Cara Black: Would you call yourself a plotter or a seat of the pants writer? Do you outline?
Martin Limón: Somewhere between a plotter and seat of the pants. I do believe in John D. MacDonald’s dictum that you should know what you’re going to write before you sit down to write. For me that means a somewhat vague idea of the beginning, the middle, and the end. Usually, I’ll make a page or two of notes on that three-act structure. Once I sit down to start writing, I only occasionally refer to those notes and, as I go along, I almost always veer away from the original outline. I will, however, at the bottom of the text, make more notes for the scenes immediately to follow. As I finish those scenes, I imagine new scenes and erase the old notes and insert new notes. I proceed this way, accumulating one scene after another, until (hopefully) the first draft is completed. I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who exhorted writers to finish the first draft. That’s the important part. After you do that, you can always go back and add or delete—which I inevitably do.
CB: Where did you get the ideas for the characters Sueño and Bascom?
ML: When I first decided to attempt to write professionally, I knew I wanted to tell about my experiences in Korea. I quickly decided that the mystery genre was the best way to do that. With a crime novel, I could explore all levels of society, from the back alleys of the red light district in Itaewon to a formal cocktail party at the American ambassador’s residence. But I needed a detective. I actually visited a Korean private investigation firm. They didn’t advertise in Seoul’s English language newspaper but only in the Hankuk Ilbo’s classified section. I asked someone to help me translate the ad and I wrote down the address and I traveled to downtown Seoul to find them. In a rundown business building, I squeezed into a tiny elevator barely big enough to hold me and rose to the eighth floor. When I walked into their office they just about fainted. They’d never had an American visitor before. One of the two partners was middle-aged and somewhat slovenly and the other was a retired police captain and dapper and dignified. It was a privilege to get to know them. However, in the end I decided that I didn’t want my series detective to be a Korean PI. Mainly because it would be much more difficult to understand their inner thoughts. Also, I realized that I not only wanted to tell the story of the Korea I knew and loved, I also wanted to tell the story of the 8th United States Army that had spent so many decades in Korea—and had itself changed as a result. So I settled on U.S. Army Criminal Investigation agents. Why two? Mainly because it seemed to me that most cops worked in teams.
George Sueño is based partly on my dad, who grew up as a quasi-orphan in East Los Angeles. His mother died when he was two. His father, a classical musician, was authoritarian and distant and passed away when my dad was only fifteen. This was during the Great Depression. He joined the military as soon as he turned 17, as did George Sueño. Still, there are differences between the two. George is an intellectual without much formal education; very interested in languages and impressed by people of erudition. My dad was a lifelong businessman and more of a doer. George is also tenacious and empathetic. Despite getting beaten down by 8th Army, he refuses to abandon the victims in the various crimes he investigates—even when the honchos pressure him to.
Ernie Bascom comes from an amalgam of people I knew in the army, many of whom were quite volatile. But mainly from one guy I knew well who, much to my amazement, paid less attention to what other people thought about him than any human being I’ve ever met.George Sueño and Ernie Bascom embody that hackneyed phrase: “I’ve got your back.” Without pre-planning, they understand when the other guy is doing or saying something for effect. And they play along with the game, knowing that the purpose for their partner’s subterfuge will eventually become evident.
CB: How do you handle their progression in a series in real time in the past?
ML: At first I thought George and Ernie would be timeless; set in their own era in the early Seventies in South Korea before the country stepped boldly into the Twenty-first Century. I imagined their personal lives to be something like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe; truncated to say the least. However, as time went by and the short stories and novels piled up, the ravages of time elbowed their way into the narrative. I also received some gentle prodding from my literary agent and my magnificent editor at Soho Press. What about their love lives? What about their career progression in the army? So I’ve yielded and now there is some of that. Women have come and gone in George Sueño’s life and even more have traveled in and out of Ernie Bascom’s door (leaving fewer repercussions for him). Cold War politics have also intervened, with devastating effect on Sueño’s family life. Also, historical facts impinged on the story. In Stars & Stripes, George reads about reporters pursuing the Watergate scandal. President Pak Chung-hee’s wife was in fact cruelly murdered in a Communist-inspired terrorist attack in 1974 and that had an effect on the plot in the novel Mr. Kill. George and Ernie are currently floating in time somewhere between late 1974 and the 1977 assassination of the long-time Korean dictator, Pak Chung-hee. As of this writing (in the series at least), President Pak is still around and still kicking.
CB: What did you do in the Army in Korea?
ML: My military career was less than stellar. I got in and got out and reenlisted for Korea and finagled assignments in Korea and paid less attention to my rank and promotion potential than I did to my overwhelming desire to be stationed where I wanted to be stationed. In all, I spent five tours in Korea of varying length, totaling ten years out of my twenty-year military career. All this peripatetic movement gave me plenty of opportunity to see the country and get to know the people and study the language and experience the culture but did nothing for the number of stripes on my arm. During my first tour, I was briefly a reporter for the Pacific Stars & Stripes but spent most of my time putting together an internal headquarters document called the Korean News Roundup. I monitored the Korean news services and any stories concerning U.S. forces in Korea—especially stories concerning crime—I checked out with the Military Police. This way, I was able to see the Korean version of the incident and compare it to the American version of the incident. Little did I know that years later I would become a crime writer. But the memory of those days serves me well.
In a subsequent tour, I landed a job as the one man editor and reporter for a unit newspaper for the 1st Signal Brigade. Since the telecommunications operation stretched up and down the spine of the Korean Peninsula, I was provided with plenty of opportunity to travel; which I did, enthusiastically. Later, I was pulled back into the artillery and served a year at Four-Papa-One, our most forward firing base near the Demilitarized Zone bordering North Korea.
