Mark T. Sullivan

Behind the Book

I used to be an investigative reporter in San Diego, and one day in my office I recalled that the police department in the nation's sixth-largest city investigates homicide differently than any other major metropolitan law enforcement agency. Where New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and most other big city police departments assign two detectives whenever an unexplained body turns up, San Diego rolls in with a team of five: a supervising sergeant and four supporting homicide detectives.

This unorthodox, swarming approach to death investigations works. San Diego often boasts the highest solve rate in the nation. Why not write about one of those teams?

I began to doodle on a piece of paper at my desk, and, to my surprise, very quickly the character of Seamus Moynihan, the supervising sergeant took shape as an ex-major league pitcher, a second generation cop, a beleaguered but loving father, a divorced, heart-worn womanizer and brilliant homicide detective.

As I took more notes, and grew more excited, Moynihan literally began to speak in my head, telling me about his childhood, about playing for the Boston Red Sox, about being the son of a murdered police officer whose slaying was never solved, about the scars that that loss had inflicted upon him.

Only one other time has this sort of disconcerting experience happened in my writing career: During the early drafts of The Purification Ceremony, Diana Jackman, an expert tracker and the story's heroine, began to speak to me in much the same way. Having someone else's voice start barking in your head is a bizarre experience. For the majority of people, it would be cause for a one-way ticket to the funny farm.

But as a writer I've found that it's an energizing, almost ecstatic creative experience, one that occurs only once in a great while, and when it does, you're smart to go with it. So I did, in effect, taking dictation from Moynihan over the course of two weeks as he told me his life story leading up to his promotion to homicide sergeant.

I wrote ten to fifteen hours a day, and by the end of the first week, it was if I'd known the man for years. Moynihan played ball in Fenway Park, where I’d worked summers as a kid selling souvenirs. As a homicide detective, he has an unorthodox style coupled with strong investigative instincts, yet he was not a prima-donna. He cares about the people who work for him, indeed believes that in many ways that they are better cops than he is. His relationship with his son, his mother, his sister, his ex-wife are all seriously flawed, mostly due to his actions. But the thing about the guy is he is genuinely trying to be a better man. Always. He doesn't always succeeds, but he's always trying.

Now about two years prior to all this babbling in the head stuff, I was fooling around with some files I keep filled with notes that might somehow be developed into future novels. It's something I often do late in the day, after the serious writing on the project of the moment is complete and I can relax a bit and let my mind play.

Anyway, just as dusk came on that night, a phrase forced its way into my thoughts: "The Second Woman."

I had no idea what it meant, but I wrote the words down and stared at them. There in the shadowy light a series of vivid images flashed through me. Some were frankly erotic, others were frankly frightening, all of them sparking off in my noggin as a result of those three words: The Second Woman.

But what did they mean?

It occurred to me that we all know who the first woman was: Eve, at least according to Judeo-Christian thought.

But who was the second woman? I trotted over to my handy King James and discovered this reference: "And Cain went out and lived in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden, and Cain knew his wife. . ."

"This can't be the only reference to her," I thought. "She's not even named."

I tracked down a man named Jonathan Kirsch, an attorney and author of several books about the Bible. When I asked him about the second woman, he said, "No one knows who she is, where she came from. She's the oldest mystery in the Bible."

Saying something like that to someone like me is like waving the red cape in front of the bull. Hanging up the phone, I was pounding forward at the cape, knowing with certainty that I'd write a mystery about the oldest mystery in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

For nearly two years I gathered string about the second woman, reading different theories about her identity, studying her history in literature and philosophy. But try as I might I could not figure how her story fit in a modern setting.

Then Sergeant Moynihan saw the file and told me.