Gilbert Cruz: I'm Gilbert Cruz. This is the book review from the New York Times. And today we have two conversations on the show. We're going to hear from Patricia Cornwell, author of the award-winning forensic thrillers featuring the beloved character case. Scarpetta. Those books have now been made into a series starring Nicole Kidman. Cornwell is out with a new memoir and it is quite a surprising story. We're going to hear all about it. But first, the Pulitzers were announced this week, and the big prize, the prize for fiction went to Daniel Krauss for his book, Angel Down.

Gilbert Cruz: Daniel, hi, I'm got to call Daniel the morning after the announcement to talk about this crazy book of his and to hear how he was thinking about what this all means for him and the types of stories that he writes. We at the book review put your book, Angel, down on our list of of top 10 books of the year last year. So, there might be some people who are already familiar with it and have read it and bought it, but for those who haven't had a chance to get to it yet and and might do so now that it has won this amazing prize, um could you give just the briefest of summaries and then I have so many questions for you about the book?

Daniel Krauss: Yeah, it's um it's a World War I novel about these five soldiers uh these five privates who are some of the the about the five worst in this um division and they are left behind to essentially euthanize a soldier who people can hear screaming out in no man's land presumably tied up in barbwire. These this kind of thing happened. Um but when they essentially when they go out there what they don't find is a soldier at all. They find an angel who has been shot down out of the sky by artillery, which was sort of new and high-flying and during World War I. And uh this angel has been hit and has fallen into the barbed wire. And then these men realize very quickly they have some sort of miraculous being on their hand. Um and this being has this incredible ability to uh heal and help and could potentially even end the war. But instead it it almost instead of an angelic encounter, it kind of turns into this hellish encounter because every man has their own way they want to exploit the angel. And so it ends up sort of tearing them apart.

Gilbert Cruz: It's um it's a good and surprising story. Something that also is very surprising is the way that it was written. It's written essentially as one sentence from beginning to end which is a fascinating conceit. I think some it takes some people just a minute or two to get into it. Did the conceit come first or the story or how did those two sort of meet?

Daniel Krauss: Oh, definitely the story. Um, I I started writing the book in a more or less traditional format and it was I had gotten about 20 pages in maybe and it was going well. Um, but I remember saying to somebody uh not every book has to be great, you know, because I was like this is this may not be firing on all cylinders, but it's sort of working. Um, but I was frustrated with it. It didn't seem like that I had chosen the right approach. Um, so I I literally just sat down and this is something I don't often do. I don't think I've ever done is just sat down and thought about what is this book about? What are what are the themes? Uh what am I trying to say? And how could that inflect usually it's much more instinctive than that. How could that inflect the pros? Um, and what I came up with was that this is a story about, among among other things, it's a story about how World War I and sort of my hypothesis began this cycle of industrialized violence that um, once we began it, we are incapable of stopping it. It just moves like a wheel that we're trapped inside. And so I had the the thought that what if I wrote it all in one sentence and the end of the book circles back to the beginning of the book so that once you start reading it in effect you're trapped in the book forever and it's this ongoing wheel. Um, so that's that's fine enough to say, but then you have to actually do it. And um, but within a paragraph, if you want to call them paragraphs when there's no end to the sentence, but within the first paragraph, um, I knew it was working for me. Like I loved it right away and I felt like, oh, my fingers can't move fast enough. This is this is providing me the right energy. It was doing all sorts of things. It was thematically um, relevant. It was it had this break neck pace because suddenly it felt like I was tumbling and I I I was running so fast and just trying to stay on my feet and that felt like war to me as well. And then I started I had this idea that I was going to start every paragraph with the word and so that it kept feeling like it was that sense of one thing after another. the bombs fell and then we did this and then this happened and then that happened and so it was this this cumulative effect and then as a sort of additional layer once I started looking at the pages like this because I'm breaking the sentence up into these sort of paragraphsized chunks.

Gilbert Cruz: Mhm.

Daniel Krauss: It began to look like uh poetry or even more accurately like a psalm. It looked like Bible verses. And there's a lot having to do with um religion and particularly sort of churches and himnels in the book. And I liked how it started looking like a Bible in a way. Um it's one of those rare times where I feel like just the idea and the voice and the format and the perspective all just sort of dovetailed in a really um meaningful way.

Gilbert Cruz: [snorts]

Gilbert Cruz: What did you think would be the challenges of this approach?

Daniel Krauss: And then what were the actual challenges?

Daniel Krauss: I like highwire acts. I do that with a lot of my books. I try to set out a certain kind of format or or style that it's going to be difficult to keep up. That's that's what kind of keeps me interested. I like limits and not having periods within the pros generally was um an exciting limit to have. So, I wasn't I wasn't that concerned about the writing of it because I've had in other previous books of mine, I've had little stretches where I do would do long longer sentences. So, I knew I I kind of understood what that meant in a kind of rhythmic way.

Daniel Krauss: Um, what ended up being the big challenge of it was clarity. You know, like I wrote the book relatively quickly. I was, you know, I was so energized by the style of it that it came relatively quickly. Uh, but then when I set to revising it, I'd never had a book that was such a mess because sort of the tradeoff of of that kind of velocity in the writing is um sort of spatial confusion. So there was a lot of just going through the book, you know, like after I do the first draft, I usually print out the whole thing and I do a draft on paper and mark it up with red pencil and it was just all red. Like the whole book was just it the paper just looked pink because it was nothing but red pencil everywhere and it was all clarity. It was all like that. I had the rhythm. You know, the book when you don't have periods, you sort of essentially depend on that sort of rhythm of tires beneath a car on the highway. It's like boom boom boom boom boom boom. It's like this heartbeat. It go speeds up and it slows down, but you sort of you can plug into that rhythm. Um, but I never knew what was I. It was unclear who was standing where, what was what was flying by. uh that stuff which is really sort of nuts andbolt stuff like in in a way kind of the easy stuff in a normal book became the hard stuff in this one.

