#11: Five for Them, One for Me, with Lori Rader-Day
Rader-Day's latest, THE DEATH OF US, is out now
Eryk Pruitt’s scared of Lori Rader-Day—as he damn well should be.
(Start listening around the seven-minute mark of the linked audio clip to know why.)
If you’re making a list of not only the best crime writers but also the most well-respected, Lori’s high on the list. She’s the Edgar Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of seven novels: THE DEATH OF US, DEATH AT GREENWAY, THE LUCKY ONE, UNDER A DARK SKY, THE DAY I DIED, LITTLE PRETTY THINGS, and THE BLACK HOURS. Her work’s additionally been nominated for the Thriller, Macavity, Barry, and Lefty awards. Talk to anyone in the field and they’ll echo that the praise is earned. She’s one the most incisive and insightful writers of psychological suspense working today, and her latest, THE DEATH OF US, is a slam-dunk from its opening pages to its stunning conclusion.
I met Lori at Bouchercon in Minneapolis in 2022, where I excitedly told her how much I loved her work and was incredibly happy to meet her, all with a level of enthusiasm that usually precedes a restraining order. I apologized for being a spaz when we saw one another at Sleuthfest this year in Florida.
She’s the only person who gets to call me “Holler,” and she agreed to answer “Five for Them, One for Me.”
Let’s go.
FIVE FOR THEM
THE DEATH OF US begins with the discovery of a submerged car and a body, and from there it spirals out into decades’ worth of secrets. Where did the original idea for the story come from, and what made it a story you wanted to tell?
The original idea for The Death of Us came from a flight home from a trip to Minneapolis. It was a clear day, so even though we were high in the air, when I looked out the window, I could see the ground very clearly. I saw a quarry with water in it way down below and thought, “I bet there are a lot of dead bodies in water like that.” (And there are, it turns out.) Right there on the plane, I got out my phone and used the notes app to jot down a few ideas.
I was also thinking at the time about a story I’d read about a woman who had gone missing. Her husband or boyfriend had been convicted of her death, without a body, but then many years later, her car was found submerged in a body of water and it was clear she had been the victim of an accident. That narrative—“it’s always the husband”—is often true, sorry my dudes, but not always. I was interested in how sometimes what we think we know leaps far ahead from what we can actually know.
Your protagonist, Liss Kehoe, is described at one point as “trying to make herself small in case someone noticed her,” but as she digs deeper into the past, she finds reserves of strength she didn’t know she had. How does Liss and those heretofore unknown qualities fit into what you have said is your tendency to write about “women who fight off the could-have-beens to figure out who they are”?
What your readers don’t know is that I said that to you in a Facebook chat and you squirreled it away until you could ask me about in a public forum. How delightfully calculating.
At the beginning of the story, at first glance, Liss seems to live a life that will be familiar to many: wife, mother, low-level job. But she’s really living a bit of a half-life. She is a mother, but not. She’s married but they are in the middle of a divorce that has stalled out, giving her some hope she’s not sure she should have. Her job at her son’s school isolates her; she’s not a teacher, not a counselor, not one of the admins in the main office. She’s peerless there just as she is as a mother raising a kid who is not biologically hers. She’s sort of suspended between in all the parts of her life. To claim the life she wants, she has to make some decisions and fully embrace who she wants to be. To stop accepting half-measures and half-status and the things handed to her and to ask for what she deserves.
Your book is rife with discussions of family, how family is defined, and how family is protected. What made that such a rich area you wanted to explore?
The Death of Us is my first post-pandemic lockdown novel, a book I wrote while receiving treatment for breast cancer (I’m doing fine!). There’s nothing like a worldwide pandemic-slash-personal health crisis to make you think about what matters, I guess. I was interested in writing about themes that would feel universal to readers—family is pretty universal—but not in a way that put barriers on any term. As the story unfolded, I realized it was important to me to represent families created in ways that are not universal. I know families like that. I also tend to write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and tough times can divide a family or it can bring a family together.
THE DEATH OF US uses an interesting technique, where you have a character acting as something of a Greek chorus, providing insight throughout the story. Without giving too much away, talk a little about how this narrative choice came about.
I don’t usually know much about a story when I start writing, so as I progressed, I realized I didn’t have a character who could set the record straight, who could tell the reader (and me) exactly what did happen fifteen years ago on that rainy night. I often write myself into these corners, but a book is made, I think, on how you write your way out.
At the time I had just read two books that had something in common, a narrator who was not out and about among the other characters, but who could see some portion of the story that needed telling. The books were Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton. No two books could be further apart in style and genre, probably, but by accident I read them back-to-back, and they inspired the narrator who helped untangle some of the knots in the story and reveal some of its secrets.
Your previous book, the Agatha Award-winning DEATH AT GREENWAY, was a historical set during World War II. It’s your only historical to date, so I’m wondering, were you happy to go back to writing about the present day after that book, or do you see yourself visiting the past again in a future book? Is there a different type of satisfaction in writing about the past rather than present-day?
I was SO happy to write a sentence without wondering if every third word was in use in the time and place I was writing about. It was much easier on many levels to write The Death of Us than Death at Greenway, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t throw myself back in time again, for the right story. I have a few ideas.
I don’t know if I had a different satisfaction from writing about World War II, but I did have a newfound satisfaction from giving myself an assignment that I wasn’t quite up to, and to come out with a book I was proud of. As someone who was not a historian, not a lover of research, not well-versed in World War II, and not British, I sort of believed someone else would tell the story of how Agatha Christie’s house had housed war refugees. But no one had, so I gave it my all. Seriously, all. I learned how to research to be able to tell that story and, in the end, tracking down real names and characteristics of people who had been left out of the history books was really rewarding.
I try to learn something new for each book, try some new technique. I used to call them “intellectual exercises” until I heard myself and realized I sounded like a jerk. But we writers have to entertain ourselves first, or the writing doesn’t get done. I entertain myself by making every book its own challenge.
ONE FOR ME
Last five songs played on your streaming app. What are they?
“Faith Healer” Julien Baker
“Growing Sideways” Noah Kahan
“Somebody Else” The 1975
“Yours & Mine” Lucy Dacas
“Afraid of Heights” boygenius
The song before those is “Lost on You” by LP, which (bonus information) is the song I play to psych myself up for speaking events.
WHAT’S WE’RE READING
After writing two of the best crime novels in recent years—2015’s THE LONG AND FARAWAY ONE and 2018’s NOVEMBER ROAD—Lou Berney’s latest, the short and sharp DARK RIDE, feels like something of a left turn from the author, a slight detour from those previous books, or perhaps a bit of a detour. But make no mistake it that this book feels very akin to Berney’s earlier work—smart, suspenseful, and achingly human.
Stoner Hardy “Hardly” Reed isn’t trying to be a hero, but when he encounters two children and notices they’ve been abused, he takes it as his mission to save them, no matter what it takes. His commitment to save them sets him against their father, a powerful and ruthful attorney with drug connections.
Hardly Reed is one of the most compelling new protagonists I’ve read in years. He may initially be ill-equipped to do much besides work a menial job and stay stoned, but that doesn’t deter him, and watching his transformation drives a book that is by turns funny and charming and heartbreaking and tragic. Berney peoples DARK RIDE with a rich cast of characters, both Hardly’s friends and enemies, and his powerful storytelling keeps you guessing and rooting for Hardly to the very end.
That’s all we’ve got for now. Thanks for coming. See you next time, and hey, let’s be careful out there.
for whatever dumb reason, i hadn't bought THE DEATH OF US, but i have now. thanks for this