Steve Hamilton has either won or been nominated for virtually every major crime fiction award, including the Edgar, Dagger, Shamus, Anthony, Barry, and Gumshoe, among others. His Alex McKnight series involves ten bestselling and highly acclaimed books. His standalones include Night Work, and The Lock Artist which won the Edgar and Barry Awards for best novel of 2011.

 The Second Life of Nick Mason was Steve’s first entry in a new series. Nick Mason is an ex-con, trying to break away from his criminal past. Because of an arrangement with Darius Cole, a Chicago crime lord, he’s been released early from prison. But because of that favor, Nick finds himself forced to commit increasingly more dangerous crimes while being pursued by the detective responsible for putting him behind bars.

Exit Strategy, the second in the Nick Mason series, finds Nick assigned to ever more dangerous missions: he must infiltrate the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program and kill the three men responsible for Darius Cole’s life-sentence conviction. But Nick is being hunted by the very man he replaced, a ruthless assassin who once served Darius Cole.

The first lines of Exit Strategy are: “You kill one person, it changes you. You kill five…it’s not about changing anymore. It’s who you are.” Talk about the importance of the opening lines of a thriller novel.

It’s sort of like the first few notes in a rock song. it puts you there right away. Those opening lines set the tone for everything that happens afterwards. And, it serves as a hook for the reader. It sets up the whole scenario about Nick Mason.

Speaking of Nick Mason’s scenario, he’s something of an anti-hero. What do you feel makes him so appealing?

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by how well he’s been received. He’s not someone I would ever have tried to write about when I was starting out.

He’s not Alex McKnight, that’s for sure.

Absolutely. Alex, who spent his life on the right side of the law, is now getting reluctantly dragged into things. A few years back, I wrote a book about a young safecracker—The Lock Artist—which was a departure for me.

Nick Mason is even a bigger departure. He’s a career criminal, and he’s in prison—not because he was wrongly accused—but because he made a huge mistake. As a writer, I found him to be a bit of a challenge to depict convincingly. I wondered if I could make the reader root for him.

I found the dynamic of his wanting to get out of prison to see his family to be very compelling. If he could make amends for his mistake, the reader would come to like and relate to him. But the circumstances he finds himself in—having to answer to Darius Cole and do whatever he’s told to do, no matter what it is—are horrifying. It’s turned into such a pressure cooker for him, and he’s just trying to survive.

True, he’s living in a nice townhouse and has a car and money provided by Darius Cole, but on the other hand, his life’s a total nightmare.  No matter which way he turns, he’s between Scylla and Charybdis.

There’s a surprising twist at the end of Exit Strategy. Tell us about the role of twists in thrillers.

Twists are what it’s all about. There’s almost a bit of cruelty in my writing this kind of twist into Nick’s life.

Be it a thriller or a literary work, the role of the twist is to knock the protagonist off-balance, and the reader as well. I know I love reading a novel that throws me an unexpected curve ball.

It’s like life itself.

Yes, it is. [Laughter]. How many of us could have imagined we’d be exactly where we are at this moment?

Nick Mason is a very different character from Alex McKnight, your first series protagonist. Talk to us about character development in your novels.

He’s different from Alex McKnight, yet, they actually have things in common. They’re both very loyal people and are dedicated to what they do. Mason was very careful about what he did as a criminal and does his best to live by a certain code, as does Alex McKnight. I think they’re sort of mirror images of each other.

If you recall the diner scene in the movie Heat, Robert Di Niro and Al Pacino sit across the table from each other and realize they’ve got a lot more in common than they thought.

When I create any character, I’m looking for a fully-realized person in every way. Even if I’m writing a villain like Darius Cole, I try to construct understandable reasons for what he does.

People are multi-faceted with reasons behind their actions and I do my best to portray that in my novels.

You wrote your first twelve books—some of which were bestsellers—while working for IBM, writing at night after your family had gone to bed. Tell us about your path to success.

I always wanted to be a writer. After graduating from college and working for IBM, I knew I wanted to keep that promise to myself. For a long time, I was living a double life: working during the day and writing at night. A lot of people do that—even some very successful authors. John Grisham was working as a lawyer, and Raymond Chandler was an oil company executive.

I think it’s what you have to do to make that dream come true. I was very fortunate that after a number of years, it really did happen for me.

