L-R Craig Sisterson, Julia Heaberlin and Ali Karim [Theakstons Crime-Writing Festival, Harrogate 2016]
One
of the darkest gothic thrillers of recent memory is the remarkable Black Eyed Susans by journalist Julia
Heaberlin from the Michael Joseph imprint at Penguin Random House.
With
film rights sold, huge critical acclaim including being longlisted for the 2016 CWA Ian
Fleming Steel Dagger Award; Shots Magazine’s Assistant Editor Ali Karim was delighted to meet up
with the author at Theakstons Crime-Writing Festival in Harrogate, and discuss
this phenomenal crime mystery novel.
Joining
us was Kiwi Crime’s Craig Sisterson, who had been equally startled at this very
dark and thought provoking thriller, and interviewed Julia here in one his renowned 9mm
Interviews.
So
for those unfamiliar with the author and this stunning book –
Seventeen-year-old Tessa, dubbed a
"Black-Eyed Susan" by the media, became famous for being the only
victim to survive the vicious attack of a serial killer. Her testimony helped
put a dangerous criminal behind bars - or so she thought.
Now, decades later, the case has been
reopened and the Black-Eyed Susans planted outside Tessa's bedroom window seem
to be a message from a killer who should be safely in prison.
Tessa
agrees to help with the investigation, but she is haunted by fragmented
memories of the night she was attacked and terrified for her own teenage
daughter's safety. Can she unlock the truth about the killer before it's too
late?
Julia Heaberlin is an award-winning journalist who, before launching her
career as an author, worked at several national newspapers. She has edited
numerous real-life thriller stories, including a series on the perplexing and
tragic murders of girls buried in the Mexican desert and another on domestic
violence. She lives with her husband and son in Texas.
I
had to ask Julia about the significance of the title, as well as the powerful
cover imagery. Julia indicated that the novel came to her as an image, a woman
lying on a bed of the eponymous American wild-flower, though she indicated that
it was her British Publishers [Penguin Random House] that came up with the
stunning cover design first, and one that was adopted for American Release at
Random House US, as well as many other territories.
Self-depreciating
and very modest, she lays down huge thanks to those who helped her in her research,
especially the forensic background; though the image of the Flower, the Black
Eyed Susans is the image that haunted her, and was pivotal in the evolution of
the story.
Though
it would be a visit to the outside of a Texan Penitentiary where Death Row
prisoners are housed that would lead to her narrative taking shape, which she
details in this essay for our readers.
As part of
her research for Black-Eyed Susans, Julia Heaberlin stood outside the Death
House in Texas during an execution. Here, she relates her experience.
Everything
quivers. The trees, the grass, the birds. The ribs in my chest, the balls of my
feet. The air, brittle with chill and death
even before the thundering noise began. I feel like I am about to explode from
the inside out.
When
people ask me what it is like to stand outside the Texas death chamber while a
prisoner is being executed, this is what I remember first. The man executed that particular night was
Edgar Tamayo, a Mexican national who shot a Houston cop three times in the back
of the head. The terrible sound was the revving of motorcycles from the nearly
two dozen retired police officers parked as close to Edgar Tamayo as they could
get. They demanded that he hear the guttural protest of their motors through
the walls as the needle was going in. Kill
him, roared the motorcycles. Kill him.
And
make no mistake, Edgar Tamayo, his family, and the witnesses he chose, could
hear.
It
is easy to stand only yards away from the tiny, nondescript room in Huntsville,
Texas, that is the busiest execution factory in the United States. Since 1982,
my state has killed more than 525 prisoners. The death chamber is housed on the
corner of “The Walls,” a historic, friendly
looking prison with a green area and a clock tower. In Texas, executions have
been performed by rope, poison and electricity for almost 200 years. The Walls
unit sits in the middle of town a few blocks off the quaint square. There is a
barbecue grill on the front porch of the white frame house next door, and an
old neighborhood stretches out beyond it. Within sight of the walls, while men
die, people are munching on pie and chicken fried steak at the best restaurant
in town. They don’t mean anything by it; it’s a matter of routine. Back when
the electric chair was used, the lights of the whole town used to shiver when
the executioner flipped the switch. If the town folks who live here don’t work
for the prison system—seven sprawling units in all— their parents probably did
or their grandparents.