Gilbert Cruz: I think this is a it's a lot of things. This book is a war book. It's also a horror book. I think I don't know. Do you consider it to be in that genre?

Daniel Krauss: Yeah. I mean I don't know where to put it. I honestly don't. I had the same issue with my previous book Whalefall. Like I don't

Gilbert Cruz: I don't I've seen it shelved in horror and sci-fi and literature. Same with Angel Down. I found it everywhere.

Daniel Krauss: So I don't know. It definitely has like my roots are in horror and I grew up on horror. Um so I think whether or not I would call it a horror novel, there's elements of horror that um sort of infect, which is a fun word, all of my books. like there's there's just something intrinsic to me that I always sort of look toward the horrifying side of things, but usually in aims of doing the opposite. Like uh I will have things that are terrifying or gross, but always I've tried to write about that kind of stuff as beautifully as possible. Like I've always been really interested in writing beautifully about the grotesque. Um, I I've always felt like there's something about that that feels very I never have been able to put into words very well, but very accepting, like they're very open. Um, if you can find beauty in the in the most like repellent of things, it feels like your mind is really wide open to um anything like whether it's a a type of place or a type of person or a type of art that you're consuming. Uh it just to me it's it's almost been the thing that I've hung my whole career is sort of trying to find beauty where there shouldn't be.

Gilbert Cruz: Yeah. I mean and you know I say this with the highest respect because I am a horror fan. Horror movies, horror books, love it all. This book is incredibly gross. Um so and so is Whalefall, you know, and so in its own way. And and and I'm curious about how you when's the like the push and pull when you're like more viscera, less viscera, squishier, less squishy, you know, like how do you how do you how do you hold that line? How do you make that balance?

Daniel Krauss: I it it must be instinctive because I don't I I don't really ever feel like I'm ever holding back on it. Like I rarely do I pull back on something and say that's a little too gross or too much. Um I think in some ways I'm a maximalist in this way. Like I I want things to be sort of overtly big sometimes. Like we you know we you were just talking about horror. There's this sort of what people call sort of A24 horror. You know this sort of this kind of creeping dread around the corners. And I love that stuff. But I also love horror that just runs right at you, you know, like a like something in a in a funhouse carnival, like just like some sort of like, you know, laughing zombie figure that comes out on a rail right towards your face. There's something really effective about that. And I think sometimes we can outf fox ourselves trying to be subtle when we should just be sort of powerful and straightforward. Mhm.

Daniel Krauss: Um, and for me that really uh plays in a lot when I when I think about gore, which I I I think about by sort of not thinking about it. Uh, I want to go particularly in early drafts, go all the way like like do everything. Be as as grandiose and as hysterical even as you need to be. Like particularly in a book like this where you're in a scenario that is grandiose and hysterical and absurd and hyperviolent like embrace all that. Um push everything to the to the max. Uh, and I've certainly done books that do the opposite, but there is, I think, real value in just grabbing someone by the neck, sort of, you know, figuratively speaking, and just saying this is all coming at you all at once.

Daniel Krauss: Uh, just like war. Um, and it just felt it it felt wrong. And I don't think in editing I pulled back on much at all, as you can probably tell. Um, you know, there's, you know, the maxim your darlings has never worked for me. Like, I've always been of the opinion of like nurture your darlings and let them mature and grow into incredible monsters. Like like like devote yourself, give into the things that you love. Don't don't cut them out or reduce them. Focus on them.

Gilbert Cruz: I um went down this little haunted path because, you know, you just won the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer Prize is not necessarily a a space or or most literary prizes, to be honest, in my opinion, where speculative fiction, certainly not horror, is often found. And I'm curious what what that means, what a prize like this means for the type of work that you do and others do in this space, which means a lot to a lot of people.

Daniel Krauss: Um, I haven't thought about it too much yet, but I've seen it like I've seen it start bubbling up from people I know who have been messaging me and and saying what it sort of means to them, you know, and some of these are a lot of them are are horror authors. Uh and so while it wasn't something I I thought of immediately, I think it's it's coming. This sort of idea, I think it has to come sort of externally.

Gilbert Cruz: Mhm.

Daniel Krauss: Uh and it is this idea that uh there are genres that don't usually get um this kind of attention. And you see this talked a lot about in the movies, how there sort of this been this horror renaissance over maybe the past 10 years. And it's happened in books too. Um there's been, you know, horror novels are have been on, I think, on the rise for a number of years. Um and you have these sort of breakthrough books, um that have been coming out. Uh and I, uh to be part of that is is, you know, wonderful. Um it's not uh I I write in all genres, so it's like it's not like I'm not single-minded about it, like this is something I want to do specifically with horror or whatever. Um, but again, my my my roots and my the things I grew up on were horror, you know, like like horror saved my life as a kid, like almost literally. Uh so to to be a a piece of bringing that to maybe a wider audience, you know, horror is multiaceted obviously, uh feels really good and it feels it feels in some ways like I've held true to that, you know, eighth grader who was renting uh Dawn of the Dead and Faces of Death and all sorts of horrible things um in the VHS store in my little hometown in Iowa. like I'm still I that's when I learned to write. That's when I learned how to how to write just for you and I was watching those movies just for me and it's yeah it's it is meaningful. I think you're convincing me here as I'm talking that yeah it is it is something I think I'm going to find a lot of meaning in as we go here

Gilbert Cruz: without asking you to totally talk about a different book. He just published a book this year uh about the director George Romero, about his breakthrough horror film Night of the Living Dead. And part of the title is this phrase that you just said, how Night of the Living Dead saved my life. You just said horror saved your life. What What do you mean by that?

