Interview with Mark Zvonkovic, author of Belinda

Today it gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Mark Zvonkovic, whose novel Belinda has its debut on June 14.

Your third novel, Belinda, is due for release very soon. Who is Belinda, the eponymous heroine?

Belinda Larkin is a very successful woman lawyer in a big Houston law firm. When the story begins she is beginning to think about the difficulty that accompanies having to redefine herself on account of a looming mandatory retirement. For many, retirement is all golf and travel. But for a woman whose life was all about being a successful lawyer and who thought that the law was her husband, the prospect of leaving the law is daunting. For such a woman mandatory retirement can prove to be a difficult life transition, not unlike beginning a new romantic relationship. And that, by the way, also occurs as Belinda's story moves forward. Golf would be no substitute.

The blurb refers to ‘white-shoe Houston law firms’ - can you explain what that means?

The term originally was a reference to Ivy League men and to the elite Wall Street law and finance firms where they worked. Over time the term has come to mean firms that are prestigious and, more derogatorily, elitist. J.D. Salinger used the term in his fiction in a depreciative manner to describe the editors of literary magazines, saying that he preferred a con man to them.

You have had a long career as a lawyer, working in Houston, Texas and New York City. How has your legal experience influenced your writing?

Character development is a focus of my writing, and what place is better than a big law firm to observe unusual people? Law partners are quite intelligent and highly educated, which make their deceit and ambition very complex, and sometimes entertaining. In Belinda, the antagonist Brashner displays a conglomeration of all of the more egregious practices I witnessed in law partners. Otherwise, my having practiced law presented a challenge to my writing fiction. I had to dispense with exactitude, or, as my editor repeatedly told me, “Stop writing like a damn lawyer!”

Belinda is a senior lawyer facing what may be an enforced retirement. What can you tell us about this situation?

Mandatory retirement can sometimes be a difficult life change for a law partner, but I think it is more difficult for a woman. Regardless of how enlightened a law firm sees itself, it is still a patriarchal organization, and requiring a man to retire is generally accepted because theoretically his dedication to the law has been considered his forbearance of other aspects of a man’s life, like raising children and honing his golf skills. So mandating retirement for him is a relief because he can quit his profession without shame, that is, without other men viewing him as failing to keep going. But this is not the case for most women who are still practicing at retirement age. They had to overcome many patriarchal attitudes to pursue their careers, including the presumed obligations of caregivers to their children and husbands. Now for the sake of equal treatment should they be required to retire also? It is really an equal treatment only for the men who want to retire.

What were the challenges of writing from the point of view of a female character?

It was very challenging, if for no other reason than the fact that I am not a woman. I knew that I could never get it exactly right, no matter how much research I did. It was easier to create the character Raymond Hatcher in my novel A Lion In The Grass, who was an OSS officer during World War II and a CIA agent after. Still, I had the privilege of working with many exemplary women lawyers during my career and mentoring outstanding women associates. Belinda is a combination of those women, as were so many strong women protagonists in novels I have read. In fact, reading novels written by women and containing women protagonists was a way in which I did research related to the formation of Belinda’s character.

Belinda is a stand-alone novel, but it connects with your two previous books, A Lion In The Grass and The Narrows. You could say that they have a “shared universe”. How does that work in practice?

As I mentioned in another answer, what I love about writing is character development. As a result, I become invested in my characters and they take on lives of their own; and they don’t just disappear from my mind after a novel is done. In all of my novels, during the writing process significant sections regarding a character’s life were removed at the request of my editors. Those sections were necessary for me to write in order for me to get to know my protagonist and they were not forgotten when they hit the editor's cutting room floor. Belinda had a tiny role in my novel A Lion In The Grass, and I really liked her. So, it was appropriate to use her in a subsequent story. The same is true for Jay Jackson, although his role in the earlier novel was more significant. Other authors have characters who reappear in later novels which are not sequels or prequels to the earlier ones. In my view, it can be rewarding to a reader to discover more about a character without being stuck in a reoccurring plot.

The other main character, Jay Jackson, is a superannuated spy. How does Belinda meet him?

While Jay was a spy, he also was a partner in Belinda’s law firm. His law practice was in fact a cover identity for his spy career. They worked together on many law transactions, and, although their relationship was platonic over all the years, they became very close. Before he retired as a lawyer and a spy, ostensibly to run his family ranch, he feared that a closer relationship with Belinda would put her in harm’s way. He decides to put that fear aside at the beginning of Belinda, after he has retired from the law firm, but as the story goes on it is apparent that it is difficult to retire from being a spy. Belinda is a novel about the difficulty of retirement on many levels.