 You have an idea for a novel, be it about Nick Mason, Alex McKnight or a standalone book. What’s it like when you first sit down to write that novel? Do you have butterflies, or feel nervous?

[Laugher] Yes, it’s terrifying trying to create something out of nothing—staring at an empty page or a blank computer screen. Even now, it doesn’t get any easier, and I don’t think it should.

If it ever gets too easy, I’m probably not doing my best work. I think every new book should be scary.

 Has your process of shaping novels changed since writing that first one? How do you go from the initial idea for a novel to the finished manuscript?

It’s different now. With most of the Alex McKnight books, I was learning how to write a crime novel, and how to write a series.  I never really knew where I was going to end up with a story. It may seem like a romantic way to write a novel, but as I kept doing it, I found establishing the structure of the story produced a better result for me.

By the time I wrote the first Nick Mason novel, I knew where I was going. I wasn’t getting lost in the plotline. I could still surprise the reader without being surprised myself. When I wrote The Second Life of Nick Mason, I already had seven future novels laid out in my mind.

 What’s your writing day like?

Every writer has a different method of writing novels. I know many writers get up at dawn and write. That always surprises me because I’m something of a night owl. I do my best work after dark. Maybe it’s just a continuation of when I was still working at a day job and wrote at night.

 I know you have a few people you’ve used as your first readers. What role do they play in producing the book that goes to print?

Years ago when I joined a writers’ group, I promised myself I’d find a few people whose judgment and opinions I could trust to improve my manuscripts.

Bill and Frank were two guys I’d see every week when I was writing the McKnight books. They helped me tremendously.

Now, I work with Shane Salerno, my agent. He helps keep me on track. An important part of being a writer is listening to someone you can trust—someone who will tell you if you’re going off the rails or if you’re headed in the right direction. Shane does that for me.

 You’ve written both standalone novels and series. What differences and difficulties do you find in these approaches?

When I write a series, it feels like each book is one piece of a larger landscape. One book leads into another. There’s an expansive arc to the entire story, encompassed by the series itself.

In a standalone, I’m trying to tell a compelling story within one volume. In a way, I’m trying to encompass an entire life in one book.

 How far along the process is Lionsgate in bringing Nick Mason to life on the big screen?

It’s in development. They’re still on track with it and there’s going to be a big announcement in the next few days.

Who do you see playing Nick Mason?

I guess I wish it could be a young Steve McQueen. He was someone who had the qualities that could make you want to root for the character. But now, since that’s not possible, I’m glad someone with casting expertise will be making that call.

 What’s coming next from Steve Hamilton?

I’m working on the next Nick Mason book and have already turned in the next Alex McKnight book.

Congratulations on writing Exit Strategy, a compelling trek across very dark terrain putting Nick Mason through increasingly pulse-pounding paces with so much non-stop suspense, I read the book in two sittings.

Review: Beyond Bedlam’s Door : True Tales from the Couch and Courtroom by Mark Rubinstein

Case studies are a longstanding teaching and continuing education vehicle. In the last two decades, they’ve emerged from the halls of medical, business and other schools to bookstore popular nonfiction sections and best selling lists. The popularity of books by neurologist Oliver Sacks contributed to an avalanche of such books, the problem being that few matched his skills. Mark Rubinstein deftly avoids the many pitfalls of the genre in Beyond Bedlam’s Door: True Tales from the Couch and Courtroom, his second book of vignettes from his four decades as a psychiatrist.

It follows the same format as his first such book, last year’s Bedlam’s Door:True Tales of Madness and Hope. Both tell the stories of a variety of patients, each followed by an “Afterword” addressing the particular issues or conditions at play. In this way Rubinstein seeks to not only make each patient’s story personal and relatable but to explain psychiatric conditions and their ramifications for the individual, their family and society.

Bedlam’s Door, a term used when an emergency room becomes “a revolving carousel of psychosis,” portrays patients Rubinstein encountered at various medical facilities. Beyond Bedlam’s Door is just what its title and subtitle suggest: accounts of his work outside the institutional setting, whether treating someone in private practice or as a forensic psychiatrist.

Rubinstein uses an almost parable-like approach in the 21 stories in Beyond Bedlam’s Door to illustrate the diversity of psychiatric issues and what psychiatrists do. Among the topics he explores are professional malpractice, the difficulty of treating adolescents, the importance of doctor-patient boundaries, and the difference between crossing those boundaries and violating them.

