Interview with Lowell Cauffiel, author of Below the Line

 

Today it gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Lowell Cauffiel, author of Below the Line (Arcade Crimewise, May 2, 2023).

We’re here to discuss Below the Line, your latest crime novel set on the sleazy side of Hollywood. What’s the significance of the title?

Below the line is an industry term that connotates someone working in the film industry that is a w-2 employee. These are typically “blue collar” crew such as electricians, teamsters, carpenters and the like. “Above the line” are the prestigious jobs of actors, directors, editors, writers, etc. who typically are employed through their own corporations and have a self-employed status. However, “below the line” has a double meaning in terms of the book as it speaks to the underbelly of LA’s entertainment industry.

Your main character, former Detroit homicide detective Edwin Blake, is out of work in Hollywood, where he acted as a consultant on cop shows. Why does he accept the offer of a suspicious-sounding deal from wealthy eccentric producer Jason “JP” Perry - the promise of work in return for finding the missing ex-wife of a “friend of a friend”?

Because like most people who get a taste of the business, he’s desperate to get back into the industry, and JP holds out the carrot of putting him on his next show as a consultant and even a writer. No more “below the line” for Blake, JP says. And people working “on spec” is a common practice in the business.

What sort of man is Edwin Blake and how has he come to this situation?

Blake is a good man, but he’s driven by the corrosive need to be in show business and avoid returning to the troubled city of Detroit.  He’s also suffering from clinical depression, which he may have inherited from his father. His lack of work feeds the dark mood. He has arrived at the inciting incident of JP offering him a job because he worked on one of JP’s shows when he first came to LA. And JP knows he needs the work.

Below the Line has been described as Hollywood Noir, but with humour. Is there a satirical component too?

Satire requires exaggeration. My narrative does not exaggerate the nonsense that goes on in the business or the characters I’ve drawn. As a screenwriter and producer here in LA, I’ve personally experienced various versions of the characters and scenarios in Below the Line.  As for the humour, I’m always working toward that punchy great line or piece of dialogue, a technique I admired in Elmore Leonard’s books. Dutch was a mentor and good friend in Detroit.

Your bio says, “fact finding has taken [you] everywhere from the president’s private living quarters in the White House to the confines of dangerous urban dope dens.” What can you tell us about these places and how you got access?

I spent a good 15 years as a news reporter, which requires you to develop a skill set of persuasion and a network of contacts that can help enable access. You just start making phone calls or showing up at people’s front doors. Or you just hang around until they can’t ignore you anymore. One of my mentors, the great Jack Olsen, called it “hang around journalism.”

Having worked as a journalist, you authored five true-crime books, beginning with Masquerade, and four crime novels. Is there a difference between researching works of fact and fiction?

Yes, you can get sued for getting something wrong in nonfiction. So, you need to be dead on with several sources and there’s no room for “fictionalization.” Plus, you’re dealing with real people and it’s your duty to be sensitive to the impact you may have on their lives. However, I research my fiction extensively as well. Writing a novel is essentially telling a great big lie. But to sell that lie, your details – police procedures, dialogue, locations – must be authentic or the reader will spot it and abandon your narrative. For example, ABC put up a Detroit based police show where the homicide detectives were threatening witnesses with the “death penalty.” Michigan was the first English speaking government that outlawed the death penalty in the 1800s. Needless to say, they lost a lot of their Michigan audience.

Tell us about your true crime books and what impelled you to write them.

All my true crime books speak to something bigger than the crime itself, which is why I published in hardcover rather than the grimy paperback originals format. I tried to tell a little something about American society and culture. Masquerade essentially was about the limitations of the “Me Decade” where psychotherapy and self-examination were seen as a solution to many problems.  Forever and Five Days spoke to the warehousing of the elderly. Eye of the Beholder dealt with the illusions of celebrity and its place in the American value system. House of Secrets covered how evil can employ the façade of American “family values” to hide horrendous acts.

Edwin Blake finds he has a rival - Warren Poole, a professional hitman also contracted to find the missing woman. Why does he decide to continue?

Besides the need addressed in your question number two, he feels a responsibility to the mother, her child and to his own cop ethics. After all, he led Warren Poole to the kid. The daughter is only in Poole’s custody because Blake failed to spot the charade Poole had pulled. Blake feels guilty. He feels like he’s slipping. And he wants to prove to himself he still has the moves and set things right.

