He's got a dynamite story, loves doing press and has no discernible sense of shame. Enlisting the help of a retired L.A. County Sheriff's Department homicide detective named Bill Stoner, he sifts through piles of decades-old evidence, rousting octogenarian witnesses and suspects and gradually learning how to truly mourn his loss. Tall and lean, he's so amped up even in his married middle-age that it's a bit frightening to imagine him as an adolescent speed freak. I solved the case in that book.
People expect that in a detective novel.
People will probably hope for that with this book, and it doesn't exactly happen. I was still caddying full-time at a Los Angeles country club and I wanted to get rid of the story. I wanted to prove myself impervious to my mother's presence and to get on with it. I made my father the killer, even though in real life my father was with me at the time the crime occurred. I didn't know at that time that you can't run from such an overweening presence.