His method of recounting patient histories in the form of reconstructed conversations provides a foundation by which Beyond Bedlam’s Door intelligibly explains and demystifies a variety of mental health issues, from panic attacks to depression to post-traumatic stress disorder. More important, Rubinstein shows that the stories of his patients really weave “a tapestry of human thinking, feeling, and behavior” in which “we see reflections of ourselves.”

Rubinstein’s background as a forensic psychiatrist — a psychiatrist who works with attorneys, courts, or other parties involved in actual or potential litigation — also allows him to provide an inside view of the interplay between law and psychiatry. He furnishes easy to understand explanations of various psychiatric issues in the law.

For example, Beyond Bedlam’s Door concisely and coherently spells out the recurring question in workers’ compensation cases of “physical-mental” and “mental-mental” injuries. Likewise, he describes the job of an expert witness, the so-called “gunslinger” expert and how forensic evaluations differ from evaluating a patient for treatment.

Beyond Bedlam’s Door sporadically repeats information from Rubinstein’s prior book, at times verbatim. To be fair, that likely is simply the nature of the beast when it comes to describing and explaining mental health conditions. Some may also be put off by the fact that while the reconstructed dialogue makes the book more literary, it can also feel artificial. That said, Beyond Bedlam’s Door is a top-notch look at the reality and relevance of psychiatry in today’s America.

 

Sam Zell, a self-made billionaire and chairman of Equity Group Investments, started out with a larger than life personality, an ability to see what others did not, and a willingness to take prudent risks. “If everyone is going left, look right,” is one of his compelling beliefs, and he acts decisively on his intellect and instincts. Over the years, he’s sponsored nearly a dozen IPOs and has created thousands of jobs. He’s active in a diverse group of industries, including real estate, manufacturing, logistics, health care, and communications. One of his mantras is, “If it ain’t fun, we don’t do it.”

Am I Being Too Subtle takes readers on a fascinating journey across Sam’s business and personal landscapes in an entertaining way that sheds light on an iconoclastic and legendary entrepreneur.

Your first entrepreneurial business experience with supply and demand occurred when you were twelve years old. Tell us about that.

My parents moved to the suburbs when I was twelve. They’d started me in Hebrew school when I was five, so by twelve, I needed an advanced school that didn’t exist in the suburbs. While my friends played baseball after class, I got on the train every day and went to the city. That gave a curious twelve-year-old boy an opportunity to see Chicago without a chaperone.

I discovered was there were magazine stands beneath the el tracks. Some of the magazines there weren’t for sale in the suburbs. In 1953, a local guy named Hugh Hefner came out with a magazine called Playboy. I quickly realized this was going to be in great demand among my friends because none of the suburban stores would carry something as risqué as that magazine. [Laughter].

I would read it on the way home. A friend looked at it and said, ‘Wow! Would you sell me your copy?’ It cost me fifty cents and I quoted him a price of three bucks. That opened my eyes to the fact that where the demand significantly outstrips the supply, margins could be very great. I was able to turn it into a viable business, and I imported lots of Playboy magazines to the suburbs. [More laughter].

As a second-year college student, you began a small business dealing with fraternities. Tell us about that.

I’d joined a fraternity during my first year at the University of Michigan. Fraternities always had pledge formals. The fraternities would give each attendee a memento of the evening. They were usually large glasses or dishes. I came up with the idea of selling the fraternities something different. My most successful product was an eight-foot-long stuffed snake.

So, I spent many a late-night tying ribbons with the fraternity’s or sorority’s name around these snakes to personalize them, and then I’d deliver the snakes. It was very profitable.

Why is the book titled Am I Being Too Subtle?

I went back and forth trying to think of potential names for the book. When we started thinking about why I’d succeeded beyond my own expectations, it struck me that I was very proud of the fact that no one has ever left my office and said, ‘What do you think he means?’

I’ve always been very direct with people. Though sometimes I may pay a price for my candor and lack of subtlety, it’s a clear way to achieve my objectives. When meeting with people and discussing different opinions, I sometimes jokingly ask, Am I being too subtle? Or I’ll say, Should I talk slower? Somehow, that mantra of mine best describes the spirit of the book.

Am I Being Too Subtle? details your first real estate investments while you were a student at the University of Michigan. Will you talk about that?