Daniel Krauss: Well, it's Night of Lim opened the door for me for horror. And I think there was really at all times in my life, but specifically most emphatically when you look at sort of the middle-rade years, which were very difficult years for me, and they are for a ton of people. Um, but they were difficult just in terms of like socially and with bullies and all all these kind of things. Uh, and I felt very very vulnerable and very anxious and all these things. Going to school was a real trial. Um, but coming home, I would rent all these the most insane, over-the-top, disgusting, unrated horror films from my local Adventureland Video it was called. And I I only sort of realized when I was writing that book, Partially Devoured, uh, people always ask horror writers, why do you write this stuff? And I sort of figured it out that watching those movies, I was building a suit of armor. Uh, and reading those horror novels, Clyde Barker and novels and stuff that I was reading, like I was mastering something. I was mastering terror in a certain way so that I could feel like, well, they can do what they want to me in the daytime, but at night I'm watching stuff they could never watch. I'm understanding. I'm I'm reading Fangoria magazine and I'm uh I'm learning how this stuff is done. I'm a fan of the monsters and the special effects artists and essentially I'm creating strength that then I can I can sort of wear to school and in life to to some degree and it was extremely important and it felt like a lifeline.

Gilbert Cruz: I wanted to ask you about someone who's also been on the book review podcast. He was on here talking about Frankenstein, which is one of your collaborators. Um, GL Model Toro, who in his own way, he talked about, you know, horror in the movie space. Like, this is a guy whose movies have been nominated for best picture. You know, this is a a an artist who has brought this formerly disreputable, you know, genre to to the heights of of the Academy. I wonder, you know, how you think about your work with him and what the two of you [clears throat] are doing in in your own sort of different spaces.

Daniel Krauss: Well, when we work together on The Shape of Water, that's that's the thing that always struck me is that, you know, he when he was a kid, he was living in Mexico City and I was living in a small town in Iowa. We couldn't have been further apart, but on our own, we were both watching horror movies. And in particular, we had both watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And we had both seen something in it that people most people didn't see. We both saw a sort of beautiful tragic story about a creature who got a raw deal basically. And then when we sort of met and got together uh and shared this idea uh it was this this great feeling of you know and this is the the magic of art like that that movie can be broadcast on a channel and some midnight show and two people in different countries can see it and have the same reaction and then when you find each other and people you know anyone who uses the internet understands this you find someone who found the same thing in than you. Um, and I think in some ways GMO and I were were and are interested in that thing I spoke about earlier, like finding the beautiful and the grotesque as a way of um of of finding beauty everywhere. Finding beauty anywhere you shouldn't see it. Just finding beauty in the in the day-to-day life, whether you're walking down a dirty subway tunnel or whatever. Like, you have to open your eyes to this stuff. You have to open your heart to this stuff. And that's something I felt like GMO understood in a way that I understood. We were very copacetic in that way.

Gilbert Cruz: Well, he is a best picture winner. You have won the Pulitzer Prize, Daniel, for your novel, Angel Down. Incredible work. Congratulations. Thank you so much for joining the Book Review Podcast.

Daniel Krauss: Hey, thank you so much.

Gilbert Cruz: Coming up after the break, my conversation with best-selling crime fiction writer Trisha Cornwell. I called this editor who'd rejected me three times [music] and I said, "Well, what am I doing wrong?" And she said, "Well, these stories, is this what you see in the morg?" I said, "No, it's nothing like [music] what I see at the morg." And she said, "Well, I want to see what you see." Patricia Cornwell is best known for her series of books featuring the character K. Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist and chief medical examiner. The series launched with the book Postmortem in [music] 1990, and it was one of the first crime novels to make forensic science [music] an integral part of the story. That book went on to win all five major crime fiction awards in a single year, the first book to ever do that. Over the next few decades, Cornwell expanded the story of Scarpetta across almost 30 books. [music] The series has sold millions of copies, and just this spring, Amazon Prime adapted the story for a new TV series starring Nicole Kidman. But Cornwell's extraordinary success did not come easy. It almost never does. And she documents her remarkable journey in a new memoir, True Crime. Your life story.

Gilbert Cruz: And when we talked, she said that she knew exactly where to start the story.

Patricia Cornwell: Start. And I thought it has to start with my mother burning the clothes. probably January of 1965, we'd been we'd been at home from school for quite a while because of these massive snowstorms that kept hitting. In fact, it was the worst in in recent history. And we would be out of school like over a week at a time. And of course, that was loads of fun for kids, sledding and snowball fights and all that, but it was a nightmare for my mother. Um, and she was in the throws of a psychotic depression. I mean, we know I know that now. I didn't know what was going on then. And it had, you know, it had been going, it had started, this had gone on since the fall and gotten worse and worse. And I think it all had to do with the fact that my father had come up to see us. And he d he came up there with his his new wife who was pregnant. And this was in the fall. And then by January, she'd had the baby. And I have a feeling my mother must have heard about it. And that just set her over the edge because she kept hoping that she and dad would reconcile. I mean, she never got over him ever my whole life. And so I woke up this one morning. I'm looking out. There's snow out the window and I hear my mother's rapid footsteps up and down the hallway and my brothers are yelling at her from their bedroom saying, "No, no, no. Please stop." So, what what's going on here? So, I get up and she's carrying armloads of their clothing into the living room and throwing them into the fireplace. There's this raging fire going and we're we're just all terrified and shocked. We don't know what's going on. Um and then she took a clipper ship off the the bedroom in my brother's bedroom and she we must she must not have burned our coats cuz she said we're going out and she starts walking us up the snowy hill and she has my older brother holding this clipper ship and up we're going. I didn't know where we were going. And so there's this orange jeep coming down with a snowplow. And it just so happens at that very moment she's doing this that Billy Graham's caretaker was coming down and he saw us and it must have looked very strange. Here's this woman with three little kids and one of them is carrying a clipper ship and they're walking up a snowy mountain road. So he stops and he knew who we were. The Grahams didn't.

Patricia Cornwell: And he says, "Mrs. Daniels, where are you going?" And she said, "Well, they're going up to see the Grahams. They're expecting us."

