Inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. Take, for instance, a serious training session about anti-trust law topics like bid rigging, price fixing, and insider information. Say it’s presented by a very serious lawyer who thinks he’s presenting ripped-from-the-headlines examples to keep you (meaning me) on the straight and narrow but he actually has my head nodding because … yes, I can see how that would be a motive for murder!!
I’m not usually the dullest crayon in the box, but financial tomfoolery sails far over my head. I get why someone would rig a bid, I just can’t imagine how. Well, a big thank you to the unscrupulous contractors out there. Your forays into fuzzy math and sleight-of-hand were very educational … especially when thoroughly documented in the publicly available documents of a legal trial.
In writing Murder On Site, the first Rizk Brothers Legal Mystery, I would have worried that I was
Dude: You want this bid?
Other Dude: Nah. You take this one. I’ll get the next.
Dude: Works. Don’t go under 25mil. Still working on deets.
Other Dude: NP. Any thoughts on a wedding gift for Dude Tres?
Dude: IDK. I hear candlesticks make good gifts.
(The above are not actual texts used in a case. Many liberties were taken. Thank you Bull Durham.)
Like they say, truth is stranger than fiction and I’m convinced fiction has higher standards.
The training enabled me to devise a bid rigging scenario that wasn’t exactly ripped from the headlines but certainly was inspired by them. Once I had the mystery generally figured out, I built the world around it. Leveraging experience as a consulting project engineer and manager and working for a construction company let me really get physical with the scenes. I know what the trailers look and feel like, how the barricades would be set up, how the contractor’s professional staff would be separated from the engineer’s and state’s staff. Some of the side characters may resemble my real-life co-workers but it’s only because I had their voices in my head fixing the scene and telling me how they would react. I appreciated the chatter as the physical positioning became important to who saw what and when.
The victim had to be someone who would notice if things were just a little off center – an OCD construction inspector fit the bill. The killer had to have high stakes – the self-assured man who saw his very comfortable lifestyle being threatened. Because this is a mystery, other suspects were needed. Not one to take risks alone, Inside Man pulled his co-conspirators into the murder to ensure their cooperation—and then there were three. Just like in real life, each decision snowballed into a bigger problem. Add in a lover’s fight and a hot-headed competitor and I had motive and opportunity abound.
The root of this evil was greed. It resulted in the killing (fictionally, of course) a construction inspector, the implication of an innocent man (have to have a fall guy), the destruction of a marriage, ripped a family apart, and jailed four conspirators.
I have no knowledge if similar ripples were felt in the real cases, but there was undoubtedly fallout. News articles seldom cover the trickle-down consequences of crime. I like to think that’s the purview of us fiction writers. It is our gift and our charge to go beyond the headlines.
All that, from a mandatory training on anti-trust laws.
My advice, no matter where you are, look around … inspiration is everywhere.
