In January of 1976 I was in a motel on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama, trying to write a book. Six months earlier I’d left New York in a rusted-out Ford wagon, bound for California and in no rush to get there. I was going through what the British call a bad patch. I kept starting books and abandoning them after thirty or forty or fifty pages, unable to think of a reason for the characters to Go On.
In Mobile I wrote about a burglar who gets in touch with the detective who arrested him years ago. The burglar’s out now, and up to his old tricks, and has had the ill fortune to happen on a murder scene, at once becoming its leading suspect and a fugitive from justice. He wants the detective to clear him. I wrote the opening chapter, took a good look at what I’d written, tore it up and threw it out and drove to Sardis, Mississippi. Don’t ask why.
Two months later I was in LA, finally, living in a place called the Magic Hotel. I couldn’t figure out what the hell to do. For over fifteen years I’d made my living writing, and now I seemed unable to do that.
Don’t rule out crime, a little voice said.
Crime had much to recommend it. You didn’t have to cobble up a resumé or provide references. There were no forms to fill out, no taxes and Social Security withheld from your pay. You just took money and ran.
And suppose you got caught? Well, for heaven’s sake, they fed you and clothed you and housed you. Not the worst thing that could happen to a person, was it?
Hmmm.
But what kind of crime could I possibly commit? Nothing violent, certainly. Nothing where I might be called upon to hurt somebody, or, worse yet, where somebody might be called upon to hurt me. Nothing with guns or sharp objects. Nothing like con games, either, that involved duplicitous interaction with others. Indeed, nothing that involved any interaction with others. I didn’t seem to be all that good at interaction just then.
Burglary, I thought. Go in when nobody’s home, get out before they return. You work alone, and in pleasant surroundings-Robin Hood, after all, had just shown good sense in stealing from the rich. You avoid all human contact. You don’t shoot anyone, and no one shoots you.
How seriously did I entertain the notion? Beats me. I did go so far as to try to learn to open my motel-room door without the key, utterly ruining a credit card in the process. (No great loss, that. That card had long since ceased to open any doors for me.)
Then I thought about the plot notion I’d gotten nowhere with back in Mobile. Maybe if I lost the detective and just told the burglar’s story, maybe something would come of it.
So I sat down at the typewriter to see what would happen.
I never thought it would come out funny. The notion I had in mind seemed like pretty serious business, but on the very first page Bernie appeared full-blown, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. (Well, maybe not much like Athena. And maybe from somewhere other than the brow…)
I wrote three or four chapters and a vague outline. All I needed was a title, and I found that while I was proofreading. Burglars can’t be choosers, Bernie mused, and I looked up, startled. I didn’t remember writing the line, but I knew a title when I saw one.
I sent it to my agent, who sent it to Lee Wright at Random House, who sent me a contract. I went back to work on the book. In July my kids came out to LA to spend the summer with me. They joined me for a month at the Magic Hotel, and then we spent August driving back east. Now and then we’d stay someplace for several days in a row so that I could get in some work on the book. One place we stopped was Yellow Springs, Ohio, where we stayed with my friends Steve and Nancy Schwerner. I talked to them about the book and said I was having problems with the solution. “Oh, that’s easy,” Steve said, and told me who he figured had dunnit. I decided he was right.
I dropped the girls with their mother in New York and wound up finishing the book in Greenville, South Carolina. (Don’t ask why.) I was very pleased with the way the book had turned out, but I never thought I’d be writing anything else about Bernie. Shows what I know.
– Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village
July 1994