Beneath the Bombs: Unpacking NYPD Red 8 with Marshall Karp!

Foreign.

Welcome to the Thriller Zone.

Guess who?

Dave Temple, your host.

So nice to have you here on today's show.

My dear, dear friend, Marshall Karp has a new book called NYPD Red 8, the 1159 Bomber.

As you can see, I enjoyed it.

Made all kinds of notes.

Marshall is.

He's fast becoming one of my best friends.

He's just a good dude.

So talented, and we have a lot of fun in today's show.

Now, there are some technical difficulties throughout the show, and this is why I tell people when they go, Dave, what can I do to make my show the best?

Your show the best?

Well, here's an idea.

Have a microphone that picks up your voice.

A standalone microphone.

Like, this is a good idea.

Headphones is a good idea.

I'm not wearing them today because I don't need to, because I'm not talking to anyone.

And.

Oh, WI Fi.

A really good, strong signal, muy importante.

Because if you don't have that, well, sometimes.

Sometimes it just kind of stinks.

You know what I'm saying?

Anyway, those are just tips here at the beginning of the show.

But Marshall Carp had a WI Fi challenge.

It comes and goes.

Big deal.

Who gives a.

We're having fun.

This book.

Well, what can I say?

Let's just say it's.

It's a hell of a read, and you're going to really enjoy it.

But what I need to do is shut my pie hole and get into the show, because this one is fun.

Stick around, bear through all the technical stuff, because you're gonna learn stuff.

This is one thing with Marshall, I'm always learning something.

So, without any further ado, New York Times number one bestselling author, Marshall Karp here on the thriller side.

Enjoy.

Dude.

Yeah.

Long time no see.

Louis, compadre.

How are you doing?

I would say I'm really good.

You haven't changed a minute.

What's it been, a year?

It feels like it's been a year.

Hasn't been.

No, no, no, no, no.

I think don't tell Me how to Die came out on March 4, and you and I met, like, on March 4 and a half or something like that.

Wow.

Yeah.

Oh, it's.

Really.

Yeah.

Well, let's just.

You know, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna put this little prop up there.

The subtitle is more interesting than NYPD Red 8 has.

NYPD Red has a fan base.

Nobody.

Nobody likes me, but they still think Jim Patterson writes the books.

Anyway, it's NYPD Red 8, the 1159 bomber, which sort of gives you.

Oh, this is going to be interesting.

There's a bomber and he starts blowing stuff up at 11:59am One minute before noon.

On a daily basis.

I'm not going out into the street between a quarter to nine and somewhere around dinner time, because holy crap, we know when the bomb's going off, but we don't know where.

And it goes from neighborhood to neighborhood to neighborhood.

And I remember when I was a kid growing up, we had a mad bomber in New York City.

And I reference him in the book.

It took the cops 16 years to find this guy.

Wow.

His name was George Meteski, and he was a disgruntled employee of Con Edison, the electric company who basically, I think, didn't take care of their employees who were hurt on the job.

So.

Yeah, but he was.

He was.

He was crazy.

Yeah.

Well, wait.

He was crazy.

So I'm writing about that.

Yeah, that kind of fits in with my style.

Yeah, I'm crazy is like my love language.

Crazy like a fox.

Well, now, hold on a second.

Now we.

We're shooting out of the gate.

I don't want to.

I don't want to shoot out of the gate with all this.

We're going to get to this.

Oh, okay, okay.

You know, we're going to get to that.

Okay.

No, well, but you got me started, so.

Take two.

Foreplay.

Anyway, I just.

I fucking love to write.

I love to hear from people who like what I write.

But I'm just having fun.

And I want you to have fun.

I want people to read the book.

I want people to go to the library and take it out for free.

I like to write, and I hope it shows.

All right, so you said earlier that you would actually.

And you said this under the auspices of kind of like.

I don't really want to say this, but I would write these books for free.

So is that you want to go on the record as saying you'd actually write, like, for instance, NYPD Red 8, the 1159 bomber.