When I was a college junior, a friend and I wanted to live off-campus, rent-free. We went to the owner of a building and convinced this guy to hire us as managers in exchange for rent. This was the beginning of our rental management operation which grew exponentially over the next few years, and all through law school.

Simultaneously, I bought my first apartment house—a three-unit building for $19,500, with $1,500 down. We cleaned it up, repainted it, changed the furniture, and doubled the rent.

During the three years of law school—which I thought was an incredible bore—I kept my sanity by building a real estate business. I ended up buying a square block, house-by-house, and got very involved in the business. It taught me a lot.

After graduating from law school, I had to decide if I wanted to stay in Ann Arbor and be a big fish in a small real estate pond, or return to Chicago. I chose to return to Chicago to test my limits, and find out what I could do.

After returning to Chicago, Am I Being Too Subtle? describes an interesting element in your life. You were a practicing attorney for about four days, and then went into your own business. Will you explain?

On my first day of work at a Chicago law firm, I was given the task to write a contract between a linen supply company and a university. For those who don’t know, after graduating from law school, you know virtually nothing about law.

I was doing my best to draft this agreement. After two days, I sent my effort off to the senior partner. When it came back to me, it looked like the guy had slit his wrists all over it because the papers were covered in red marks. It was clear I wasn’t the greatest scrivener in the world, and it also became clear to me that the legal profession was excruciatingly boring.

Despite having a pregnant wife at the time, the Friday of that first week, I went to the senior partner, and as only a twenty-four-year-old could say, I said, ‘I didn’t think what I’m doing is a good use of my time.’ He asked, “What are you going to do?’ ‘I’m gonna go back to what I was doing at Ann Arbor,’ I replied.

That was the totality of my legal career: four days.

However, despite law school being one of the worst things I’ve ever endured, the training was incredibly important. We live in a legalistic society. Over the last fifty years, my legal training and its focus on how to think have been extraordinarily valuable. From that perspective, going to law school was vital for me, though I can’t imagine why anyone would want to practice law. [Laughter].

Am I Being Too Subtle is filled with very personal stories. One of the most compelling is how your parents came to America. Tell our readers about that.

My parent lived on the eastern side of Poland until August thirty-first of 1939.

Hitler attacked on September first of that year.

The details of their trip are harrowing.

On August 24, 1939, my father was on a business trip to Warsaw when his train made a stop at the halfway point. He saw a newsboy selling papers and stepped off to buy one. The headline read that Germany and the Soviet Union had just signed a nonaggression pact. He knew with certainty that Poland, squeezed in the middle between Germany and Russia, would be attacked from both sides and be divided between the two aggressors. It was time to get out. My father immediately crossed the tracks to board a train heading back home.

His train arrived in Sosnowiec at 2:00 p.m. It was a ten-minute walk home, and when he got there he told my mother to pack what she could carry. They boarded the 4:00 p.m. train out that afternoon.

He took my mother and sister, Julie, to a relative’s house in Kielce, about seventy-five miles away, and then returned to their hometown in one last effort to beg their families to leave Poland with them. But, they refused. So, my parents and sister started out alone on a nearly two-year odyssey. The Germans invaded Poland at dawn. My father had caught the last train out of Sosnowiec before the Nazis bombed the railroad tracks.

My parents and sister spent the next twenty-one months travelling east, which was the only direction they could go, eventually arriving in the United States in May of 1941.

I was born in September, so, I was really the child of immigrants.

As a result, I came to understand the importance of immigration, and realized that immigrants are a self-selected population of risk-takers. The reason the United States is exceptional is simple: we’re filled with immigrants, people who took immense risks in coming here rather than simply believing their lives elsewhere would be ‘okay.’

Unfortunately, my parents’ families who choose not to go with them, didn’t survive the Holocaust.

Speaking of your parents, both had an enormous influence on you. Tell us about that.

In our house, it was very clear that love was abundant and wonderful, but respect was required. I was always sensitive to my parents’ position. Frankly, there were lots of situations where I disagreed with them. Growing up in that kind of household had profound implications for the decisions I would later make. My curiosity and appreciation of international issues are very much connected to the fact that I realized we were given the extraordinary opportunity to become Americans. It bred in me a sense of patriotism and a need to learn about the rest of the world.