Patricia Cornwell: Well, he knew that wasn't true. Um he said, "Well, you know, why don't you just hop up on in here and I'll take you up there. You can't possibly walk." And that's true. We never could have gotten up there. It's unbelievably steep and all that. So, he drove us up there and the next thing you know, Ruth, I mean, I remember coming around the curve and seeing that house all built out of old split logs. I mean, this amazing place she built and smoke's coming out of the chimney. And then the door opens and here's this woman walking out and she was standing out there with long skirt on and a shawl holding it against the cold with her hair kind of all pinned up as I remember and Mr. Rickman leads us into the house and we sit in front of her fireplace

Patricia Cornwell: and I don't remember what all my mother said to her, but no doubt my mother was talking about Florida and how she had to come here and why she moved here because of Ruth's husband. And by the way, Ruth had heard this from all kinds of disturbed people trying to come up to her house. This was not new. But but this time it was a neighbor and my mother handed Ruth a note and said, "I'm there there's going to be a great flood and I'm sailing away on a ship. Please raise my children in your kingdom."

Gilbert Cruz: Wow.

Patricia Cornwell: Ruth obviously couldn't keep these three strangers. She had five children um and Billy and that just wasn't going to happen. But they did arrange for people who had retired missionaries from the Congo had agreed that had volunteered to take care of us. And while I am so appreciative that they did that, it was an absolute nightmare.

Gilbert Cruz: Yeah.

Patricia Cornwell: It was something that shaped my life forever was being was the foster mother.

Gilbert Cruz: You um go into great detail describing how terrible this foster mother was. I I don't necessarily want to go into those details here. At one point, they're doing you and your family a favor. at the other point. She's sounds just like an absolutely terrible person, but it it was something that needed to be done at the time because your mother had to go into a hospital. Um, you talk about meeting Ruth Graham at this very young age and then you talk about many years later, as you say, it's the spring of 1976. You write that it's a turning point in your life. You just come out of a a facility. You were at a church service. Ruth Graham walks up as you say, she gives you a dark red leather journal with a brass clasp. She said she had gotten it in Switzerland. It's very fancy. And she [snorts] encouraged you to write. And eventually this led to you writing your first fulllength book. You began it right after you turned 20. And it ended up being about 300 pages long. What was that book?

Patricia Cornwell: That was what I thought was a novel, but it was a thinly deviled autobiographical. when Ruth said and when and you know I'd come out of this hospital and yes I'd gone to church I couldn't stand to sit there all the neighbors were staring at me because now I would been in a psychiatric hospital just like my mother had been so oh I must be you know my fate seemed to be sealed and of course the eating disorder is a very different thing but even so I was very depressed I felt hopeless and I walked out of church because I I would felt so uncomfortable and the minister saw me walk out so the next thing I know I get called when I was home and and he said, "Come to Vespers tonight. I'll pick you up." He came and picked me up, took me to this Vespers group and the chair next to me was empty. It was all a plot. It, you know, Calvin, the minister had arranged for Ruth to be there and she came sat right next to me. I know what he did. He called her and said, "Houston, we've got a problem."

Patricia Cornwell: [laughter] And so, cuz that's what they did. And so, she called she sat next to me and and after it was over, she looked at me and she said, "We should have lunch." And I thought, "Right, I'm sure that's going to happen." Never. I mean, Mrs. Billy Graham's going to call me for lunch. Sure enough, the next morning she called and um I still can see the phone on the kitchen counter. And how thrilled I what Ruth Graham's calling for me? She said, "I've got to go to Asheville. You want to come with me and go to Pizza Hut?" I said, "Okay." [laughter] So, that's what we did. And that and she gave me the journal at that time and I still have it. It's in my bookcase over here. and she said, "I know you write poetry and I believe that you're talented and and I and I know what you've been going through and I want you to write your story. Will you do that for me?"

Patricia Cornwell: And that is how that all started.

Gilbert Cruz: You wrote this book, these 300 pages. It was a lightly fictionalized version of your own life up up till that point. Um, what did you do with it? There was a draft. Did you put it away? And that

Patricia Cornwell: I wrote many drafts. I mean, from the time I started writing it, right before I turned 20 until I graduated from Davidson in 1980, I was 1979, I was I was doing one draft after another of it. The whole time I was at Davidson when everybody else was out socializing. Um, I was working on this. I was writing the next draft of it. And by my junior year, it had become my honors thesis. They gave me permission to graduate with honors if I would do a project. and I they you know like writing a master's thesis or something and I said well what about the book I'm writing and they agreed and that so so I kept doing it for that reason and then when it was done and I got honors in English I put it in a box all in fact multiple drafts cuz there was more than one that I had saved and you know I saved things and then when I started becoming well known as a a writer all this stuff we started archally preserving these things and so literally the manuscript that I looked that had been sitting in an archival box or I had not looked at it since I I finished writing it in college and it was very strange to look at that pull it out of that box and then I think oh god this is awful it's awful it really is bad I'm not kidding [laughter]

Gilbert Cruz: do you think that writing and rewriting this fictionalized version of yourself in your late teens early 20s what do you think were you trying to sort of work through your life up to that point

Patricia Cornwell: says, "I think that must have been it." I thought that I was trying to write a good story, but that really wasn't it. I think it was my therapy. I think that was my coping skill. And and the funny thing is it's still my coping skill because with all of the trauma and violence that I have seen, you know, turning it into stories is a way of venting it for me. If I had to keep that all inside and never do anything with it, that would be very haunting. But I I suppose you're probably right. When I was doing that in college, it must have been more for therapy because I never even tried to get it published. I never sent it anywhere, not even once. When I finished it and got my grade, so to speak, I thought, "Okay, well, I'm not sure what this was all about. It's not ever going to be published." But I got a grade and and I did really didn't think about it anymore.

Gilbert Cruz: You eventually got a job as a as a journalist uh at the Charlotte Observer. First, you started writing TV listings. The way you describe it, you make it seem like the most horrible thing. [laughter] It

Patricia Cornwell: was awful. And and it was oh my god, it was so boring and tedious. And you

Gilbert Cruz: I I can I can imagine I can imagine remembering what TV listings used to used to read like. Uh [snorts] you were eventually promoted to the metro desk and then the police beat. Um this is 1979. And as you write, you were really covering some pretty tough stuff. You know, you say, quote, "For the first time, I was afraid to go home.

