"Am I in Your Book?"

I once heard a verifiable rumor that someone with clout thought she was “in” one of my mystery novels and was pissed off enough to consult a lawyer (who said a lawsuit was a waste of time). This was a bizarre situation because the woman wasn’t remotely in my book, not even near my book. The character she was outraged by was the villain, though, so the complaint intrigued me: this person apparently had a guilty conscience.

On the other hand, a fan once jokingly said, “You should put me in one of your mysteries” and I walked away smiling. Because this fan--a lifetime academic--had apparently read them all without realizing I’d drawn on a dramatic incident from his life as a plot point in one of the books. So you could say that my fan made a phantom guest appearance. Sort of. Or maybe just a contribution.

The thing is, nobody gets shoved wholesale into my books from real life. Each one of my characters is a composite of fact and fiction, heavy on the latter.

Take Juno Dromgoole in my Nick Hoffman mystery series. She’s a luscious professor of Canadian Studies who’s beautiful, foul-mouthed, and quite intemperate. Think of her as a combination of Chaka Khan and Bette Midler in looks and attitude.

By making her over-the-top I was playing with the American image of Canadians as quiet and well-mannered. How was she born? She was actually inspired by several different women I met at a mystery conference. But the more I worked with her, the more she became sculpted by the storyline and interactions with other characters and the further away she grew from her “sources.”

Curiously, I did once run into a woman who looked and dressed just as I envisioned Juno did, when I was staying in a German hotel on a book tour--and she was Italian!

The smallest thing can inspire me: a look, a gesture, an outfit, a snarky line, an accent--and suddenly a grain of sand is on its way to becoming a pearl. That’s how real people can make their way into my fiction, but always through shards, fragments, bits and pieces.

For me, people are just partial models and sometimes inspiration. Fiction—and the reality of a manuscript that changes as you write it—sculpts them into something completely different from what they were until they become unrecognizable. If it’s good, of course.

Lev Raphael is the author of The Edith Wharton Murders and 26 others books in many genres. The Edith Wharton Murders was his first book to be reviewed by The New York Times Book Review. It was truly a life-changing event because of the prestige it offered—and because of the juicy pull-quote his publishers could recycle on other mysteries for years afterward.

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