Sometimes,
I take my mind back to the night of Edgar Tamayo’s death. Survey the scene. On
that night, and most execution nights, the screaming politicians and social
media fanatics are far from the town of about 40,000 in the piney woods of East
Texas. The crowd I’m with is small, mostly Hispanic. Two beautiful Mexican TV reporters
are brilliant stars in the dark, illuminated by camera lights, one in a brand-new
purple tie, another in bright red lipstick. Mexico, despite its ongoing battle
with corruption and brutal cartels, is anti-death penalty. The government is vigorously
protesting the execution of one of its own on our soil.
A
group of mourners kneel by Edgar’s picture and sing, their mouths opening and
closing like birds. Gloria, who runs a straggly group of regular, vocal
protesters, chants through her bullhorn that an innocent man is about to die
even though he is not innocent at all. Some of them hold signs that declare Rick
Perry a serial killer (279 people were executed during his time as governor). Another
group of five men and women, all white, all older, weigh down a street corner. Most
of them make the drive from Houston to as many executions as they can. They
come not to yell but to be present for the family of the executed. On the
coldest nights, the most stalwart, a criminal justice professor in Huntsville, stands
by the Stop sign alone with his battery-operated Christmas candle until the
family of the executed walks out the door. He is tired and cynical and understandably
does not want to talk much. He has been talking to tourists like me forever.
The
whole thing is so banal. So efficient. Everyone here knows where to be. The
pros are on one side of the building, the cons on the other. The Texas troopers
wandering around don’t expect trouble. The execution process usually starts at
six, is done by seven, although tonight is going long. Legendary Texas death
penalty lawyer David Dow says he doesn’t mean to be flip when he speaks a truth:
“Killing people is like most anything else; the more you do it, the better you
get. If killing people were like playing the violin, Texas would have been
selling out Carnegie Hall years ago.”
Ice
starts to fall. I re-examine why I am here and why I have not been here before.
I am writing a novel, a story meant to entertain. I showed up out of
convenience, curiosity and a desire to be authentic in my book. I had casually Googled
the Texas execution schedule two months before: Should I pick the woman who
helped a group torture and murder a mentally ill man for his life insurance?
The man who ate the doughnuts and breakfast tacos that he ordered after beating
the delivery woman with a baseball bat? A boyfriend who repeatedly stabbed and
killed the married woman he was sleeping with and her daughter and
three-year-old grandson? A guy who kidnapped a young Houston couple, raped the
woman and then killed them both?
In
the end, I picked Edgar, and so we were united. The day of his death fit into
my schedule. I asked a friend to come with me. We chattered and ate sour
gummies and red licorice on the three-hour ride from Dallas to East Texas. We
booked at a lovely bed and breakfast only a few blocks from the Death House.
I am
horrified as I write that last paragraph.
I
was raised by a woman who gave spiders a free ride out of the kitchen on a
newspaper. There was no death penalty in our house. I was a sensitive kid who didn’t
believe my God would send anyone to hell. I couldn’t stomach violent movies,
much less the barbaric concept of it being legal to kill someone. As I grew
older, I was further shaped by intellectual reasoning—that the death penalty is
part of a racist and unfair system. I protested by voting for candidates who
believed as I did.
Then
came Edgar Tamayo. The roar of motorcycles. The victim, Guy Gaddis, a
24-year-old police officer, two-and-a-half years on the job. He left an
expectant wife behind.
When I arrived back home, the experience began
to shape my story, my characters, in ways I didn’t plan. I poured out a chapter
I feared my editor would cut entirely. She never touched a word.
The lawyer, so important to this part of the
story, sprang to life.
Tessa,
my heroine, would not cooperate. She was conflicted about the death penalty no
matter how much I tried to convince her otherwise.
How can you know how I feel, she asked me, if you’ve never experienced something this
terrible? If evil hasn’t ripped out a staggering piece of who you are?
Don’t
preach, she told me. Let me be who I
am.
[This essay is an updated version of a
feature that originally appeared as extra content in a Waterstones special
edition of Black-Eyed Susans]
Shots
Ezine wish to thank Gaby Young [of Penguin Random House] and Ann Chadwick [of Cause UK / Harrogate International
Festivals] for arranging and facilitating the
meeting with Julia Heaberlin at the 2016 Theakstons Crime-Writing
Festival in Harrogate, England.
