New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer is a master of the written word.His words matter — whether he’s writing his “I Am” children’s book series, his page-turning thrillers, scripts for TV shows, college commencement speeches, or putting words in the mouths of cartoon characters or superheroes.
Publishers Weekly calls his latest book “high-octane” thriller that “starts strong and never takes its foot off the gas.” Meltzer joined Henry Santoro to talk about “The Viper” on GBH’s Henry in the Hub. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Henry Santoro: It’s a pleasure to count Brad as a great friend and a great guest. This is your third “Zig & Nola” novel. Please tell us what they’re up to this time around.
Brad Meltzer: Let’s talk about it. A man walks into a funeral home carrying his favorite blue suit. He’s got a terminal disease, and this is the suit he wants to be buried in.
But here’s the thing. If you go to your local bank and open a safety deposit box, paperwork gets filed. That means the government can eventually track it. It’s the same thing if we go to the UPS store and you open a P.O. box.
But, if you secretly sew something into the lining of your suit, and you hand that suit to your local mortician, you have the ultimate untraceable hiding spot.
From there, the man goes back to his hotel room. There’s a guy with a gun waiting who says, “Where is it?” And the man says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The guy with the gun shoots him dead. That suit is still in the funeral home.
You won’t believe what’s hidden inside it, or who’s about to find it. And that is chapter one of “The Viper.”
Santoro: And like we said, the foot never comes off the gas. You open with a quote that says, “I don’t believe in closure. I don’t think we ever really get over anything.” That’s a very personal quote, and there’s a lot of you in this book, isn’t there?
Meltzer: That quote was the last thing I put in the book — ironically, the very first thing you read is that opening quote.
I realized it has a lot to do with my dad. My dad and I had a very complicated relationship. My dad illegally took out $40,000 of credit cards in my name, and was borrowing money, and was just always making a mess of things. And it caused a lot of heartache in our relationship.
But Henry, there is a quote at the end of the book, a word that I never heard before. It’s pentimento. I didn’t know what it meant, it’s a painting term.
It’s when paint gets so old and brittle on an old canvas, it becomes translucent. You can see through it. And you can see the original pencil marks that the painter puts on the canvas. Their rough draft. All the mistakes, all the regrets, you can see it. Think of an old Rembrandt, you to the museum, you can sometimes see that, those sketches behind it. So, a woman’s skirt that’s swaying to the left is now swaying into the right.
And I realized that we’re all rough drafts. We are all filled with regrets and mistakes, but you can’t make a masterpiece without it. When that word hit me and that quote hit me, I realized, “Oh, that’s what this book is about.” It’s about me trying to make peace and find some forgiveness for my dad. And the answer is: closure’s overrated. What you have to do is love yourself for who you are.
Santoro: Like Stephen Stills says: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” And sometimes the one you’re with is yourself.
Meltzer: I made peace with my dad before he died. He knew I loved him, I knew he loved me. And I’ve written a lot of books about losing my dad, I’ve written books about losing my mom.
But I don’t think I ever realized that I was still carrying around that anger and pain. I didn’t even know I needed to forgive him because I was so focused on losing him that I missed that part of the story.
When he did all those things when I was younger, I couldn’t see this part of the story — which is a story I told at his funeral. When my dad was a little kid, he used to get beat up by his dad, who was a boxer in the military. I know my dad used to jump in front of his own younger brother and take the hits for his younger brother, so his younger brother wouldn’t get hit. I know he used to jump in front of his mom and take the hits for her, so she wouldn’t get hit.
And I couldn’t see that when my dad was taking out all those credit cards in my name causing all that heartache, what he was trying to do was financially take the hits from me. That’s how he was paying for my college, is taking out these credit cards — $40,000 in credit card bills — to take the financial hit, so I could be the first in my immediate family to go to a four-year college and get out.
But I couldn’t see that part of the story because I was so focused on the headache he was creating for our family. I could only see how much pain it was causing me and how much heartache it was. And sometimes what novels are, is they even surprise the writer who is writing them.
Santoro: When my mom died, you wrote to me, and you said, “They never leave you.” And that’s what you’re saying.
Meltzer: What’s so funny is, when my mom died, everyone gave me useless advice. And one person gave me a piece of advice that was actually helpful. They said, “Our parents never leave us, ever” — which is the advice that I then passed on to you because someone passed on me.
