D.J. Reid
asked
Dale E. Lehman:
Hello Dale. In "The Fibonacci Murders", was Montufar’s brother’s car crash intended to be a red herring or was it just a means to flesh out Montufar's character? Or something else:-)?
Dale E. Lehman
It was meant to add some tension and flesh out Corina Montufar's character. I need to explain something, though.
Due to a 10-year hiatus from fiction writing, I was admittedly out of practice. I was so focused on getting the crime sequences right that I didn't delve much into the main characters' backgrounds. In hindsight, the little bit that's there probably wasn't enough. We learn that Peller's wife died in a car crash four years earlier, and he has one brief phone call with his son and grandchildren. The car crash brings in Corina's sister Ella and brother Eduardo. But that's it. Dumas stands strangely alone, without any past to speak of. If I were to write Fibonacci today, I'd do it a bit differently.
Nevertheless, that shortcoming afforded me, in True Death, the opportunity to explore my detectives' backstories. Sandra Peller's fatal accident comes to the fore. How he confronts the truth of her death and works through it with his son's family reveals a great deal about him. The Montufar siblings must simultaneously cope with the aftermath of Eduardo's accident. And we find out about Eric Dumas's troubled, hidden past.
The forthcoming installment in the series, Ice on the Bay, continues these explorations in the context of a disappearance, a murder, and an arson, and opens (sort of) a new chapter in Rick Peller's life.
What happens in HCM4 remains to be seen. ;-)
Due to a 10-year hiatus from fiction writing, I was admittedly out of practice. I was so focused on getting the crime sequences right that I didn't delve much into the main characters' backgrounds. In hindsight, the little bit that's there probably wasn't enough. We learn that Peller's wife died in a car crash four years earlier, and he has one brief phone call with his son and grandchildren. The car crash brings in Corina's sister Ella and brother Eduardo. But that's it. Dumas stands strangely alone, without any past to speak of. If I were to write Fibonacci today, I'd do it a bit differently.
Nevertheless, that shortcoming afforded me, in True Death, the opportunity to explore my detectives' backstories. Sandra Peller's fatal accident comes to the fore. How he confronts the truth of her death and works through it with his son's family reveals a great deal about him. The Montufar siblings must simultaneously cope with the aftermath of Eduardo's accident. And we find out about Eric Dumas's troubled, hidden past.
The forthcoming installment in the series, Ice on the Bay, continues these explorations in the context of a disappearance, a murder, and an arson, and opens (sort of) a new chapter in Rick Peller's life.
What happens in HCM4 remains to be seen. ;-)
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