Interview with Michael Kaufman, author of The Last Resort (Book 2 of the Jen Lu Mysteries)
It gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Michael Kaufman, whose novel The Last Resort has its debut on January 10.
The Last Resort is the second novel in your near-future series featuring police detective Jen Lu. What can you tell us about Jen and where she is at the end of your first novel, The Last Exit?
Jen is a late-thirties police detective in Washington DC. She’s not a comic-book superhero, but has a mile-wide stubborn streak: she doesn’t take no for an answer when it comes to following her hunches. She’s coming off a case where she almost lost her job, almost split up with her boyfriend, and almost was killed. Right now, though, things are looking up.
The series is set in the near future, in 2034. What issues are haunting the world and what has changed?
I’ve got to say off the bat that this is definitely not a grim dystopian novel! Yes, climate change is worsening and there is ever-growing inequality, but ultimately it’s a hopeful book. I strongly believe in the human capacity to create positive change. And I also believe that we all need some escape into the fantasy world of books that pick you up, rather than push you down.
Why did you decide to set the novels in the future, and how far are they cross-genre works?
First and foremost I’m writing a crime novel, a mystery, a police procedural. But I think readers are smart people and realize that reality doesn’t come neatly packaged into genres. Reality itself is “cross-genre”. That’s why the publisher’s blurb says it’s “Margaret Atwood meets Raymond Chandler meets Greta Thunberg”. Worlds and themes collide, just like they constantly do in real life. But you could say I decided to set it in the near-future so I could plunge into problems that we’ll still be facing a decade from now. I also figured it would be a lot of fun.
Jen has a partner, Chandler, who is an AI implant in her brain. How does she cope with such a modification? And how does Chandler cope?
Chandler is not only Jen’s partner, he narrates half the book. The moment I started writing, his voice was in my head: he’s a wannabe tough guy but has a hard time pulling it off since he’s only three years old. Jen has gotten used to this implant—Chandler handles her comms, writes reports, does research, and generally dishes out advice on everything from policing to her relationship. But there are definitely times when Jen wrestles with this utterly bizarre and, let’s face it, troubling situation.
Is it safe to say that Chandler is more than a computer or bot?
There was one amazing moment when I was writing the first book of the series, The Last Exit. I knew Chandler was going to be interesting, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he would evolve as a character. As the series goes on, he’s increasingly grappling with his own set of existential questions.
How significant is humour in The Last Resort?
Big. Very big. It deals with serious themes, but I wanted to make sure that more than anything, it’s entertaining. However, the humour isn’t created through the plot, which is as serious as the themes, but by Chandler’s narrative voice.
You have worked for decades with the United Nations, governments, NGOs and businesses engaging men to support women’s rights. How important is that work to your fiction? You are the co-founder of the White Ribbon Campaign, the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women. What can you tell us about this and how it informs your writing?
My work has informed my progressive, pro-feminist, anti-racist world view which is reflected in my fiction. More directly, The Last Resort has a theme about violence against women (as well as the central theme around climate change.)
When writing a police procedural, how important was it for the protagonist to be a woman? What challenges do you face as a man imagining and writing a female character?
From the start I knew that the protagonist of this series would be a woman. At the same time, I didn’t want to pretend that, as a man, I could narrate it in her voice. That’s why half the book is narrated by Chandler and the other half by an impersonal third-person narrator. To understand Jen’s life, I tried to do what any male ally needs to do: listen, listen, and listen some more to the voices of women, including (in this case) to racialized women.
You have written numerous works of non-fiction. How do your fiction works fit in?
I’m lucky that I also write non-fiction. When I want to get into teacher mode, I write non-fiction. (My most recent is The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution.) When I want to tell a page-turning story, I write fiction. Woe be it to the fiction writer who starts lecturing the reader.
In the world that Jen inhabits, how far have issues like misogyny and racism changed?
This is an example where my optimism shines through. Jen still experiences sexism, but big advances for women continue. Although she’s a cop, she works in an LGBTQ-positive environment and her work partner (Les) is a married gay man—a fact that everyone takes for granted. And in the first book of the series, I talk about the uprising in the DC police force against racism—I wrote that before the wonderful Black Lives Matter happened—and this has had a huge impact on police culture. Perhaps I’m being a bit overoptimistic, but since I happen to be the world’s expert on Washington DC in 2034, I can pretty much say whatever I want.
The plot centres on the death of prominent lawyer Patty Garcia, who won a court case for massive climate change reparations to be paid out by oil, gas and coal companies. What inspired this story, which has echoes in contemporary reality?
Well, it is the issue for humanity and, sadly, will be even more so in the years ahead. I wanted to find a way to explore some cool ideas about reparations. But since it is a mystery, the story revolves around the lengths that someone will go to try to stop change.
In a novel that features such serious important themes, how do you keep the readers turning the pages?
The key is not to dump mini-lectures on readers, not to “educate” readers, but to simply tell an entertaining and exciting story populated by complex characters that readers will love.
What happens next? Will Jen Lu return?
Definitely!
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About Michael Kaufman:
MICHAEL KAUFMAN has worked for decades engaging men to support women’s rights and positively transform the lives of men. He is the co-founder of the White Ribbon Campaign, the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women. He volunteers as a senior fellow at Promundo (Washington, D.C.) and has worked in 50 countries with the United Nations, governments, NGOs and educators. He advised the French government in 2019 as a member of its G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council.
He is the author of numerous nonfiction and fiction works, and was awarded the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His most recent nonfiction book is “The Time Has Come.” He’s also written “Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution” (2019) and his first Jen Lu novel “The Last Exit.” His books and articles have been translated into 14 languages. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, having lived in Durham, North Carolina, and now living in Toronto, Canada, he is married and has a daughter and a son.
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