So are you saying you might offer this for free or you're just saying you would like.

Oh, my problem is that my problem is always the uncomfortable balance between art and commerce.

I write a lot of stuff for free.

I don't want to get into the things that I have written for free, that have helped people, the world, whatever, and I do it because I can do it.

But I now have a publisher who plunk down money to get this into, you know, bookstores and libraries and, you know, all over the place.

And they're not in business for love.

You know what they don't call it?

Show friends.

Jerry.

Right.

One of my favorite lines.

I mean, it's so.

But if you said to me, would you help me write?

Blah, blah, blah.

Oh, I mean, I cannot tell you how many father of the bride speeches I have written that, you know, people go, oh, thank you.

You tell me when I write you an email or a text or even an inscription, you don't feel like I phoned it in.

You feel like, this guy writes to me.

That's right.

Yeah.

Because I want to read an example of that on the little note that you put in my book, David, I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

Hugs.

Kisses, Love, Marshall.

Carp right there.

Oh, it says Marshall.

It doesn't say Marshall Carp.

Oh, the printed says, but it's just signed Marshall, like, warm.

Am I right?

Well, there's a great big heart that I was just assuming was Carp.

No, it's Marshall Hart.

But okay, anyway, so listen, let me.

Jump over here because otherwise, if I don't interrupt you, you'll just be talking to yourself all day long.

So we're gonna go back to you.

And James started the series Jim Jimmy to his friends.

How did you navigate that creative handoff?

Because I don't know if I asked you this last time we talked, but I want to know how you hand handle that, that creative handoff and.

And what was like one of the biggest creative.

Let's go with creative differences and freedoms between collaborating and writing solo.

And before you answer that, I want the reason I asked that.

I was having dinner with a buddy of mine, Jack Stewart, who came into town last week, and we were talking about it and I said, you know, how is it writing with a collaborator versus on your own?

And I thought, oh, I'm gonna ask the same thing, a Marshall, because you're talking about having written with one of the really big biggies.

And I'm like, that had to have been its own unique experience.

But I also have gotten to know you pretty good, and you're kind of an opinionated, thoughtful guy with lots of.

I don't know if I hit the word opinions enough, but.

So I'm curious as to what that was like, how.

How that handoff was and the pros and cons of duo versus solo.

When you talk about collaboration, sometimes you talk about like, you know, Rogers and Hart or, you know, Roger Hammerstein or this guy and that guy.

They're kind of equal.

I was collaborating with an 800 pound gorilla.

And that's, that's a little different.

I mean, Jim has a brand, he has style.

And I knew that brand and he knew how he knew my writing.

And but the interesting is like I came to him with the concept of NYPD Red, an elite task force who jumps in whenever a crime is committed against, and sometimes by the rich and famous.

He loved his publisher, loved it.

I don't think this is, I think I've said this before.

Originally NYPD read the first book was going to be by Marshall Karp, you know, kind of presented by James Patterson.

Because I basically wrote the book and got Jim's feedback on it, but the publisher was so happy with it that they wanted to make it more co author and there goes art and commerce.

So I said yes.

But for the most part, you know, Jim is producing 30 books a year.

Some he has to like be more involved with than others, but he was involved every step of the way.

And so I had done a lot of this on my own with him basically approving or not approve it.

And there were times when I would pitch a story and he would say, no, I don't like that.

In NYPD Red 7, which is the first book I wrote without, you know, just on my own.

Without his, without the gorilla.

Yeah.

You know, and you know, the, you know, we say that affectionately.

I mean he, he's, he's the guy responsible for the James Patterson grant.

And I introduced a character in NYPD Red 7, this 18 year old documentarian, Theo Wilkins, who may or may not be the illegitimate son of the detective who's the hero, Zach Jordan.

Now I had pitched that idea to Jim and he didn't want that.

He wanted keep it clean, just focus on the heroes.

And now in NYPD Read 7, we find out a lot about that relationship between Zach and, and, and, and Theo.

And people were writing to me saying, well, what happens next?

