Dying
For History-Key Elements of My Novels
By
Tj O’Connor, author of Dying to Know & Dying for the Past
Every good book I’ve ever read intrigued me not just because of the main story, but because it had subplots and vignettes that kept the main story buoyed with a touch of complexity and diversion. One of my favorite subplot techniques is the interweaving of real history into the storyline. There are many facets of using historical events as a subplot in my stories that I enjoy. Among them, performing research and finding twists and turns from real-life events are my favorites. The old adage, “History Repeats Itself” has become a mainstay subplot of my novels.
Let me give you a few examples.
Dying to Know—In my debut novel, dead-detective Oliver “Tuck”
Tucker is faced with solving his own murder and dealing with a series of grisly
others. Some of the murders go back over forty years. The historical subplot
revolves around the American Civil War—a significant era in the history of real-life
city Winchester, Virginia. The story, and resulting murders, begin when the
discovery of unmarked Civil War remains threatens to halt a multi-million
dollar development project. The battle between history and development is a
fact in Winchester. For years, the county has considered building a highway
bypass around parts of the city. But in its path is at least one Civil War
battlefield. More angst and skirmishes have resulted over this conflict than
perhaps in some of the many battles Winchester actually fought in the war. If
you know anything about historical sites, you might know that the protection of
historical lands often trump new construction, development, and even some
modern zoning laws across our country. And trust me, getting in the way of
development is a sure fire way of creating a crisis in your community. Land
barons are often in battle over future development with societies sworn to
protect historical sites. In Dying to
Know, the land dispute and Civil War connections to Tuck’s murder are
rooted in real Winchester History and drive the story from several viewpoints.
Dying for the Past—Tuck and his pals are back in Book II and
encounter the death of a mysterious philanthropist who seems to have a wad of
Grover Clevelands in his pocket—1930’s Gold Certificate one-thousand dollar
bills. Notwithstanding a plethora of sketchy characters, Dying for the Past’s historical subplot focuses on 1930’s mobsters
and their pre-World War II collaboration with our own FBI. This theme follows
Tuck and others chasing “The Book”—an old mobster’s journal detailing Nazi and
Russian spy rings around Washington D.C. and New York City. This subplot is
based on true events in our history. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the U.S.
Government sought the help of folks who knew our ports, rail yards,
transportation hubs, and the gritty underbelly of American cities where spies
and saboteurs might hang out. Who did they turn to? The second largest
intelligence network in the country—organized crime. During those days, the U.S.
was concerned about Nazi, Japanese, Russian, and even Italian efforts to
conduct wartime sabotage and subversion operations against us here at home.
Organized crime families had deep inroads into some of the biggest targets in
the country—New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, and many other port
cities. Well-known gangsters such as Lucky Luciano were reputed to have
assisted American authorities in the war effort. In Luciano’s case, his
organization reportedly helped gather intelligence for the invasion of Sicily
and in the protection of New York’s ports against saboteurs and spies.
Borrowing from these historical vignettes, I transposed some of the mob
connections to Winchester and molded the plot around just such a storyline—1930’s
mobsters helping track World War II spy rings. The result, with some colorful
characters involved in the present day murders, set the foundation for a murder
plot that lasted for more than seventy-five years.
New Sins for Old Scores—In
an unrelated mystery series that my brilliant agent, Kimberley Cameron, is
offering to the market as we speak, I use a real World War II OSS operation—Office
of Strategic Services—and superimpose it into present-day Northern Virginia.
The story surrounds Richard Jax, a Virginia State Police investigator under
suspicion for the murder of his partner. Jax is thrust into the story when he
is almost killed after stumbling onto a strange human-trafficking operation out
of an old World War II Inn. Unbeknownst to him, he connects with Captain Trick
McCall—a murdered OSS Operative from World War II—who was believed a double
agent who betrayed his country. Together, they pursue their two cases—separated
by seventy years—and learn that history is repeating itself. The story
surrounds real-life Operation Paperclip,
the American OSS operation to spirit scientists and industrialists out of
war-torn Europe before the Nazi or Russians could further exploit them. Operation Paperclip was responsible for
the U.S. making significant scientific gains, especially nuclear and jet
propulsion technology, being explored by the Germans. In New Sins for Old Scores,
I superimposed this human-capitol operation into modern-day Middle Eastern
theaters of combat, and added in a rogue element of prior World War II
operatives and modern-day mercenaries who move Middle Easterners out of
Afghanistan and Iraq to the U.S.—for profit and exploitation. This spin on Operation Paperclip helped me create a
viable plot that was worth murder to keep secret, and linked the modern human
traffickers to real-world World War II spy exploits. It also raises the
question—could it really be happening? So once again, I took a historical episode
and superimposed it into a modern-day murder mystery to create the environment
and plot necessary for my characters to be plunged into crisis and murder—and
link their cases to crimes of the past.
History appeals to me in many ways as a reader, but it
motivates me as an author. In a time that every plot and every character-type
seems to have been written over and over as often as redos of Superman, historical events give me a
foundation of facts for which I can create new plots and characters, and
hopefully offer a new spin on intrigue.
I have two other novels—Dying to Tell and The
Killing of Tyler Quinn—that have a historical subplot woven into modern-day
mysteries. But I’ll save those discussions for another time.
Learn about his world at www.tjoconnor.com and Facebook at www.facebook.com/TjOConnor.Author.
This Blog also appears at http://midnightwriters.blogspot.com/
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