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Where did you get
the idea for Silent Lies?
The story was inspired by certain events in my husband's family.
His maternal grandfather was born in Hungary, and left home
at an early age to create a new life for himself. Leo's story
reflects some of the struggles he faced, including how to
reconcile his own nonreligious Jewish heritage with the persecution
of all people of Jewish ancestry in Hungary after World War
I, and throughout Europe during the Nazi regime.
Another one of my husband's relatives,
his great Aunt Melitta, was an artist. She used her skill
to forge a Siamese (Thai) transit visa for herself and her
family, and they escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Shanghai.
Melitta and her husband evaded confinement in the Jewish ghetto
in Shanghai, because, like Leo, they invented new identities
for themselves. They lived in the French Concession for the
duration of the war.
Hearing Litty's story began my fascination
with Shanghai. I was intrigued by the idea that, for over
fifty years, it was the only place in the civilized world
where you could just show up, without a passport or visa,
and begin a new life. The stories of the people who made--and
lost--fortunes there were absolutely captivating. I was particularly
interested in the period between the two World Wars, because
it was a time of such dramatic societal change all over the
Western world.
At some point I came across a story about
a notorious Shanghai gangster, the head of one of the Chinese
Triads (which were like the Mafia families, only worse). He
supported Chiang Kai-shek's revolution in rather nefarious
ways, and that became the genesis for part of Leo's story.
In fact all of the events—the fall of Budapest, the Hungarian
counterfeiting scandal, the bombing of Shanghai—actually
happened the way I describe them. I just inserted a fictional
character.
In many ways Leo is not at all heroic.
Why did you make him the main character?
For the same reason Margaret Mitchell made Scarlett O'Hara
the heroine of Gone with the
Wind. To misquote Faulkner, "sin and redemption" make
for the most interesting stories. Leo doesn't have a lot of
moral guidance growing up. Most of what he does as an adult
is motivated by his desire to protect his wife and daughter.
Like Scarlett, Leo is a survivor who has to pay a very high
price to learn that deception, especially self-deception,
often has unintended consequences.
Do you think there are any lessons to
be learned from the historical events you write about?
The opportunities to learn from history are always there--we
just rarely do. For example, there are very interesting parallels
between what's happening now, in the Middle East and with
terrorism, and what was happening in China at the beginning
of the last century. In both cases, Western countries took
advantage of a power vacuum to stake out claims--in China,
after the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, and in Arabia, after
the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Those decisions all triggered
long-term, unforeseen consequences.
Another interesting parallel is the development
of the intelligence community. I discuss the development of
the Office of Secret Service, the precursor to the CIA. There
was a huge amount of disorganization prior to World War II,
which the OSS was created to solve. After the war, Congress
split the jurisdiction of the CIA and the FBI in ways that
didn't make a whole lot of sense, and here we are, fifty years
later, trying to figure out how to do it better.
Why did you use just your initials on the cover? Why not your
whole name?
I took a page out of J.K. Rowling's book (the first one).
"Mary Lee," my given name, is so Southern, it's distracting.
I'm happy with my name—I was named after my grandmother--but
I didn't want people to judge the book by the name on the
cover. Hence I used my more neutral nickname, M.L.
You've worked as an attorney, a journalist, and a fiction
writer. Does one type of writing help or hinder the others?
Well, it's hard to say because I've done all three for so
long. I wrote my first short story when I was six. Long before
I became a professional journalist I worked on the school
newspaper, and I was on the debate team in high school and
in college. As a lawyer, I was a litigator, or trial attorney.
In some ways that is similar to being a journalist, because
you have to be able to marshal facts quickly, verify information,
and accept criticism of your writing. Both those career moves
also taught me how to write succinctly, and how to work on
a tight deadline.
Did you have the
sequel, Deceptive Intentions, finished when Silent Lies was
released?
Not really. I first wrote Silent Lies as a huge, multi-generational
saga. When the original publisher decided to split the book
into two parts, I had to make sure that the second half--the
part that would become Deceptive Intentions--could stand on
its own, so I had to expand it. Luckily for me this involved
doing more research into the early days of espionage during
World War II, because Leo was about to begin his career as
a spy.
Why did you pick
North Africa as the setting for Leo's espionage work? Why
not France or Germany, if he spoke both languages fluently?
For the same reason that I wrote about Budapest and Shanghai
in Silent Lies: I enjoy learning about and then sharing fascinating
corners of history that are a little less-well explored. For
example, but for WWII buffs, few people realize that the first
American casualties in Europe were not inflicted by the Germans;
they came at the hands of the French, when the Vichy government
elected to honor their agreement with Hitler and defend North
Africa.
Are you writing a
third book in this series?
Not yet, although I do have one planned. This time it will
be Katherine's O'Connor's turn to take center stage. It's
the story of how she's betrayed by someone she loves when
she's working as a foreign correspondent in South America
during the early 1970s, and how she has to reexamine her own
view of what honor and integrity mean. More intrigue! More
history! More adventure! All the good stuff.
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