How does Jay’s career as a spy come back to haunt him and how does this connect to events in the previous novels?

An alternative would’ve been an easy plot to write: an old adversary from Jay’s spy past comes back looking for revenge. But I use plot primarily to fuel character development, not as a means to an end. So, the history of Jay’s spy career is not straightforward. To say much more than this would give rise to a spoiler.

One of the lawyers in Belinda is corrupt. Does this issue have significance beyond the bounds of the novel?

The corruption in Belinda is perhaps exaggerated but not a great deal. I think many professional organizations, like law firms, encourage far more unethical behaviour than they wish to admit to. Compensation and promotion in law firms is very dependent upon standards like the number of hours billed and client fees collected. What do partners do to make sure their numbers are higher than their peers, and that more client matters are attracted to them? The unethical methods they employ are subtle, and at times difficult to recognize. And why do they take the risk that their unethical behaviour will be discovered? Often, they become too sure of their own greatness, and they assume themselves to be the smartest guys in the room. Or it may be nothing more than unquenchable greed.

The story is character-driven and part of that narrative is a romance between Jay and Belinda. How does that develop?

One could say that Jay and Belinda had a very long platonic courtship during all the years they were law partners. I’d say that they had a friendship, born from their working together, that became a romance once they were no longer law partners. Of course, even that had a two-year hiatus.

When talking about Belinda’s thoughts and experience of ageing, you reference The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. What can you tell us about the poem and how it evokes Belinda’s experience?

Some reviewers of Belinda didn’t understand the connection of the Prufrock poem to the story in Belinda, which actually surprised me. Had they read the poem? Of course, the connections are subtle, and the references to Prufrock in the novel are never with direct quotes but with casual allusions, such as coffee spoons, flickering greatness, and sea waves. The themes in Prufrock are the themes in Belinda, the most notable being desire, hope, anxiety, and indecision. These same themes accompany the growing concern Belinda has with mandatory retirement, not to mention her awkward commencement of a romance with Jay. I believe that one can read Prufrock as the musings of one confronted with retirement and what to do with oneself after retirement. I think that if one takes the time to read Prufrock as an internal monologue of a person anxious about retirement and romance, one will see its relevance to Belinda. In my opinion, good literature is full of metaphor and allusion, rather than straightforward explanation. Many reviewers take the time to look for metaphor and allusion, but not all reviewers do.

Many current and past television shows that feature law firms focus on crime and lawyers who are district attorneys or defenders. Is there room for more novels and shows featuring the complexities of civil law?

Those shows lean more toward entertainment than a story made rich by its characters. They are about fast paced plots, not the people in them. The complexities of civil law in Belinda are all there to give substance to the characters engaged with it. There are plenty of great novels where the characters are engaged in professions that may be viewed as dull when compared to the entertaining events that occur in law trials or operating rooms. Are there many involving crime and district attorneys where the protagonists are wonderfully complex? Readers choose what kinds satisfy them most.

Have you enjoyed any legal thrillers or other crime novels over the years? Who has influenced you?

The answer is yes, of course, particularly if you include spy novels in with crime. What influenced me in these was the solid development of the protagonists and not just, or in spite of, the plots. One of these was Scott Turow’s Ordinary Heroes, so much so that I took the time to write a review of it, which is published on my website and in Midwest Book Reviews, where I have a reviewer’s page. The same is true for novels written by Joseph Kanon and Mark Pryor.

What are you planning to do next?

As I said in an earlier answer, my characters live on in my mind long after a novel is finished. Years go by and these characters change, just as real persons do. One such character who I’ve thought about recently is Larry Brown from my novel The Narrows. He was a young man in the turbulent 1970s when that novel took place. A lot of time has now gone by and I think it might be quite interesting to discover where life has taken him.

Preorder Belinda!

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About Mark Zvonkovic:

Mark Zvonkovic is a writer who lives in Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico, with his wife Nancy and their two dogs, Finn and Cooper. He has written three novels, A Lion in the Grass, The Narrows, and Belinda, and he also regularly writes book reviews and essays for various publications. Before retiring to Mexico, Mark practiced law for 35 years at 3 multinational law firms in Houston, Texas and New York City. He attended college at Southern Methodist University and Boston University, and his law degree is from SMU School of Law. Mark grew up as an oil company brat and lived in Latin America, Texas and New York.

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