Gilbert Cruz: You bought a BB gun pistol." You say you were perpetually jumpy and afraid to be alone in the dark. You were seeing things, terrible things.

Gilbert Cruz: Um, how were you like taking that stuff in, metabolizing it? This is you're doing, you're seeing reality, you're having to face reality now as a journalist. What did that lead you to think about crime about the thing that you would eventually really lean into with your fiction?

Patricia Cornwell: You know, the town of Montre for all the horrors of my childhood, I mean, there were tough stuff for sure, but the town itself, it had a zero crime rate. So, we nobody even locked their doors. So to to go from that to the crime beat where you're going to homicide scenes and you're talking to rape victims and or you're going to talk to the parents of a child who's been abducted whose body shows up on a lake shore. This was not something that I had ever had any exposure to. And the reason I think I I was good at it, had an aptitude for it, and was so relentless is because it was so shocking to me. I had to find out everything I could. And I think in my own weird way, I was trying to help with the investigation

Patricia Cornwell: and I became, you know, very close. The police were, you know, I spent a lot of time with them. Um, and and that wasn't necessarily a good thing because the newspaper didn't want me solving crimes. They just wanted me writing good stories about them. But it was that changed me. If I had not been a journalist, I would not be who I am today. I never could have done these books. Um, I I had a journalistic I learned how to be a journalist when I got the job at the Charlotte Observer writing all kinds of stuff. Um, desk crime, but free but other things too. General assignment, obituaries that I would get wrong and have the wrong person dead, that kind of thing. But, um, if I hadn't done all that, I wouldn't have a journalistic approach to my research.

Gilbert Cruz: Mhm.

Patricia Cornwell: And that is the hallmark of Scarpetta. I mean, it's almost like journalism that you turn into a novel because I research things as if they're real, but I weave them into a story. And so, I never looked at the world the same way after I started seeing the kinds of stuff that really happens out there.

Gilbert Cruz: Something else that changed the way that you look at the world, I imagine, is when you got a job at the chief medical examiner's office in Virginia. You started working there. you met another woman in your life who was uh important for your development, for your career. Um, tell me about her. Tell me about Dr. Marcela Fiero. Well, first let me just say the my my arrival at the morg and my ended up working there was was never planned and a lot of people think that I started out working in a medical examiner's office and the truth is I went there to do research cuz what I wrote the Ruth a biography of Ruth Graham after I I left journalism and when that was done in 1983 I said well now what am I going to do with myself I what I do for a living and I didn't really want to go back to journalism and I thought you know, I'll write books about crime.

Patricia Cornwell: The only thing I didn't really know anything about was what happened to the body when it left a crime scene because I'd never talked to a medical examiner and the one in Charlotte would never get on the phone. So, I had an appointment to go down there and that was my first encounter with Dr. Marcela Fiero, who was one of like 10 female forensic pathologists in the country and quite frankly just legendary. She's so it was so good at what she does. She was just amazing. And I started doing doing research there, talking to her whenever she'd let me. I wanted to see an autopsy. She said, "No, there's no validation for you being down there seeing something like that." And I said, "Well, what would it take to give me validation?" She said, "Well, I guess if you became a volunteer police officer." So, I did that. But the big thing is I started I was writing books. I started getting rejected.

Patricia Cornwell: And I wrote one and then another and then another. Postmortem was my fourth attempt. And by the time that got published, I'd been at the Emmy's office for six years.

Patricia Cornwell: It was my full-time job.

Gilbert Cruz: So, in in that time that you were at the medical examiner's office, you started to write mysteries, which are different from what you eventually ended up making a career out of. But you

Patricia Cornwell: I started writing a mystery right after I finished the Ruth book. And I I didn't know what the medical examiner would do. And I was stymied. And I was already working on a novel called The Stick Doll Murders where I where I had created a blow gun and a I have they're in a shadow box on my wall right in this room. But anyway, I I was doing all that and I and I finally got this appointment. So I went to see her and I went through all the stuff, you know, that I was going to do so that the person would would get away with the crime or think of it and she would say, "Nope, that's not going to work. Nope, that's not going to work. Nope, I'd figure that out. Nope. Toxicology will tell you otherwise." And I'd say, "What do you wear to a crime scene? Do you wear a lab coat?" Nope, I don't wear a collab coat to the crime scene. And it was all these dumb questions. But this is how I began to learn what really happens. And meanwhile, I'm going there doing research and doing working on the stick doll murders. Well, that all got rejected and I started another one. And I'm still doing research. I'm going I'm not getting I mean, I wasn't working there yet. And then the chief came to me one day and he said, "If you want to do something helpful around here," he said, "Maybe you can help edit my medical legal book journal that I publish a couple times a year." I said, "Okay."

Patricia Cornwell: So, I started doing that. Then they got a computer and he said, "If you really want to be helpful, maybe you can figure out that blasted thing in the room that they expect us to start using." So, we started getting computerized and meanwhile, I'm still getting rejected as a novelist. I'm writing at home when I go home after work

Patricia Cornwell: and I I learned computer programming and I be and that out of necessity I became their computer programmer because while I'm writing books that nobody wants and uh so that that was it was a it was an ordeal that I never thought would happen but if I hadn't been there that long I wouldn't have learned what I needed to do what I needed to you know for writing these books.

Gilbert Cruz: [music] Coming up, how Patricia Cornwell cracked the thriller writing code and became one of America's most popular authors. [music]

Gilbert Cruz: You were writing books that you say nobody wanted, but you eventually wrote a book that started a series that everyone, you know, wanted at some point. Um, which is the Scarpetta series. I I I want to sort of ask you at this time in your life, this young moment in your life, what was it about forensic pathology that was so intriguing to you, particularly given all the things that you had seen and that had troubled you while working the police beat at the Charlotte Observer? And then how did you end up incorporating that into your fiction in a way that sort of unlocked what you would eventually do for for your career?