How and why did you get the moniker the Grave Dancer?

In 1977, I was buying lots of distressed assets. I was asked by Real Estate Review to write an article about my experiences. Trying to decide on a title that would reflect what I was doing, I decided the piece would be called The Grave Dancer. That caught on. As I bought more and more distressed properties and businesses both in and outside of real estate, the Grave Dancer moniker just stuck to me.

You’ve worn jeans to work since the 1960s.  You’ve even worn them to the fanciest restaurants on the planet. Am I Being Too Subtle describes the unique culture at Equity Group Investments. Will you tell us about that?

I think it comes down to a very simple mantra: If you dress funny and are really good at what you do, you’re eccentric. If you dress funny and you’re not so good at what you do, then you’re a jackass.

From the beginning, we realized at EGI, that if we really excelled, we would get a pass on almost anything we did, so long as it was legal. We work very long days, and the last thing we want to do is dress in straight, uncomfortable clothes. We started coming to work in casual clothing. After wearing a suit and tie to work for a couple of months, I said to myself, ‘This is crazy.’ So, I just started dressing accordingly. In 1969, our clients wanted to come to our offices to see how anyone could possibly dress like we did and still do a good job. I think we were testing our limits.

Testing your limits is what you’ve done throughout your career, isn’t it?

It’s always been my intention. It’s been my mantra.

If you could live your life over again, would you do anything differently?

Of course, there are things that might have been done differently, but I only look forward. I’ve never rued any decisions I’ve made. I never sat around thinking, ‘If only I’d gone right instead of left.’ I don’t spend much time worrying about what I could’ve or would’ve or should’ve done. It’s much more important to focus on what I’ll be able to do.

Enormous wealth provides great opportunities as well as potential predicaments. Will you talk about that?

One thing I hope I convey in the book is for me, money is only a way of keeping score. It’s not the ultimate goal.

Being economically productive has given me resources well beyond my ability to spend. I make lots of charitable contributions. Having the means to make a difference in people’s lives is really an extraordinary gift. Perhaps, it’s the most important gift success has given me.

My wife, Helen, has established a creative writing program at the University of Michigan. I’ve created a real estate program at Wharton. I not only fund endeavors, but I personally involve myself with them. I concentrate on programs that can make a difference. I very strongly believe anyone can write a check and put their name on a building. My goal is to create programs that change the way people think and to make a difference in the world.

What about the predicaments of great wealth?

My first reaction to that question is that I’ve lost a sense of privacy. I’ve been in the public eye for more than thirty years. Some people would love that. I’d much prefer not to walk down the street and have someone whisper to somebody else, ‘That’s Sam Zell.’ My diminished privacy is an unfortunate development.

How about wondering if people are being genuine with you or simply ‘stroking’ you because of your wealth?

Stuff like that happens every single day. I’ve always been somewhat cynical. I don’t know if I became more of a cynic by being wealthy, but I know I’ve often avoided people because I don’t want to get caught up in those kinds of hustles.

What, if anything, keeps you awake at night?

Many things in the world are disturbing. But, I’m sometimes kept awake by thinking about the future—not so much my own, but my family’s; and what’s going to happen in the world. I wonder what opportunities await us.

The last chapter of Am I Being Too Subtle? details the “rules” for success. They’re all unique, but most intriguing to me is ‘Obey the Eleventh Commandment.’ Tell us about that.

I once did an interview with a reporter who asked me if I had a mantra for success. I thought about it and said, ‘The Eleventh Commandment is Thou shalt not take one’s self too seriously. That’s been an important part of my life. Nobody laughs at me more than I do. No one’s more willing to challenge my own ideas that I am. One of my favorite comments to my associates is, ‘I’m not interested in your agreeing with me. Take me on. Challenge me.’ By not taking myself too seriously, I avoid falling into the traps egomaniacs suffer from.

Do you ever think of retiring?

People often ask me when I’m going to retire. My answer is, ‘Retire from what? I love what I do. The reason I’m good at what I do, is because it’s not a burden. It’s a joy. It’s what gives me fulfillment.’

Congratulations on penning Am I Being Too Subtle? a highly readable and revealingly personal book filled with unique insights, and unvarnished straight talk about business, people—their quirks and potentials—and about life itself.

Book Review: Beyond Bedlam’s Door by Mark Rubinstein, MD