“The Mercy Rule”

September 16, 1998

Author John Lescroart chats about his latest thriller, “The Mercy Rule,” another novel starring his popular character, Dismas Hardy.

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CCCMyst: Welcome! NetCafeLive brought to you by The Talk City Network (tm) and Borders.Com (tm). Welcome to our chat with author John Lescroart about his new book "The Mercy Rule." John, welcome to Talk City!

John Lescroart: It's good to be here!

Mysterygirl: John, welcome to Talk City! Tell us how Dismas Hardy was created, and why he's back now?

John Lescroart: Dismas Hardy was the first creative name that ever occurred to me. I wrote an unpublished novel when I was 21 and this character Dismas Hardy walked onto the page with that name. About 17 years later, having written 3 other novels containing a character named Dismas Hardy who kept growing closer and closer to the man we know now, finally appeared in “Dead Irish.” That's how the name evolved. The character is a combination of myself and two or three of the more interesting friends I've made in the first 35 years of my life. After “The 13th Juror,” I frankly didn't know what else to do with him, and I figured if my character was beginning to bore me, he would bore my readers. I had to let him go away for a few years, and then I could re-meet him with kind of a new eye. I was pleased and surprised to find that I liked him as much as I ever did in “The Mercy Rule.” Maybe more.

Alphonse: When reading (or writing) suspense fiction, what is most important to you- plot, character, atmosphere? Or something else?

John Lescroart: That is a great question! That is THE question! Plot is obviously very important. But the most interesting things in the world, that is the plot, can happen to people you don't care about and it's meaningless. Therefore I think character is the engine that drives all fiction, not just suspense fiction. I think that atmosphere if done correctly is really just another type of character, in other words the physical setting and the tone of the book is a character issue. That's kind of a short technical answer, to a fascinating question.

Bovine: How has Dismas Hardy changed in this book from his earlier style? Or has he? What makes a good protagonist?

John Lescroart: (laughing) Yes, Hardy has changed in some ways. Most notably that he has become a family man. Where in the earlier books, he of course had his relationship to Frannie, he was still the same kind of young bartender type maverick attorney in all of the first four books. In “The Mercy Rule,” he is really settled into his family existence. Of course being the ambivalent man that he is, many aspects of this life just rip him up. Now as to what makes a good protagonist, I think you need a unique individual with an unusual background and perhaps most importantly something that creates strong empathy such as a past tragedy. And Hardy has had a couple of those. For example, the loss of his son, his parents, and the breakup of his first marriage. They were all in different books, but many of them were simply part of his back story when we first met him. It also doesn't hurt to have your protagonist be alone in the world, even if he has family, friends and sidekicks. Because it creates in the reader a sense of privileged intimacy.

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