Patricia Cornwell: When I was in grade school, I wanted to be an archaeologist. That was my pipe dream. And I read every book I could find on it. I was intrigued by and I was always digging for things. I was looking for gold. I mean, I was just this weird person wanting to look for stuff. But forensic science and forensic pathology are very similar to archaeology in that you are taking little pieces and parts of something and reconstructing a life and not only the death of of that civilization or the people but who they were before it happened. And that to me is absolutely fascinating that you can find a fleck of paint in a wound on someone's leg who's been hit by a car and you take it upstairs to the scanning electron microscope and you do other tests and you not only find out, you find out the make and model of that vehicle and then you begin to track down who ran over this person and why.

Patricia Cornwell: There's just something about all that that I am insatiably curious. I want to know what happened. And that that's the journalist in me. Um, I want to know the truth. I want to tell me. And I don't know why that is, but that is that's just who how I'm wired. And so, forensic pathology and forensic science fed right into that with me. Um, by the way, it's not because I like gore. I'm squeamish as heck. I mean, I really am squeamish. I don't like it when I have to go in the morg. I got used to it after a while because I was down there all the time. But when I haven't done it in a while, it's very offensive. I mean, the smells, the sights, it's I mean, it's not pleasant. I would have to a lot of my research like going to the body farm, that's a that's a horror show and I have to steal myself to walk in there and do that. And I don't wear a mask. You have to be brave, but I don't like it.

Patricia Cornwell: [laughter] Uh there was a series of of events that happened in 1987 that [snorts] led to you writing your first book or or that you incorporated rather into your first book postmortem. Could you tell us about those killings that were happening at the time?

Patricia Cornwell: Yeah. Well, there were several things that came into play. First of all, I'd finished I I turned in my third book and after about eight or nine months, it was making the rounds and being rejected by everybody and I was at my wit's end. It was now four years I'd been there or something like that. And I did something you're not supposed to do. I called this editor who'd rejected me three times who was really nice in her notes and she got her name was Sarah Anne Freed of the Mysterious Press and she got on the phone. I was surprised when I said who it was and I said, "I know I'm not supposed to do this, but can you just tell me, should I quit?" And she said, "Um, no, I don't think you should quit." And I said, "Well, what am I doing wrong?" And she said, "Well, these stories, is this what you see in the morg?" I said, "No, it's nothing like what I see at the morg." And she said, "Well, I want to see what you see. And secondly, your best character is this woman medical examiner who's a minor character. Make her the main character." And I thought, "Oh my god, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know enough to do that." I said, "Well, thank you. and I will try. Well, meanwhile, around the same time, these serial murders were starting in Richmond and it it turned the whole city upside down. I mean, it was one of the worst things ever. And I was working at the medical examiner's office while this was happening. I was riding with the police on the weekend. So, I was seeing the homes of these people. We'd sit outside and we'd talk about the case. I had nothing to do with the cases in terms of what happened at our office. Dr. Fier wouldn't let anybody. Nobody was present during the autopsies except certain key staff people and she sealed the records and locked them in a drawer cuz she was so afraid of leaks because this was such a a nightmare situation going on. And as this was happening and I was watching how Marcela was dealing with it and I was traumatized, I bought my first gun. I started taking shooting lessons. I put a deadbolt on my bedroom door and my apartment because I was terrified of this person who was crawling through people's windows. But I thought to myself, what would Scarpetta do if this were happening in her jurisdiction if this were her and these were her cases? What would she do? And that was the impetus, what started postmortem. And it's definitely inspired by the Southside strangling cases, but does not mirror them. But that was when I decided to let Dr. Scarpetta take over and try to walk in her shoes. And I remember sitting a very long time at my computer, my word processor going, "She did da da da. No, no, no. I d No, no, no. Got to be she." I couldn't figure out who's going to tell the story. Is it she or I? And I thought, how am I going? I'm an English major who fled from every science course and can't do math and wouldn't go to funerals. So what the hell am I doing writing about a chief medical examiner?

Patricia Cornwell: And but [clears throat] but that was the beginning. Now postmortem that I think it it was rejected by at least half a dozen houses before Scribner took it on barely. And so just by a thread if that editor Suzanne Kirk had not seen she said she liked the Scarpetta character. She thought she was worth watching and they took it. If that hadn't happened I I really would have quit after that. I wouldn't have tried anymore. That had been four strikes, you're out.

Gilbert Cruz: You write, however, that Postmortem came out and even though it eventually kicks off this massive series, you were still a newly published author. Several reviews weren't great. There wasn't really marketing or publicity behind it.

Gilbert Cruz: Um, it's still it was on a thread

Gilbert Cruz: and I'm wondering what was it that led you to keep going with this series? And then also how did you feel as you write about [sighs] I don't want want to call it like a moral issue but this idea like am I am I writing this the right way? Am I doing it in a way that is not exploitative? Am I doing it in a right way that is not making this violence seem you know exciting?

Patricia Cornwell: [snorts] That's always and that's really good question because you know I I remember one time somebody in the UK I don't remember who it was had said that you can write about violence but you don't celebrate it and because that the stories are told from Scarpetta's point of view there's an element of condemning this violence as opposed to make it scintillating and exciting and sexy because you'll never get that from her point of view and that's the point of view I write from and but it's a very very good question because is something I I struggled with at that time. I thought to myself, I'm seeing the real thing every day. How do I write about this? How do I let my imagination let this infiltrate it? And how can I do this while I'm condemning it and not celebrating it because I do not want to add to the problem? But the thing is, these things do happen out there. And by the same token that it may seem very graphic and some people could say it's exploitive, but you know, we need to know these things even if they're painful. We need to know what goes on in the world. We need to know the dangers out there. And I can't tell you how many people I've had tell me over the decades of how they lock their windows at night, they don't do this anymore, they don't do that, that they're much more careful about certain things because they've read the Scarpetta books.