And I love that life is like that sometimes, right? It’s like a boomerang. You throw it out there and then boom, boom, boom, it comes around, comes right back to you all those years later. You quote that back to me years later.
And I think, for me, that’s what this book was like. Sometimes you throw your love out there, sometimes you throw your words out there, and sometimes you throw it in the form of a book — and it comes around and helps you in the least-expected moment.
Santoro: Because of these reasons, was this book more difficult to write?
Meltzer: No, it was actually really fun for me to write! Because it’s a thriller, and it makes you turn the pages. You get to know Zig and Nola, my characters. So I was just enjoying myself.
I don’t really ever figure out my bigger theme. I know my intended theme, but when you spend two years in a book and you finish it, you look back and then you ask: “OK, what the undercurrent here?”
And what I saw was in the opening scene in that funeral home. The main character is playing an old Hall and Oates song: “You Make My Dreams Come True.” Later in the book, they’re watching their favorite movie, “The Breakfast Club.” At the end of the book, they’re listening to everything from “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to old ’80s songs to “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty.
And I’m asking: “Why is everybody living in their past? Why is every character looking backwards rather than looking forward?” And I realized, “Oh, that’s where I am. It’s not the characters, it’s me.” What I inhabit in these characters with is myself. And that’s when I realized what I was doing. OK, let me look backwards and see where this is coming from. And I was like, “Ugh, of course, it’s closure for me. That’s what’s just hitting me like nothing else.”
Santoro: Now, I’ve known you a long time, long enough to know that you are a major fan of pop culture. Has anyone asked you yet how many pop culture references are you planted in this book? Because this book is littered with them. And they’re hysterical!
Meltzer: In a weird way, for those of us who grew up in the ’70s, ’80s and in the early ’90s — it’s so long ago, but it is a language we all understand. If someone comes and quotes something from “The Breakfast Club” or “Back to the Future,” or even “The Empire Strikes Back” or The Sting — that’s an instant friend to me. I immediately look at that person and say, “We have a language we understand.”
And I started putting it into the characters and realizing I’m not alone. And all these people are like, “I’m going to count the pop culture references. There’s so many here.” I didn’t intend for it to happen. I didn’t go out and say “I’m going to consciously throw this book into it,” but that’s where I figured out that I’m looking at the past in this book in a way that I never have before, unintentionally.
Santoro: Well, and they’re super fun to read because once you realize that this book is littered with them, you keep looking forward to the next one and then the next.
But there’s also, in addition to those pop culture references, there’s a lot of Dover Air Force Base in this book. And that’s not a pop culture reference, that is something very serious. You write in this book: “The people who know you best are the people who know your memories.” And there’s a lot of that that goes through Dover Air Force Base.
Meltzer: I found Dover years ago. I do a lot of work with the USO, so I’ve traveled with the military all over the world, entertaining our troops. They used to bring half a dozen thriller writers every year to entertain our troops. And it was there I first heard about Dover.
I didn’t know anything about what Dover was. Even if you don’t know the name, it’s where — when a soldier dies in action — that flag-covered coffin comes off the plane and everyone salutes.
But Dover isn’t just a place for fallen soldiers. It is when the space shuttle went down and exploded, all the astronauts’ bodies went to Dover. When 9/11 happened, all the Pentagon victims went to Dover. And in fact, right now in Venezuela, all our CIA agents — all of agents all across the globe — if something goes sideways, their bodies go to Dover, too. Which means Dover’s a place filled with secrets.
And the morticians there will spend 12 hours rewiring someone’s jaw, smoothing it over with clay, because a family wants to see their son one last time in their coffin. Or rebuilding someone’s hand because a mother says, I want to hold my son or daughter’s hand one last time. And I was so struck by that ability by those people who work there to show dignity and respect to someone who’s made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
The country is in such a mess right now, but in this one place in Dover, Delaware — in America’s most secretive funeral home — people were just consistently doing the right thing by each other. And that struck me. I’m starving for that right now. And so, the people there struck me, and it became the perfect setting. As a place that’s filled with secrets, you know I love secrets.
Santoro: Do we ever. You are a master of the written word. Thank you so much.
