But women friends of mine who have read this novel haven’t found any problems with how I’ve handled Rachel Tile, so I guess I’ve managed the problem after all. I’d like other readers to judge that for themselves.

DS: How would you describe your lead character, Rachel Tile?

LT: You’ve read the book so you know her general characteristics. Rachel is a beautiful, forty-year-old woman who teaches criminology in Toronto at a fictional John Strachan University. In fact, Rachel is Director of the School of Criminology, so she has an important supervisory job, plus she has to raise money for the School – lots of money. Aside from that, Rachel is married and has two children, one with her former husband – the guy who gets murdered. Finally, and also important, Rachel is going through a tough period of her life. She’s suffering panic attacks and depression, and dealing with that by drinking far too much.

DS: Rachel sounds like a complicated character. But maybe not very relatable or likeable. Do you think readers will identify with her?

LT: A lot of women between, say 35-55, will identify with Rachel. Like Rachel, many women have important jobs and are under a lot of pressure at home and at work. So, a lot of them may also suffer panic attacks or depression and do addictive things – for example, drink too much – to handle the stress. That said, there are many other, positive reasons to identify with Rachel. Rachel is beautiful, she’s smart, she’s a good teacher, a good wife, a good mother, and as it turns out, also a good detective. Oh yes, and a good friend. There’s where Jen Coale, comes in.

DS: Do you want to tell me about Jen Coale? I have a feeling she’s an important character too.

LT: Jen is a very powerful character in the story. She’s glamorous, funny, and a famous photographer. More than that, Jen has a mysterious backstory that is revealed in the novel. And the relationship between Rachel and Jen is pure fireworks. Jen plays an important role in this novel and will show up in other Rachel Tile novels as well, I can tell you that.

DS: Given your admiration for women, I suppose there are other important female characters in this novel. Can you tell us a bit about them too?

LT: Rachel has a teenage stepdaughter, Ellie, who is a handful and gets herself into trouble in ways that are important to the story. Beth Coale, the second wife of murder victim Michael Coale, is an impressive woman, as we come to see in this book. And Michael’s personal assistant, Trish McCormack, is a dynamic, spectacularly beautiful woman who plays an important part in the story.

DS: Are there any men in this story at all? Or do women take up all the oxygen in the room?

LT: There are half a dozen important men in this story. First, of course, there’s Michael Coale – the billionaire philanthropist who gets murdered. Without him, no story. Then there is Daniel Rosso, Rachel’s lovable but goofy husband; he gets himself into problems that drive the plot forward. There’s also Robert Delamont – handsome, urbane, and dangerous. Rachel falls for Robert in a big way, unfortunately. There’s Yevgeny Tretnikoff, an international gangster who befriends Rachel and helps her in many ways. And there’s the villainous and crazed J-C Guzman. Readers will remember J-C long after they forget everyone else in the book.

DS: You call this book DEADLY DONATION, and a lot of the story involves Rachel trying to get her hands on a $20 million donation to her university. Why should anyone except, perhaps Rachel, care about university fund-raising? Aren’t there more important problems in the world than fund-raising?

LT: Of course, there are. But the fund-raising Rachel must do calls our attention to a whole raft of important issues that affect us all. And those are the issues that led me to write this book. Because this book is, finally, about wealth and the ways great wealth distorts our lives. As you know, governments have been cutting back on the funds universities – indeed, for all public institutions – need to survive. Universities deal with this by increasing tuition fees and seeking money from wealthy donors.

DS: But aren’t donations good things? Why should we want to discourage donations from rich people?

LT: The need for donations gives wealthy people an opportunity to gain prominence and admiration that may not always be warranted. Many wealthy people use large donations – philanthropy more generally -- to whitewash their fortunes. They want people to forget about how they made the money and think only about how they gave some of it away.

DS: Do you have any particular people in mind here?

LT: I want to avoid targeting particular people on this topic, David. As you can imagine, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in court, fighting accusations of slander. But let me cite an obvious example: the Sackler family. They made billions of dollars in the US, through their company Purdue Pharma, knowingly addicting the population of North America to OxyContin and other opioid pain-killers. Then they whitewashed their reputation by giving millions to Harvard, the Louvre, and other worthy institutions. I could give you other examples, but I won’t. Readers won’t have any trouble finding them if they want to.

DS: The Sacklers were famous for having buildings, or wings of buildings, named after them. And a great many buildings – college buildings, hospital buildings, and so on – are named after wealthy donors today. And many of these buildings were constructed using mainly public funds. Do you have other kinds of donations in mind?

LT: For years, perhaps centuries, wealthy people have been donating large sums to get their children into elite universities. Some of these admissions are called legacy admissions. But some wealthy people just buy their children a place in the university: the parents of both Donald Trump and Jared Kushner took this route, for example. And recently, in the US dozens of wealthy parents were prosecuted for fraudulently getting their children into elite schools through the payment of donations. College administrators were prosecuted as well. This is well depicted in a recent (2019) documentary called Operation Varsity Blues The College Admissions Scandal.