I want to know what happens with those characters.

Because that's.

Yeah, I was going to say we find out because when I, Yeah.

That when I got to the end, I'm like, oh snap.

Yeah.

But working with Jim for the most part was easy because we're both on the same mission.

You don't have to always agree creatively.

I worked in television.

Some people were impossible to work with because they had an agenda.

Most people's agenda is like, oh, please God, don't let me get fired today.

Especially in the.

Yeah.

And so a lot of people in the business that I worked with were like, well, I had the head of comedy at One point, comedy development at a studio.

I worked for comedy was.

Had an accounting degree.

And he was promoted from business affairs to head of comedy development because one night they all went out and got drunk and he was very funny.

I'm not kidding you.

So at least I respect Jim's point of view.

The very first book I wrote for him, which was not NYPD Red, which was don't, don't, which was kill me if you can, I resisted some of the.

I resisted the Russian mob guy who was having an incestuous affair with his daughter.

And then, you know, the first sex scene I wrote that wasn't the inside.

He goes, nah, I don't like the sex scene.

And, well, he knows what readers want in a sex scene.

So we had a glass of wine.

No, I learned a lot from Jim.

And I think if chapter one, 321 prologue, 321 pages, grabs you, you could read those two pages in a bookstore.

You can read those two pages in the library.

You go, like, you could call me on the phone and I'll read you those two pages.

Actually, you would do it better.

But it's a compliment to say that.

And so we got to the point where I really wanted to take over the series and Jim was now branching out.

He was working with President Clinton and Dolly Parton and the estate of Michael Crichton and Jeffrey Epstein.

It was like he was beyond doing, you know, the sequel to NYPD Red.

So we, I wound up owning the property.

There you go.

And it was.

I mean, he did a video say, from now on, Marshall is writing.

And I can't wait to read it because I'm going to be surprised at the ending.

So it was like, you learn a lot and then you go off into business yourself with the blessing of, you know, I could not do what Jim does, which is produce that many books a year, trusting a lot of other writers.

I'm a different kind of writer.

And that's why.

That's why I don't have a mansion in Palm Beach.

All right, so let's do this since we only have 30 minutes.

And that was question two.

And I've got 10.

Let me get moving here.

Not that we have to stick to my script, but because we often don't.

But I want to talk about the heart behind the action, because here's one things I've picked up from your books.

They're always there.

They always have great way to blend big scale cinematic plots, which is one of the reasons I like your writing, because you.

We write similarly, like cinematic.

When I write, I see the picture.

You write the same way, but also it's the way you embed the very human relationships.

There's a lot of heart in there.

So I want to, I want you to tell my listeners how you balance that emotional depth with all that adrenaline fueled pacing, especially like you did with a prologue.

How do you do that?

What's that?

Talk to me in the simple answer.

It's two things.

You can get complicated if you need to.

Well, I'm only on question three.

I don't want to like being a television writer, being a film writer, having been in the advertising business.

I don't think plot or I certainly don't think only plot.

I think character.

And I think two things.

One is what is going on in the heart and mind of my character right now as I write?

Because if this guy got punched in the face in chapter six and then I didn't get back to him till chapter 17 and that's been like two months.

Gotta remember that he just got punched in the face.

Yeah, he's still like, ow.

And it sounds like, well, wouldn't everybody?

No, a lot of times you just forget.

You start writing what you want to write, not remembering how the character feels.

What is going on?

What is the character thinking?

I mean, with Zach and with this kid Theo, Zack is going, do I talk to this kid?

He's already happy with the father he's got.

What do I say?

And the other thing is, years and years ago, working in television, I was asked this question by this brilliant guy who was very successful, Richard Dorso.

Why do people come back to the same show over and over?

And it's simply because they love the predictable emotional experience they get from spending time with those people.

And the example is Cheers or Seinfeld or Grey's Anatomy or any.

The plot changes every week.

But you don't remember all those plots of the Office.

You just remember that Michael Scott was such an idiot and Pam and Jim were so in love and they couldn't express it.