Gilbert Cruz: Are you still someone, you think, who is afraid of the world? you describe growing up with a mother who used to run you through emergency drills at home and you've had many terrible things happen to you. You started working adjacent to the police where you see so many terrible things happening. You worked in a medical examiner's office where you saw the end result of the most terrible thing that humans can do to another human. Sometimes

Patricia Cornwell: you have reasons to be afraid of the world, but you also now exist and have for a while [snorts] in a world that you are somewhat able to control because of the the success and the wealth that you have accured. Is the world still scary to you?

Patricia Cornwell: Oh, the world is a very dangerous place. Absolutely. Um I I mean I I I don't like live my everyday as if oh my god, Chicken Little, the sky is going to fall on me if I dare go out the door. It's not that sort of thing, but I'm very aware of of the things that people do and I'm the sort of person who I'm going to read crime stories. You know, if if I'm looking at the Wall Street Journal or better put the New York Times app, which I have on my phone, just so you know, if I'm looking at that every day like I do and I see a big crime story, I'm going to read it and I want to know exactly what happened to those people.

Patricia Cornwell: So, yes, I am like the embodiment of an emergency siren. You put me in a room or you take me on a little walk and we should do that sometime and I'll tell you all the scary things I see that you should be aware of. That will be

Gilbert Cruz: That sounds like a very relaxing afternoon.

Patricia Cornwell: It will be. We'll walk through a parking lot and I'll tell you to look at every car you walk past and see what you can tell about the driver from what they left inside of it. Cuz that's what predators do.

Patricia Cornwell: The baby shoes hanging from the rearview mirror, the gym bag in the back that has a woman's name and her address on the tag.

Patricia Cornwell: I can't help it. I look at all these things in passing and I go, I wish they didn't do that. I wish they hadn't done that. Be careful over here. This is the the world according to Patricia Cornwell. [snorts] What can kill you, maim you, abduct you? Um, I'm going to think about it. What you can trip over or fall down the stairs while you're looking at your phone. And it's relentless. It's all true, but it's also relentless. [laughter]

Gilbert Cruz: you know, the world according to Patricia Cornwell um [snorts] has been good. You you you know, there was this big moment when you had true blockbuster authors, Tom Clansancy, who I understand maybe was a friend of yours, John Gisham, Stephen King, they dominated the world of publishing and you joined that club. You big advances, giant crowds at your signings. I'm curious what that was like as someone who grew up in the circumstances that you detail in at the beginning of this book to through hard work and time arrive at a point where you're flying helicopters, you're living in homes that have gates around them, you're showing up at bookstores and there are thousands of people waiting in line. What was what is the the dissonance if there was one between that?

Patricia Cornwell: was I don't I did not even I couldn't comprehend it at it it happened you know it was very first of all you have nothing happened forever and then postmortem came out and it didn't seem like that was going to go anywhere and then it started winning all these awards is what is what changed everything you know I got $6,000 for postmortem I got $120,000 for body of evidence and that was that to me was like oh my goodness because I was earning like $27,000 a year at the Emy's office when I was full-time there. So, but then I mean within another year I was a millionaire and you will appreciate a hope. I went through an Elvis stage which was like ain't nothing I'm going to if I want it I'm getting it.

Gilbert Cruz: Yeah.

Patricia Cornwell: I'm going to drive that Mercedes. I'm going to get that fancy outfit. I'm going to dress all in blaze orange and look like a traffic cone when I walk in the restaurant and then wonder why people are staring at me.

Patricia Cornwell: I wish I'd had a really good advice for someone who would said and maybe let's don't do this right. you know, maybe don't go on that shopping spree. You don't need this and that and the other. But it was uh it was crazy cuz I went from having nothing to I almost could there wasn't much I couldn't afford or at least it felt like it.

Gilbert Cruz: Mhm.

Patricia Cornwell: But I have to say the truth, it was a bit destabilizing,

Gilbert Cruz: you know. Oh,

Patricia Cornwell: well, first it was all the money and also then you have all these movie stars and stuff. you know, you're running around with Dei Moore and Bruce Willis and meeting people like Woody Harelson and Robert Redford and and you know, um, you know, Rob Reiner. I remember sitting on a plane with him and I have a story about that in my book because I didn't know who he was. Here I am at Demi Moore's birthday party and we're in the big old corporate jet for the Gulfream flying back to LA from Las Vegas. All the big famous people are in the back. I'm sitting up front by myself and there's this bearded man sitting across from me and he said, "Hello." And I said, "Hello." And he said, "Now, what do you do?" And I said, "Well, I'm blahy blah, you know, I'm here because of me when I write these books." And he and I said, "And what do you do?" Well, it was only the director of the freaking movie whose plane we were on. It was Rob Reiner. And he said, "Well, I used to be on this show called All in the Family." And you know, for the rest of and I'm so sorry what happened to the Riners, but for the rest of the days that I knew him, and I would run into him from time to time, I always kitted him about that. I said, "You were so kind to me at a time when I felt so out of place and scared and overwhelmed

Patricia Cornwell: and I've never forgotten it because you could have made me feel like an idiot at that moment." It was destabilizing and I didn't have anybody in my life that I could really talk to who could help me with how to cope with all of that. And it's no wonder I had that car wreck. I mean, it was like it almost seems inevitable in hindsight that I was going to literally run off the road.

