Whenever I’m asked to appear on a panel at a mystery convention, I always wonder whether it’s such a good thing for a writer to talk about writing. After all, many of us are a lot better in print than on stage, and most of the audience comes to see us not because of how our voices sound but rather because of how our novels read. Having been asked to contribute this piece for a website, I’m now wondering whether it’s such a good thing for a writer to write about writing one of his or her books.

Maybe it would be easiest to talk a little more about the series, introducing the character first, then me as an author. John Francis Cuddy is a private investigator in Boston. A Vietnam veteran and former insurance investigator, Cuddy lost his wife young to cancer but stays faithful to her memory until he meets someone he thinks can replace her. Now, I’m a former trial attorney and (so far, at least) happily married. However, it might be interesting for you to see how my having been a trial attorney helps me write mysteries about a private investigator. For ease of pronouns in the illustrations, let’s assume we have a female trial attorney and a male author.

One way my experience helps me is in plotting. What does a litigator have to do in conceptualizing a trial? She has to visualize the jury coming back with a verdict in her clients favor. How does she achieve that? By introducing enough evidence during the trial to convince the judge that there is enough confliciting information to warrant a jury’s deciding the case. How does the attorney know what information to offer as evidence? Prior to trial, she’ll have engaged in formal discovery and informal investigation. How does she know what to look for in discovery and investigation? She’ll have done some preliminary research after the initial conference with her client.

This process in litigation strategy is called "backstepping." You start with a known destination (the favorable verdict), and you "step backward" from there, inductively reasoning your case. Well, that’s exactly what I do as a mystery author. I start with a known destination, the confrontation in Chapter 30 between Cuddy and the killer. In order for that scene to make sense, something has to have happened in Chapter 29: Cuddy has to have found some new piece of information. In order for 29 to make sense, something else has to have happened in 28, and so forth all the way back to the initial private investigator/client conference in Chapter 1. This backstepping approach forces the writer to be rigorous so that he has a solid plot, which in my opinion is what most mystery readers demand, and rightly so, from a book. A side benefit of the approach is that the writer never takes a "wrong turn" in Chapter 5, not realizing it until he’s painted himself into a corner in Chapter 10, thus requiring the scrapping of Chapters 6 through 9.

I used this backstepping approach unconsciously in my first book, BLUNT DARTS, in which Cuddy searches for the missing son of a judge. In that novel, I had to mask what I hoped would be a surprise, but fair, ending. What I found in later books is that the approach worked well, regardless of the plot involved.

A second way in which being a trial attorney has helped me with mystery writing is in the area of authenticity. A beginning lawyer learns very quickly that she has to be accurate in any fact she represents in the courtroom. Even one mistake that the opponent can establish will result in the mistaken attorney losing the confidence and trust of the jury for the balance of that trial and perhaps the respect of the judge for the balance of her career.

I’ve taken a similar approach to authenticity in my novels. In my second book, THE STAKED GOAT, Cuddy searches for the killer of a friend from his military police service in Saigon. Several chapters are set in Vietnam. Now, I was in the military police, but never went overseas. Accordingly, I read 12 books on the war, from Stanley Karnow’s comprehensive non-fiction work to Mark Baker’s oral histories, just to be sure I had enough background to write those chapters. Even then, after the chapters were written, I gave them in draft form to a combat veteran who had volunteered to read them as a quality control on the "feel" of the place and people.

Authenticity is important in little details, too. For example, in my third book, SO LIKE SLEEP, Cuddy investigates a murder connected to a group therapy session involving hypnosis. One of the chapters requires him to go to a local jail to interview the criminal defendant. While in civilian law enforcement, I’d worked one jail and visited others, but not that particular jail. I arranged through the Sheriff’s Office to get a tour of the facility, a helpful deputy walking me through the exact sequence a private investigator would have to follow in order to see a client. Such attention to authenticity wins the writer many readers that a parallel inattention would lose for him.