And you know, and Mindy Kaling was all Mindy Kay.

I mean, it was just.

It's the characters.

I want to see them behaving.

It's like, why do you go out to dinner with the same people when you have a lot more friends on your, in your contact?

Why do you like, like to hang on the phone or do something with this guy or that guy?

It's because you enjoy that experience.

And characters, characters give you that experience.

So the emotional hot buttons that you feel Is because in the middle of real life, people are real.

And.

And I can.

I, I.

It's.

I'm going to call it a gift that I can be in touch with that.

Yeah, well, and it's so funny to answer that question myself is as I get older, and especially having now gone through cancer and so forth, and it makes you realize how precious life is without getting too corny and how little time you got.

And so really, when you think about it, and Tammy and I were talking about this over the holiday when we were on vacation, I, like, we.

We spend most of our time together, a very select few people.

I'm going to your point.

So you find something in their character or their personality, the way they share their life with you, and you just want to hang out with them, and that's kind of the way that you're saying about your characters.

Let me move along here.

All right, now let's talk about the craft of continuity, because again, eight books in this particular series keeping characters like Kylie and Zach, which, I mean, I love that.

Keeping them fresh, that's no easy feat.

I mean, come on.

We all know that as writers, but what's your process for tracking their evolution?

And I kind of.

I was looking at.

I was.

Okay, I was, you know, I was following you on Instagram and so forth and on Facebook, and I see where you were sitting.

You're right.

And I'm like, does he have master boards in his office where he goes, like, here's the characters and here's their arc, and this is where they're going?

And so do you, like, do you track their evolution?

Do you keep long time, you know, in order to keep those longtime fans satisfied, or do you just, like, go with the emotion and what you recall?

How do you keep track of your life?

I mean, how do you keep track of your friend?

I mean, I remember the backstories when I was working with Jim, the editor at Little Brown would.

The copy editor.

There were no developmental editors.

The copy editor would say, um, well, in book four, they said they knew each other, you know, for 11 years.

And now you're saying 12 years, but it only went from July.

So you have fact checkers, that kind of thing.

But also you feel a certain kind of confidence that that's not what the reader cares about.

If I accidentally, you know, say that, you know, we did this last year, and it was, you know, you do your best to keep the continuity, but that's.

That's not a problem.

You.

I mean, you want to know.

So in Red 8, Kylie's husband, legally married husband appears.

And I think he vanished at the end of Red four.

And he was gone through five, six, seven, and he comes back and then I have to figure out how many years he's, you know, so you do a lot of, you know, there's no AI involved.

It's just police.

It's police work.

Who was I talking to not long ago when they were talking about they.

They.

I want to say maybe it was Kyle Mills.

We're talking about writing series versus standalones.

And this person, whoever it was, said one of the biggest reasons they like doing standalones, it's two big reasons.

One is they don't want to keep track of all the characters and the timelines of a series.

And number two was they said, I have so many fresh ideas at any given moment, then that why would I.

Why would I stay in one particular pot?

I want to jump out of the pot to a new pot.

And I.

And I thought about that because I always thought, well, you know, you want to, you want to do a series because you know that's going to sell and so forth.

But really interesting take on that, I think.

I've written several standalones and Don't Tell Me how to Die, Snowstorm in August, but I think a series because again, the predictable emotional experience of being.

Also, if you go into a publisher and, you know, here's the.

The book of my life where I was, you know, resurrected and, you know, and I won the lottery and this happened and that happened and they go like, you have six more like that.

Well, no, it was one time, you know, No, I mean, publishers don't make a lot of money on the first book.

Witness Slow Horses.

Now, all that stuff that the television show has helped the book catch on the series and now you want.

I think from a business standpoint, you have a better chance.

If people look at this and say, this could be a series, that's compliment to say this could be a series.

It means I, I don't care what the plot is.

I want to be back with these characters.

They were so much fun.

You took me from page one to page 378 and I still want more of them.

I love it.

It goes back to your very opening statement about being character driven.