Gilbert Cruz: Yeah. You write about this incident. Um, you know, you you're in contact with Dei Moore because you're trying to get a a big screen version made of a Scarpetta story. Several actors sort of pass through. Deme is is very interested and you are involved with writing trying to write a a screenplay. Yes, there's

Patricia Cornwell: a lot of pressure

Patricia Cornwell: and if you can tell the story, there's a very very terrible car wreck that you were involved in. Well, you know, so what happened is when Postmortem came out and when it won started winning the awards and the LA Times book reviewer, Charles Champlain, who had uh given a wonderful review for Postmortem, which also was rather a gamecher, he came to one of my awards ceremonies and he said to me, he was very nice and he said, "You know, Jodie Foster ought to play Scarpetta in a movie." And well, no one talking really about movies to me before this. I said, "Oh my goodness." Well, yeah. I mean, but I also would like to have a castle somewhere. I mean, but okay. He said, "I'm going to I'm going to arrange for you to meet her because I'm talking to her. I'm I'm interviewing her in the fall or something or whenever it was." So, sure. I flew to LA for that to to meet Jodie Foster. And um and of course fans, everybody would have for years thought she would be such a perfect Scarpetta. But anyway, that was the beginning of that. And while this was going on, I got word that Demi Moore was interested in playing Scarpetta. And so I said, "Well, I have Well, that's unbelievable, but I have to make sure that I I have to know that Jodie won't do it." And and she made it very clear that she wasn't going to do it. I did we did chat about it. And so that's how the de thing started in the summer of 1992. And for the next almost 6 months, I mean, I was at her house in Malibu. I was at her house in Sun Valley. Um, I went to her birthday party in Las Vegas. I mean, she came to Richmond to the Emmys office. She came to the FBI Academy with me. I went to a party with her in a premiere in New York. I mean, there were lots and lots of stuff while I'm writing the screenplay for this and we're developing it. But here's the thing most people don't know. I didn't have a contract and I'd never I I wasn't paid a penny. This was just a verbal thing that we were doing and the and hindsight that probably wasn't the smartest thing. Mhm.

Gilbert Cruz: So, but it was just I'd never written a screenplay before. Start with that. So, I I became

Patricia Cornwell: it's overwhelm I was feeling overwhelmed all the time, just overwhelmed. And so, a psychiatrist in Richmond that I would go see from nap time to time for therapy, she said, you know, I'm going to put you on Prozac. That might help you just to calm down a little bit. Well, it did the opposite. That was gasoline on the fire for me. And I started drinking more because I I couldn't calm [clears throat] down. And that is what led to that terrible accident in January of 1993 and which pulled the plug, you know. Then that was that was the end of that whole thing, you know.

Patricia Cornwell: I was supposed to have go back to the FBI academy with Dei and I canceled it. I went into a treatment center. I didn't tell her that. I lied and said I was on a safari somewhere for book research or had my staff tell her that. My or somebody tell her that. I didn't have much staff back then. But um but that's how that all happened. and that it's I'm just lucky that I wasn't killed really. That was a terrible accident.

Gilbert Cruz: Yeah. The way you describe it, it's quite um it sounded quite serious. Uh somehow decades later, you do have finally someone playing K Scarpetta.

Patricia Cornwell: Who would have ever believed it would happen after all

Patricia Cornwell: on the screen major actress? And not just a someone. I mean, she's I've heard, you know, Nicole had been mention Nicole Kidman had been mentioned to me for over 20 years and and you know, she was always a top contender for who would be a great Scarpetta

Patricia Cornwell: um along with a couple other people, but Dei, you know, Dei was completely out of the picture. And I talked to Susan Sarand and then it was Angelina Jolie and a number of different people. and then it circled back around to Nicole and so, you know, Scarpetta was so huge in the '9s especially, but but it's harder to sell that today. Um, there's so many shows out there, so many people writing about forensic stuff and all the rest of it. And it may not be that it's not the same thing that I do, but but I did not after so many failed attempts, I just didn't see how this was going to happen

Patricia Cornwell: ever. And so to have it happen and then in such a big way is still I'm not sure I've wrapped my mind around it to be honest with you.

Gilbert Cruz: Well, isn't it nice that there are still things that can surprise us?

Patricia Cornwell: I am so grateful. I mean I'm so happy with what they've done. It's a really it's a it's a excellent show. It's not identical to my books, but it shouldn't be.

Gilbert Cruz: I'd like to circle back as we near the end here. Patricia, um, Ruth Graham told you all those years ago, you should tell your story. In 2013, when you did a buy the book interview for the New York Times, you said, "I can't imagine writing my memoirs anytime soon." This was in 2013. I hope I have too much ahead for that, and there are still many people around who might feel uncomfortable about ending up in a published memoir. Ultimately, yes, I will want my story told with glaring, unflinching honesty. That was 13 years ago. Do you think you've accomplished that here?

Patricia Cornwell: Yes, I have. That doesn't mean I've told you everything.

Patricia Cornwell: I don't tell. No. I mean, you know, there's some things that that I don't tell in that memoir that I will never tell because they shouldn't be told, including some things that I've seen in doing my research or witness that that were so bad that that I literally had to go home because I couldn't and that that scar you. But I've told the important stories and it's not been easy because I don't really like talking about people particularly if something's negative and I've tried to be very careful about that. But I cannot I have to say the things that happened that shaped me. And I think that if Ruth were to read this and if she were still here and could read this,

Patricia Cornwell: I know most of all she would laugh and she would say, you know, I've tried so hard to straighten you out, but you've just always been a bit of a mess now, haven't you? Are you glad that she gave you that very fancy Swiss journal all those decades ago?

Patricia Cornwell: Yes. Most of all, I'm glad that she told me to write my story. The journal wasn't what I wrote it in. I didn't write any of it in that journal. I wrote poetry in the journal over a period of years. But I borrowed the neighbor's typewriter, literally my next door neighbor, because I didn't have one. And I would go over there every day and work on the story that Ruth wanted me to write. That was what started me writing that story that I wrote in college that preserved some memories that have helped me with the memoir that I just wrote.

Gilbert Cruz: And it is quite a memoir. True Crime. Patricia Cornwell, thank you so much for joining the book review podcast.

Patricia Cornwell: Thank you. It's a pleasure and honor to be with you today. Thanks again.

Gilbert Cruz: [music] The book review is produced by Sarah Diamond, Amy [music] Pearl, and Patricia Sulbaran. It's edited by Lissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado. Original music by Dan Powell and Alicia. Special [music] thanks to Dalia Hadad. We want to hear what you think about the show, so send us an email at the book review [music] at ny times.com. I'm Gilbert Cruz. Thanks for listening.