Blake’s only ally is his girlfriend Carla, “a former roller derby queen who has turned more than her own life around.” What sort of person is Carla?

Carla is an opioid addict in recovery. She’s a no bullshit sober sister who finds fulfilment in helping other alcoholics and addicts recover. As a former addict, she can spot lies and cons when she sees them because she formerly was of that mindset when she was using. I always like to feature somebody in recovery in my novels because I’ve been clean and sober many years and know the territory well.

With hints of Hollywood Noir, are you looking back to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, or to more recent exponents of the genre?

Not really. I’ve read very little from both authors but have enjoyed the film adaptations of some of their stories. As for noir, my working definition of that is your main character makes a mistake, often a moral lapse, and finds himself painted into a dark corner that he must fight his way out of. But I don’t think of Below the Line as noir but as a “crime novel.” It’s not a mystery. It’s not a who-done-it in the classic definition of that genre. It has twists, turns and big reveals, for sure. But I’m really exploring the choices of my main character Blake as he pursues what he thinks is his object of desire (getting a Hollywood job) when he really needs something else entirely to put his life back in order. So, I guess in that sense, it fits my definition of noir.

Have you any plans to write true crime, or do you plan to focus on fiction?

No plans to do true crime. It’s too emotionally taxing and, in some ways, has gone the way of the western and is a paperback market. Publishers just aren’t paying the advances needed to do compelling, hardcover true crime. You need to survive for a good year doing research to produce a book that’s more than just a rewrite of news stories and court transcripts, which are notoriously inaccurate. Fiction also isn’t paying well for midlist writers in today’s book industry. But it’s much more fun to write. Edwin Blake has been bugging me lately in my imagination, so I may bring him back for another book.

You worked in Detroit for many years, before moving to Los Angeles. How far has the move changed the type of stories you write? 

It hasn’t really changed that much. The location has changed. The people are tan and pretty on the west side. But human nature and criminal pathology remains universal. What it has changed is my music. I was an accomplished blues guitarist in Detroit for many years. Out here I find myself studying with Nils, a smooth jazz guitarist and hitmaker. You have to find out ways to chill out here because it’s a very demanding city, financially and logistically.

You have featured in numerous documentaries about your non-fiction work, and have written and directed documentaries for the Discovery Channel. What can you tell us about that and your work in film?

I’ve pitched and sold a half dozen pilots of TV series to major networks like CBS, HBO, NBC and others. They pay very well, but don’t necessarily shoot what you write, not because of the quality, but many factors beyond the writer’s control such as scheduling and what their competitors are doing. I was able to develop a film based on the Swedish bank robbery in 1973 that hatched the Stockholm Syndrome term, Stockholm, starring Ethan Hawke. As for the nonfiction, producers regularly come to me to comment on film about stories I’ve covered in my nonfiction books. Right now, I’m also exploring producing a true crime documentary series based on my cases.

What are you working on at the moment?

As I wrote earlier, I’m exploring producing long-form true crime documentaries (three to seven episodes for streamers) on some of my cases. I’m also toying with some ideas to bring Edwin Blake back in another novel.

Skyhorsepublishing

About Lowell Cauffiel:

Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of nine books and an award-winning veteran investigative reporter. His research has taken him everywhere from the President's private living quarters in the White House to the dangerous confines of urban dope dens. Cauffiel's three crime novels have explored diverse characters and settings that range from a Detroit shakedown crew in Marker to the glitzy, corrupt underworld of the National Football League in Toss, which he co-authored with former Superbowl quarterback Boomer Esiason. His five nonfiction crime books have covered a monstrous, homicidal patriarch in the New York Times best-selling House of Secrets; a pair of female serial killers in Forever and Five Days, and a calculating criminal justice instructor who tried to design the perfect crime with the murder of his TV anchorwoman wife in Eye of the Beholder. Cauffiel's first true crime book, Masquerade, the story of a Grosse Pointe psychologist's deadly double life, was a national best seller. He has appeared in a dozen documentaries about his books, MSNBC, Court TV and A&E. Cauffiel has written and produced documentaries for the Discovery Channel and CNBC and has adapted his first book Masquerade to film. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he writes feature films and creates shows for television.

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