And we tune in for the familiarity and the attraction to the characters.

Now let's talk about plotting the perfect crime.

You've written.

You've.

Well, perfect Being Relative.

You've written complex thrillers that hinge on precision.

And that's kind of one thing I pick up on.

On your stuff.

And I. I like precision.

I'm telling Tammy all the time.

I like things that are precise about.

I like people who really know their stuff, and they operate within that world with that same precision.

Now, what's your system for building that layered mystery where you just stack it up, that it feels both unpredictable and inevitable?

You've got a really great way to do that.

I don't know.

Okay.

David.

I'm just damn good at what I do, and I just jump in there and I just.

But I think solving a crime in real life, committing a crime in real life, and solving a crime in real life takes planning and execution.

And I work with a retired NYPD homicide detective.

I've mentioned him.

Danny Corcoran.

Danny Corcoran.

And Danny.

I mean, the feedback that I am getting on NYPD Red 8 is so good because you did hit on an important thing.

The intricacy of how these crimes are going and how they're, you know, how it's evolving and it's really well thought out.

That's because I'm working with a guy who spent 24 plus years in the department, and he knows the ins and outs.

It's why so many cops are fans of NYPD Red and of Lomax and Biggs.

Because I understand Michael Connolly is great at this stuff.

Oh, yeah.

You know, I mean, there are.

There.

Michael Connelly knows what he's doing when it comes.

He was a crime reporter, he's a journalist.

So I think partly it's all that attention to detail, because you have to respect that your audience is going to catch you if you get it wrong.

And Danny is there to help me get it right and certainly keep me from getting it wrong.

Yeah, yeah.

And you guys have been pals a long time, right?

I mean, he's kind of there over your shoulder for years.

It was.

Again, you know, he had me at hello.

All right.

Lessons from a career in storytelling.

Let's do this.

You, as you mentioned earlier, you've worn all these creative hats.

I mean, at the young, ripe age of 49, you've managed to do all of this stuff, which is just amazing.

I'm going on 126.

I told you.

TV films, novels.

What lessons?

And I'm particularly fascinated by screenwriting because I just.

I love that world.

What lessons from your screenwriting background?

Let's take that little departure, for example.

Most informed.

The way you write a thriller.

Keep it moving.

And just because two people are talking doesn't mean they should just be sitting there.

Talking, Give them some business, put them in a garden, put them in a diner, put them in a car chase.

I worked in a visual medium and I do my best to think visually.

That's, that's why I forget.

I, I don't even know which book it was.

I, it was six or seven.

It was, you know, they are.

The, the guy thereafter is, is in a blood mobile that was at, at, you know, Citi Field, met, you know, where the Mets play.

And he was, you know, taking blood and the cops were after him, he jumped and he drives the bloodmobile like a maniac.

And I'm thinking like, give me something that the best action directors would want to shoot.

Give me stuff that lends itself to film.

You make it come alive.

When you make it cinematic.

You're painting the picture without telling the reader.

You're painting a picture.

God, you could cut that out.

It took too long.

Yeah, I think I will, because that was all right.

If only people were watching this far.

But yeah, no, they left a long time ago.

I want to do a little reflective thing.

I want to get off your book for a second because these are the kind of questions that just every once in a while I like to ask for the pure of it.

If you could go back to your 15 year old self and just say, hey, listen, knowing what you know today, what would you go back and tell 15 year old Marshall as he was trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life, if indeed he was trying to figure that.

Out at 15, I would say, schmuck, you like to write, don't you?

And I write to pen.

I was writing, I was writing short stories.

My high school English teacher told me.

And yet I had decided that when I would go to college that I would actually go to college to become a dentist.

Because I didn't think there was.

I thought writing was just something you did, like you, you know, nobody pays you to go home and eat dinner.

Nobody pays you to like, you know, take a nap.

Right?

It was just.

But I would have really told my younger self, this is, this is not a job.

This is your calling.

Don't, don't dick around for as long.

Now, I did go for dentistry.

I found myself in journalism in college, but I didn't know.