During my next tour, I worked in what is called imagery interpretation, which is analyzing the photography gathered by the U-2 spy plane and other surveillance aircraft. I had a birds-eye view of not only North Korean tank battalions but also the backyards of Kim Il-sung’s pleasure palaces.
For my last tour in Korea, I was stationed at Camp Red Cloud in the city of Uijongbu, north of Seoul. This housed the headquarters which you might remember was called “I Corps” in the M*A*S*H* television series. I ran the enlisted club, a restaurant and bar operation, and I managed forty-four Korean employees. You might say I had died and gone to heaven. I’d been there two years and already had an approved extension for my third year. However, the clerks who work at the enlisted assignment’s branch in Washington, D.C. seem to have a sixth sense. They know when a soldier is happy. Therefore, they sent me orders to return to the States and become a recruiter in Oakland, California. This was a shock. How could I explain what I loved about the army to some pimple-faced teenager? Still, to keep from going nuts back in the States, it was then and there that I decided to start writing.
Once we returned to the U.S., my family and I were provided housing across the bay from Oakland at what was then the Sixth Army headquarters on the Presidio of San Francisco, a truly beautiful place. I went to the PX, purchased a Smith Corona portable typewriter, and stole some paper from the recruiting office. I was in business.
CB: Where did the idea for Jade Lady Burning, your first novel, come from?
ML: The U.S. Army has been in Korea since 1945. There have been a number of incidents over the years of an American serviceman murdering a Korean business girl. In at least one incident I’d heard about, the GI tried to cover up the crime by setting her hooch on fire. Most of the victims are not what we think of as high class call girls. They’re young women from the Korean countryside who are forced into prostitution because of poverty. Not exactly Madonna’s version of the “Material Girl.” When such things happen, the Korean government—at least in those days—tried to cover up the crime. During the Cold War, such things were not conducive to the flow of economic and military aide from the U.S. to Korea. But often the case was so big—and caused so much outrage amongst the Korean public—that it couldn’t be covered up. I figured such a case would be a good place for George Sueño and Ernie Bascom to start.
CB: I loved The Wandering Ghost, so evocative, can you talk about writing female characters?
ML: For twenty years after the Korean War, the area north of Seoul near the Demilitarized Zone was classified as a combat zone. Female soldiers weren’t allowed up there. But in the early Seventies the army relented and women began to appear at Camp Casey, the headquarters of the Second Infantry Division, bordering the city of Tongduchon. Also women were being allowed into the Military Police. I still remember the first time I saw a woman in her fatigue uniform and wearing an MP helmet and with a .45 automatic strapped around her hip. I was shocked. She must’ve weighed all of about ninety pounds. The army was changing. Of course, most of the women were robust and bold and determined to do their jobs well. I got to know a few like that. So I imagined the lead character in The Wandering Ghost as the first female MP assigned to the 2nd ID. And imagined that, for some mysterious reason, she’d gone missing. I was also witness to the sometimes appalling amount of harassment some of the females in the military put up with and about the lies and rumors that were spread about them, both individually and as a group. I have two daughters. I never encouraged either one of them to join the military. The women who do—and especially those who thrive and prosper—have my respect.
CB: What’s one thing I, and your readers, don’t know about you that would surprise us?
ML: I spent a few years in Korea as a card counter. That is, someone who keeps track of the cards dealt in a game of blackjack. The idea is that you bet higher when the advantage is to the player and lower when the advantage is to the house. Let me emphasize here that, contrary to what the Las Vegas casino owners would have you believe, card counting is completely legal, ethical, and moral. Just check it out on DE gambling legalities at bestuscasinos.org/legal/delaware/ if you are still skeptical. What you’re doing, in effect, is using your brain while gambling. Casino bosses hate this. On the other hand, if you’re blind drunk and can barely see the cards, they’re more than happy to take your money. Be sure to come back here and check the homepage since this is a topic we will likely return to.
Nowaday, I focus more on playing online casinos besides how convenient it is for me. I like the latest games at 666 CASINO compared to a land-based casino that the games are still the same as before. Back in the late Seventies and early Eighties, there were four government-sanctioned casinos in Korea. I visited all of them but became a regular at the Olympos Hotel/Casino in the port city of Inchon and at the largest casino in the country in the Sheraton Walker Hill on the eastern edge of Seoul. Much to their credit, even after they figured out that I was counting cards, the casino bosses didn’t kick me out. Mainly because they knew I was on active duty in the U.S. Army. Because of the Korean government’s pro-military stance, they allowed me to play while at the same time ejecting the few civilian card counters who found their way to Korea. Both the Olympos and Walker Hill dealt excellent games, honest and with good rules, and it was a pleasure to play there. I didn’t get too greedy and didn’t get rich but my family and I lived better than most enlisted men of my rank. On one traumatic day, the Olympos in Inchon asked me not to return. They were very polite about it. They didn’t take me into the back room and rough me up—as sometimes happened to card counters in Nevada. Still, I hated to leave. The Sheraton Walker Hill, however, allowed me to play until I left Korea. They were making so much money from the high rollers from Japan and Hong Kong, that what I managed to pull down was a relative pittance. An enlightened attitude. One not shared by their brethren in Las Vegas.
#SohoCrime25
Martin Limón retired from military service after twenty years in the US Army, including ten years in Korea. He is the author of eleven books in the Sueño and Bascom series, including Jade Lady Burning, Slicky Boys, The Iron Sickle, The Ville Rat, and the short story collection Nightmare Range. He lives near Seattle.
Cara Black is the author of sixteen books in the New York Times bestselling Aimée Leduc series. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and visits Paris frequently.