A third way that being a trial attorney helps me as a writer is in generating story ideas. In law practice, I did a lot of divorce cases, realizing how poorly the system deals with women who are battered by otherwise "responsible" husbands. In my fourth book, SWAN DIVE, I explore what happens when Cuddy is brought in by a lawyer to protect one such wife. In practice, I also represented reporters who refused to reveal their confidential sources. In my fifth book, YESTERDAY’S NEWS, Cuddy looks into the killing of a confidential source, the reporter being too suspicious of the police to trust the authorities to investigate thoroughly. A topic that has been hotly debated in both legal and medical circles is whether a terminally-ill person has a right to end his or her life, perhaps with professional help. In my sixth book, RIGHT TO DIE, Cuddy becomes trapped in the problems of a female law professor who crusades for the right to assisted suicide, an issue he had to face during the illness of his own wife. In my seventh book, SHALLOW GRAVES, Cuddy gets more than trapped while investigating the murder of a model who turns out to be related to an organized crime family, people who have no intention of relying on the police to find the killer.

Finally, a trial attorney occasionally has to leave her home ground and litigate in relatively unfamiliar courts, feeling like the proverbial fish out of water as she has to learn new local practices. The eighth book, FOURSOME, allowed me to use what I’d learned about Maine to involve Cuddy in a brutal, triple-murder by crossbow at a lake house. The people killed were three members of two couples who did everything together as a "foursome," the accused the surviving husband whose lawyer hires Cuddy to investigate on his client’s behalf. However, since half of that novel was set in Maine, I wanted to stay closer to home with the next book, ACT OF GOD. Set almost entirely in Boston, this novel revolves around the co-owner of a furniture store, apparently killed in his office by a panicked burglar. A secretary at the store disappears from her apartment shortly thereafter, and the widow of the murdered man and the brother of the missing woman jointly ask Cuddy to look into the incidents on the theory that they might be related.

My tenth book, RESCUE, is another fish-out-of-water story, in that Cuddy must come to Miami and the Florida Keys in search of an apparently kidnapped boy who bears a prominent birthmark on his face. The eleventh book, INVASION OF PRIVACY, brings Cuddy back to Boston and deals with a common problem: a female banker has fallen in love with a man, but in doing a discreet credit check on the guy, she can’t find any background. As kind of a "fat cat," the banker is afraid that she may be a target, so she asks Cuddy to check on the lover without "invading his privacy," which becomes the springboard for both the title and the plot of the novel.

If I haven’t told you more than you ever wanted to know about my series, maybe we’ll have the chance to talk about it face-to-face in the future. Meanwhile, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little exploration of my approach to writing and will enjoy the books I’ve written using it.

JEREMIAH HEALY is a graduate of Rutgers College and Harvard Law School. Formerly a professor at the New England School of Law, he is the creator of John Francis Cuddy, a Boston-based private investigator.

Healy’s first novel, BLUNT DARTS, was selected by The New York Times as one of the seven best mysteries of 1984. His second work, THE STAKED GOAT, received the Shamus award for the Best Private Eye Novel of 1986. Nominated for a Shamus a total of nine times, Healy’s later books include SO LIKE SLEEP, SWAN DIVE, YESTERDAY’S NEWS, RIGHT TO DIE, SHALLOW GRAVES, FOURSOME, and ACT OF GOD. His last novel, RESCUE, was a Main Selection of the Mystery Guild, and his current book, INVASION OF PRIVACY, appeared in July.

Healy has served as a judge for both the Shamus and Edgar awards. His books have been translated into French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and German. Currently on the Executive Council of the International Association of Crime Writers, he was president of the Private Eye Writers of America for two years. Healy has contributed articles on mystery writing at numerous events, including the Smithsonian Institution’s Literature Series, The Boston Globe Book Festival, and international conferences of crime writers in New York, England, Spain, and Austria. A member or chair of panels at ten World Mystery Conventions ("BoucherCons"), Healy also served as the banquet toastmaster for the 1996 BoucherCon in October.