And then I got into advertising, which is a business.

I didn't know that the depth of creativity, I didn't know the well that was there.

And so I spent a lot of years.

It wasn't until I was like in my late 30s and very successful That I did that classic, is this all there is?

You know what I really want to do in life?

I want to write stuff that people listen to people read.

I would tell him that you have something that you can haunt.

I used to write stories in my head when I was five, six years old.

I was actually in.

I was go to sleep and I was now reading, reading books.

And I was going to write a book that had cowboys and baseball players and mystery and Hardy Boys and cool stuff in it.

And it was like.

But I never took myself seriously.

And that would be a good thing to have known.

And I don't know if I would have believed my older self, but that's what I would tell myself again, you know, hey, schmuck.

And it's so funny.

I was.

As you were telling that story, I think of Ted Bell, James Patterson, both said a similar thing.

We got up close to the top or at the top or over the top and realized, I mean, this is good and I'm making a shit ton of money and I'm having fun, but there's gotta be more.

And it's so funny that all three of you said almost the exact same.

Thing, because in our hearts, we want to write.

Yeah, that's what we want to do.

And yeah, my writing helped me become successful and get to the top of running a huge creative department.

But.

But it wasn't the.

I didn't want to write for corporate America.

I wanted to write for the rest of the world.

The book is NYPD Red 8, the 1159 bomber.

But you feel like you're going to get two books in one because there's 12 chapters at the end, 10, plus two preliminary chapters of Don't Tell Me how to Die.

So in case you didn't hear our former conversation back in March about Don't Tell Me how to Die, you can start the book here, read, of course this book and then go get that book.

So really, you can pre order this now, get that book, read them both back to back because that's how much carb you want at now.

And if you hurry, if you order before midnight, I have these Ginsu.

No, I don't have any Ginsu knives left.

Remember those?

All right, listen, closing comment.

I know we mentioned this back in March, but for the listeners who have joined the show since that show premiered, best writing advice is kind of the button on the end of my show.

Everyone gives their best writing advice.

So maybe it's changed since last we spoke, maybe it hasn't.

But if someone is sitting at home or driving a car or on vacation.

And they're listening to this and they're thinking, geez, Dave, are you going to ask Marshall if he has a best piece of writing advice?

So give it to me, baby.

Right?

Crap.

Write a chapter of total crap.

Write another chapter.

It doesn't matter.

The only way you're going to get to a book that you can edit is to have something on paper.

Write every day.

Think about writing.

Don't worry if it's good or bad.

Don't beat yourself up.

Just write.

Don't judge.

Write every day.

And a professional writer is an amateur who did not quit, folks.

You would think his website was marshallcarp.com but don't let that fool you because it's carp kills dot com, dude.

Closing comment.

I loved the book.

It was so much fun.

Like I said at the beginning, the prologue takes your breath away.

By the way, little sneak peek.

I'm going to give you a little.

The very final chapter, the very last one before the, you know, the blurb on Don't Tell Me how to Die is almost equally as good as the prologue.

So I haven't.

Very seldom do you see the bookends of a story start with a bang, literally, and end with a bang.

Can I give a shout out to my, my developmental editor, Michael Carr, who said when I was writing that last chapter and he said, why don't you like parallel it to the prologue chapter?

I went, ah, great, great idea.

I don't see me here in the end of the acknowledgment.

Oh, that's going to be in the souvenir edition.

Souvenir edition.

No, I didn't know you when.

I didn't know you when I was writing that book.

This one.

You didn't know me then?

No, I was already finished when we met in March.

Well.

So NYPD9, right?

I will see you again down the road very soon.

Thank you for your time.

It's always a pleasure.

It's been terrific.

And you know, when we're offline, we'll talk.

But I'm a big.

I am.

I am your biggest fan.

You are Me and Tammy, so.

You and Tammy.

And thank you.

Thank your audience and for those of you who, for those of you who stayed, look under your seats.

There's a gift certificate to Taco Bell.

All right.

All right.

See you.