David Putnam’s seventh novel, a fast-moving police thriller about the world of Los Angeles County officer Bruno Johnson, involves a hunt for escaped convicts through the meanest streets of Los Angeles. The premise certainly isn’t unfamiliar. Bruno and the bad guy, an escaped sociopathic killer with a foot fetish named Louis Barkow, will have their climactic reckoning.
But here’s what separates The Heartless (Oceanview Publishing) from the pack: The conflict between Bruno and Barkow is scaffolding around a rich, surprising and more intimate story that will touch you deeply. It’s an all-too-human mess of guilt, survival instincts, rage and regrets tied to a rapidly deteriorating relationship with his teenage daughter, Olivia, that would break any parent’s heart.
We asked the author about the father-daughter relationship and a lot more, and he provided some fascinating insights into how his writing evolves.
Q: How do you create a character that on the outside is in the thick of solving violent crimes with “mean streets” characters and on the inside shows a range of sensitivity and emotion for his teenage daughter?
A: Tough question. I use several techniques that lean a little toward a mechanical process. After character development (voice being the Big Kahuna of writing), I believe conflict carries the story, and emotion is conflict. So, actually the action of Bruno thwarting the bad guys doesn’t necessarily fit in the emotional category.
I write by MAR (Motivation, Action, Reaction), which means for every motivation there has to be an equal action and reaction from the character. This means I try to strike a balance between his personal life and the plot — how the plot impacts his personal life as it pertains to MAR. The action is only the catalyst for the emotion or how Bruno and his family react to the action.
Q: In that Bruno Johnson is a recurring character comprising a series of books, how do you keep him fresh from book to book and keep his character evolving?
A: With all my books I use a snapshot of my career, an emotional incident or even an entire section of my career. Which in one respect makes it easy. The difficult part is the Motivation (MAR) and the transition to the caper or what on the surface looks to be the plot of the book. When in reality it’s the emotions created by the plot.
I ran into a real problem after book four (The Vanquished). I left Bruno emotionally and physically crushed. The publisher loved it but said it was going to be difficult to bring Bruno back from how I left him.
I had not realized this issue until they brought it to my attention. Rather than deal with the problem, I chose to write four prequels or what the publisher calls “Bruno, The Early Years.” And here again, I simply used time (position in my career / and position in Bruno’s family life) as my transition to separate these four books. The four early-year books are: The Innocents, The Reckless, The Heartless, and The Ruthless (Due out February 2021). Book nine I went back and picked up where I left off after The Vanquished. That book is The Sinister, due out February 2022.
Q: Tell us about your writing process; do you map out a story entirely in advance, or come to points along the way where you make some unplanned turns?
A: I don’t outline at all. I start with a theme and three plotlines. During the servicing of these plotlines (call this scene sequencing), the story unfolds all on its own. I start every day by going back 20 pages and working forward. This keeps the emotion and cadence on an even keel. Then I work forward four pages. Each scene has to have the five things a scene needs to work. With MAR, scene sequencing, the theme and the three plotlines, the book virtually writes itself.
Q: What do you hope readers will take away from The Heartless?
A: The theme or evolution of The Heartless is the relationship between a father and daughter, how each must make compromises.
Q: Tell us a fun fact about yourself that might enhance readers’ enjoyment of The Heartless.
A: At the end of each book, I write an Author’s Note which describes as best I can what is real in the book and what is fictitious. One of the main plots in The Heartless is how six murder suspects escaped from the San Bernardino County Jail. True story. I’d left the Violent Crimes Team and was working smuggling out of Ontario Airport. I was pulled back in to chase these escapees. Specifics of that chase are folded into the story. And the shoe fetish had a little more bite to it, but I toned it down.
Q: What’s the next project?
A: After each book I feel hollowed out — empty. And each time, I have this need to write a memoir. But I can’t ever get it to flow, so I put it down. I’m on my fifth try at it right now. It’s more a placeholder until I get regenerated with a Bruno idea. I like the character Helen Hellinger in book nine, and as of right now I’m planning on bringing her back in book ten.
The Heartless is now available for purchase; read our review here. For more on Putnam, please visit his BookTrib author profile.
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About David Putnam:
Best-selling author David Putnam comes from a family of law enforcement and always wanted to be a cop. During his career, he did it all: worked in narcotics, served on FBI-sponsored violent crimes teams, and was cross-sworn as a US Marshal, pursuing murder suspects and bank robbers in Arizona, Nevada and California. Putnam did two tours on the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s SWAT team. He also has experience in criminal intelligence and internal affairs and has supervised corrections, patrol and a detective bureau. In Hawaii, Putnam was a member of the real-life Hawaii Five-0, serving as Special Agent for the Attorney General investigating smuggling and white-collar crimes. The Heartless is the seventh in the Bruno Johnson series and the third of the “young” Bruno prequels. Putnam lives in Southern California with his wife, Mary.
