Robert Palmer │ Character Building

Choosing the right protagonist for any series is tricky business. That’s particularly true for suspense. As a writer, you’ll be making a friend for a long time and putting that poor chum through some terrible twists. So how do writers decide? For some it’s pure epiphany: the idea hit me like a bolt! For most of us, though, there’s a lot that goes into building a main character.

The hero in my novel THE SURVIVORS (set to release this October) is a psychologist in Washington, DC. When I mentioned that choice to someone I know who has been in the book business for decades, she said, “Fascinating . . . but risky.”

Think of the typical hero in a suspense series: cops, lawyers, spies, private detectives, medical examiners, surgeons – and did I mention cops? You won’t find many architect heroes. Or actuaries. Heroes do, my book-business friend argued. Psychologists, well, they talk. True, I had to admit, but I still liked the idea enough to keep thinking about it and imagining. . .

Good novels, I’ve always thought, take interesting people and put them in a crisis. I’ll admit, when a psychologist is faced with a crisis, their first thought isn’t likely to be: OK, now I’m going to punch somebody. When a psychologist is around, talk happens. It’s the sort of talk that reaches deep into people’s pasts and strips bare their emotions. Isn’t that one of the main reason we read – to see how characters we care about will feel and react and treat each other?

There is a special risk in centering a book on a psychologist. I’m a lawyer, by the way, but I have a lot of contact with mental health professionals in my work and also, happily, have a number of psychologists as clients. Being a psychologist can be pretty dark. People show up at the office with real problems, and not the kind of problems that can be fixed with a glass of milk and a pat on the head. A lot of mental health issues are never really cured, but, at best, patients learn to cope and that way find happiness.

Darkness in a novel is fine, and often necessary, but there must be a balance of sun and clouds or most readers will set the book aside. The answer, I decided, is humor. The psychologists I know have a great sense of humor (and pity the patients of any cold-shoulder psychologist). When we’re talking about people’s health, this can’t be a sniping kind of humor or condescending. It has to be warm. The kind of poke-fun-at-the-world humor that would make you want to spend a whole evening with the hero, or a year or two.

There still is that problem of psychologists not doing enough. I decided to solve that by giving my hero a few flaws of his own, including a tendency to care too much about his patients. He can’t just sit and talk and go home at the end of the day to his Chardonnay and Bach (or beer and skittles, your choice). If his patients need help, he’s there for them, even if he has to face some darkness of his own along the way.

And that’s where the setting comes in. Who better to give us their deepest secrets (and drag us into the worst alleys) than the judges, politicians, high-flying lawyers, and other creatures found on the streets of Washington, DC? Those are my hero’s patients. To all that I only had to add his back story, family, friends, hometown, shoe size, and favorite late- night snack, and there he was! You see, it’s a process, one that can be maddening – and great fun.

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About Robert Palmer

Robert Palmer is a lawyer and law professor in Washington, D.C. His clients have included cops and school teachers, members of Congress, judges, and agency heads—and more than a few psychologists. In his spare time he enjoys distance running, downhill skiing, and hiking and backpacking in the Blue Ridge, the Rockies, and anyplace else with mountains. He lives with his wife and son and their Portuguese Water Dog, Theo.

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About THE SURVIVORS

Successful psychologist Cal Henderson has a busy practice in Washington, DC, good friends, and big plans for the future. But he can’t escape a terrible secret. When he was a boy, his mother murdered his father and two brothers and severely wounded Cal’s best friend, Scottie Glass. Desperate to keep the nightmare at bay, Cal has turned his back on everything that happened that night.

Then on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the traumatic event, Scottie shows up at Cal’s office—edgy, paranoid, but somehow still the loveable kid he once was. Though their lives have taken very different paths, they both believe Cal’s mother couldn’t have been a murderer. She loved them too much, no matter what dark place she found herself in. They set off to dig up the real story.

In his search for answers he uncovers secrets about his mother’s life involving a defense contractor’s dark dealings, a nominee for U.S. Attorney with a questionable past, and a shady corporate billionaire whose sphere of influence seems to include everyone from the Pentagon on down. Meanwhile, as Cal gets closer to discovering the truth, recovered memories of his childhood push him into a psychological tailspin.