DS: Could someone argue that donations do more good than bad? For example, they supply public institutions with new buildings and other needed funds. They may even provide scholarships to worthy students who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend these colleges.

LT: That may be true. But these donations also undermine our sense of fairness and the idea that schools are about achievement and merit. As it turns out, a lot of elite colleges are largely about money and influence. And as for donations to other public institutions like hospitals, we might ask why rich people get to name a building after themselves. After all, these institutions are public institutions, mainly built using public funds. So, there’s an unfairness here. It points back to the unwillingness of politicians – in Canada, provincial politicians -- to properly fund public institutions.

DS: So really, then, your book is about economic inequality, right? And is this as big a problem as you make out?

LT: It’s a huge problem and it’s been growing throughout the world over the last forty or fifty years, at least. But the book is not only about economic inequality. It’s also about international crime and about the problems of addiction.

DS: What part does international crime play in this story?

LT: Let’s start with Michael Coale, the victim. He’s a financier – mainly, a real estate speculator -- who had to flee the US to avoid prosecution for insider trading. Then there’s Yevgeny Tretnikoff, a crafty Russian investor who’s made billions from gambling casinos, loan sharking, and a quasi-legal trade in Middle Eastern antiquities. But the worst is J-C Guzman, in past years a henchman of the Mexican government and now a “fixer” for a major pharmaceutical company. There are others in the book but I don’t want to tell you everything. Let’s just say that we get to see a strong connection between criminal wealth and “legitimate” wealth in my book.

DS: It sounds like you have a lot going on in this story. How does the plot of this novel connect with your earlier work?

LT: A lot of my earlier work as an academic sociologist was concerned with economic inequality, crime, and other social problems. I’ve also studied alcohol abuse, gambling addiction, and family problems. 

DS: I’m getting the impression this is a serious book – maybe, not a book for faint-hearted readers. Am I right?

LT: No, not at all. Some characters are pretty funny – especially, Rachel herself and her best friend Jen Coale. But even the criminals Yevgeny Tretnikoff and Robert Delamont get off some good jokes during the story. That’s how real life is: a mixture of serious events and funny events. And the funny events make the serious events all the more poignant.

DS: Is this what people might call a “cozy mystery”? How does it relate to other crime novels you have read?

LT: It isn’t exactly like other crime novels, because it falls outside every crime genre. It isn’t a cozy novel – you know, an amateur detective, a pleasant and tidy setting -- say, a small, rural community -- with order nicely re-established in the end. And it isn’t exactly a crime noir novel either, because the lead character – maybe, all the key characters in my book – are women. Though I’m not sure any of them is what people used to call a ‘femme fatale.” Finally, it isn’t a “police procedural” – in fact, the police play only a small role in this novel. And in fact, they played only a small role in the murder case on which I originally based this book.

DS: So, the plot of your book is based on an actual murder case?

LT: I started the book with a particular murder case in mind, but as I went forward with the writing, I left the actual case far behind. So no, I wouldn’t say this book is based on an actual murder case anymore.

DS: What about the characters in this book? Are they based on your own life? Are you going to have uncles and aunts and cousins looking for themselves in this story? 

LT: As you know, David, authors always use material from their own lives when they create characters. But they take all kinds of liberties with their characters, and they also use information about other people they’ve heard about. So, the short answer to your question is, yes, Rachel Tile – for example – draws on many people I know but also, many people I don’t know.

DS: In reading your novel, I sometimes got the feeling that you have a negative view of the world, a pessimistic or critical view. Some of the situations you describe are frightening or saddening, or make me angry. And many of your characters – especially, the murder victim Michael Coale – are deeply flawed -- in fact, despicable. Do you really have such a negative view of the world?

LT: No, I have a positive view of the world. I see a lot of good people trying to figure out what is going on and what to do about it. There’s no denying we’re at a difficult point in history right now. Increasingly, we are at the mercy of would-be tyrants and autocrats, people with a lot of money and power who can do a lot of harm.

DS: This sounds a bit heavy. I would have thought the goal of a crime novel was light, easy entertainment.

LT:  In many ways, my job as a novelist is to help people see their lives more clearly -- to understand what’s going on in the world. Because, if they can see what’s going on, they have a better chance of handling the world. And we see that happening in the book, as Rachel gains a better understanding of her own life and the lives of people she cares about. As she goes from ignorance to knowledge, she graduates from desperation to confidence.

DS: Is there anything else you want us to know about your book?

LT: In the end, the book is all about Rachel Tile. I admire Rachel -- beautiful, intelligent, and courageous Rachel -- and I think the reader will too. Rachel has to walk through fire to solve Michael Coale’s murder, but she proves she has the courage, the intelligence, and the resourcefulness she needs to do that. We can all learn a valuable lesson from Rachel Tile.