Shots
have discounted paperback copies of Black Eyed Susans for sale at £3.99 from
the Shots Bookstore – click here
Before it Breaks by
Dave Warner, (Fremantle Press)
BEST TRUE CRIME
Certain
Admissions by Gideon Haigh, (Penguin Random House)
The Sting by Kate
Kyriacou, (Echo Publishing)
A Murder Without
Motive by Martin McKenzie-Murray, (Scribe)
Killing Love by
Rebecca Poulson, (Simon & Schuster)
Kidnapped by
Mark Tedeschi, (Simon & Schuster)
BEST FIRST FICTION
Please Don't Leave Me
Here by Tania Chandler, (Scribe)
Good Money by
J M Green, (Scribe)
Amplify by Mark
Hollands, (Self-Published)
Skin Deep by Gary
Kemble, (Echo Publishing)
Four Days by Iain
Ryan, (Broken River Books)
Resurrection Bay by
Emma Viskic, (Echo Publishing)
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
AWARD
This
year the Australian Crimewriters Association will honour Carmel Shute with a
Lifetime Achievement Award. As a founder and national co-convener of Sisters in
Crime Australia, Carmel has spent 25 years supporting and nurturing Australian
women crime writers.
This
year’s NED
KELLY AWARDS will be presented during the Melbourne Writers Festival at a
free event including live music, storytelling and door prizes on Sunday August
28 at 4.00 p.m. at TOFF IN THE TOWN, 252 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000
The
Goldsboro Gold Dagger Dodgers
by Bill Beverly (No Exit Press) Black
Widow by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown) Real
Tigers by Mick Herron (John Murray) Blood,
Salt, Water by Denise Mina (Orion)
Ian
Fleming Steel Dagger
Make Me
by Lee Child (Bantam Press) Real
Tigers by Mick Herron (John Murray) Rain Dogs
by Adrian McKinty (Serpent’s Tale) The
English Spy by Daniel Silva (Harper Collins) The Cartel
by John Winslow (William Heinemann)
John Creasey
(New Blood)
Fever
City by Tim Baker (Faber & Faber) Dodgers
by Bill Beverly (No Exit Press) Freedom’s
Child by Jax Miller (Harper Collins) The Good
Liar by Nicholas Searle (Viking) Eileen by
Ottesa Moshfegh
CWA International Dagger
The Truth and Other Lies by
Sascha Arango, tr Imogen Taylor (Simon & Schuster) The Great Swindle by Pierre
Lemaître, tr Frank Wynne (MacLehose Press) Icarus Deon Meyer, tr K L
Seegers( Hodder & Stoughton) The Murderer in Ruins by Cay
Rademacher, tr Peter Millar (Arcadia) Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama,
tr Jonathon Lloyd-Jones (Quercus)
A FADING All Black, a teen runaway, a cop
in witness protection, and a robotic private eye are among the memorable
characters at the heart of novels named today as finalists for the 2016 Ngaio
Marsh Awards.
“We had a
record number of entrants this year, which gave several headaches to our
international judging panel,” says awards founder and Judging Convenor Craig
Sisterson. “Not only are our local authors producing novels of exceptional
international quality, they are breaking the shackles of convention and
stretching the boundaries of genre to explore crime storytelling in unique and
exciting ways. We were comparing apples with feijoas.”
An
extended judging process has led to two very strong shortlists, says Sisterson.
This year, not only will the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel,
established in 2010, be presented at the Great New Zealand Crime Debate at WORD
Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival on 27 August, but also a new Best
First Novel prize for debuts.
The
finalists for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel are:
• INSIDE
THE BLACK HORSE by Ray Berard (Mary Egan Publishing);
• MADE TO
KILL by Adam Christopher (Titan Books);
• TRUST
NO ONE by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press);
• THE
LEGEND OF WINSTONE BLACKHAT by Tanya Moir (RHNZ Vintage); and
• AMERICAN
BLOOD by Ben Sanders (Allen & Unwin).
The
finalists for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel are:
• INSIDE
THE BLACK HORSE by Ray Berard (Mary Egan Publishing);
• THE
FIXER by John Daniell (Upstart Press);
• THE
GENTLEMEN’S CLUB by Jen Shieff (Mary Egan Publishing); and
• TWISTER
by Jane Woodham (Makaro Press).
“I’d like
to thank all our entrants for making our job so tough,” says Sisterson, “along
with all our judges and WORD Christchurch for their ongoing support of the
Ngaio Marsh Awards. Local crime writing is in fine fettle.”
