With a career spanning forty years, Kevin Wade has been a successful playwright (Key Exchange), television writer (Cashmere Mafia, Blue Bloods), screenwriter (Working Girl, Meet Joe Black, True Colors, and Maid in Manhattan, which garnered seven Academy Award nominations). He joined the CBS police procedural series Blue Bloods in its first season as a writer. In Season 2, he became the showrunner/executive producer for the remainer of long-running CBS series. During the lockdowns caused by the COVID pandemic, he began writing a novel, which has now been released. Titled Johnny Careless, the police procedural features a former NYPD cop, turned small town police chief who faces the death of an old friend under suspicious circumstances.
Interview by Judith Erwin
Q: With your phenomenal career in film, stage, and TV, how did a move into crime-novel author come about?
Kevin: I think in the back of my mind I always wanted it. I started my career when I was twenty-five and wrote a play called Key Exchange, a little romantic comedy set in New York that people liked, critics liked, and it ran for a couple of years in New York. If you’re twenty-five, your protagonist is more than loosely based on you. The protagonist in Key Exchange was a mystery writer. He was working on a book called The Bride Came DOA.
It was not part of the plot, but I think I envisioned myself as John D. McDonald or Robert Parker. But that went away because I got jobs writing for stage, then for movies, and then for television. But apparently it was always in the back of my mind because as soon as there was a writer’s strike, and I had time off, I thought I’d write a book with a cop or a detective as the protagonist.
Q: Were you influenced by your work on Blue Bloods?
Kevin: I was influenced by Blue Bloods in that I’d spent 14 years, neck-deep in police procedure research and crime. I had a great friend and colleague named Jim Nuciforo, who was ex NYPD. He was our technical advisor. I could listen to his stories all day long, and so I immersed myself because of the job I had in that sense.
Q: In switching disciplines, what problems did you encounter?
Kevin: The sheer number of words. I’d spend 40 odd years writing plays, screenplays, and TV scripts, which are 90% white space broken up by some typewritten dialogue lines, short slug lines of where the location is, and who’s in the room? I had a story in mind and have lived on the north shore of Long Island for 22 or 23 years, so, I’m very aware of the upstairs downstairs and have and have nots of it. But the sheer amount of words was really daunting.
I’d get through a day’s work and think, oh, my God! I’ve only got three or four pages out of 280 or 300. I’ll never get this done. Then one day it occurred to me that for decades I’d sat around big tables at production meetings where we would have the costume designer, the art director, the casting director, the location scout,
Now, I was the location manager. I was the costume designer. Not that I could do their jobs, but I’ve been around them long enough to know what led to their decisions.
Q: When you were writing, did you feel like you were your protagonist, Jeep, or think what would he do next?
Kevin: He was a fun protagonist because to me protagonists are savvy in the customs of where they live, know the rules of the tribes, and if they have to butt up against them, they have a little bag of tricks. Jeep had grown up where it’s set, and he came back as an adult and ex NYPD cop. Once I had that in mind, I really had fun with it. I think any writer sees himself somewhat as an outsider, as an observer. Even if you become rich and famous, there must be a part of you that’s still looking through the plate glass into the great party. So, I was able to put a lot of that into him.
Q: Having worked in multiple writing techniques, which do you like best?
Kevin: At this stage of life, I like this [novel writing] because I know when I sit down to work in the morning, I control the destiny of it. With movies, television, and stage plays, you have to have the cast in a lot of senses. You have to have a couple of very recognizable names in order to get the money or the company to push it forward. No one’s going to put it out there with Joe Schmo and Betty Schmo as the stars. But on the page in a novel, they are the stars. It’s my job to create a three-dimensional character, absent the natural sex appeal, charisma, wit, and heroics of actors and stars. In that sense, it’s easier because I know that whatever I do is just going to live or die on its merits, not on what the marketplace or all the machinations of the marketplace.
Q: And an actor can’t mess it up.
Kevin: Or make it really sexy and cool. I love actors. I love working with them, and they bring things to life in ways that words on a page never can. But it’s nice to have this to be able to do as well.
Q: Looking back at Johnny Careless, what came first, plot or character?
Kevin: Character and geography. I did not outline it. I had a few index cards on a bulletin board. I am a great fan of Elmore Leonard, not only his writing, but his perspective on writing, and I remember once reading an interview with him where he said very succinctly, “I don’t write outlines. I create characters. I put them in a situation, and I let them tell me where it’s going.” That, combined with the tenth of Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing: “Try to leave out the parts that the reader tends to skip over.”
Q: What do you think is most important in a novel–characters or plot?
Kevin: The plot is driven by the characters. I think they go hand in hand. A plot is great because you care about the character who’s going through it.
Q: What was the motivating factor in your creation of Jeep?
Kevin: First, a cop in his thirties whose father was a cop, and he lived in, and was raised in, a wealthy suburb of New York City. There was a kind of working-class tribe in the midst of a very moneyed tribe. So, I liked his perspective on where he grew up. And frankly, this is the television and movie writer going into police stories, medical stories, and legal stories genre.
Q: I immediately loved the character’s nickname. What came first, Jeep or his real name?
Kevin: I’m pretty sure the nickname came first, and then I had to figure out which letters, when said together, would sound vaguely like Jeep. So, you got me there.
Q: Was Jeep based on anybody in particular?
Kevin: An amalgam of cops I knew, actors I’ve known, and a kind of slightly cynical, but always hopeful, voice I’ve heard all my life.
Q: How would you describe Jeep to potential readers?
Kevin: As a guy who needs second chances even when he doesn’t know it. He’s sort of the last guy in the room, who realizes that he needs to reinvent.
Q: You did a seamless job with multiple timelines and your use of third person POV in contemporary sections and first person in the historic. Was that always your plan?
Kevin: I thought, it’s the way I had to do it, because I didn’t think I had enough material to write a whole book in the present day. I have great respect for people that can write a 300-page detective story or thriller. I knew I didn’t have it. But I knew with what little I had, if I were able to build some relatable sympathy for the friendship of Johnny and Jeep, plus Jeep’s longing for Niven, maybe the outcome and the little plot I had would matter more, and they (readers) would be more invested in what happened to these folks.
Q: In reading Johnny Careless, I felt you have set Jeep up for future books. Do you plan to write more?
Kevin: I am working on one. As in the real world, that depends on how many people buy the first one. If enough people buy it, I absolutely have a second one well underway.
Q: Is the police procedural your favorite genre to work in?
Kevin: My favorite genre is the one where somebody says, “We love this idea. Go write it.”
Q: Do you have any plans for Jeep to become a TV series?
Kevin: I have agents who I think are working on that.
Q: in closing, what would you like readers to say about Johnny Careless?
Kevin: I like to hear, “I really enjoyed reading it, and I hope you write another one.”
Review by Judith Erwin
Johnny Careless begins when a faceless body is pulled from the water on the beach of Bayville, New York. When Police Chief Gerald Paul Mullane, a/k/a Jeep, sees a tattoo on the leg of the deceased, he recognizes his high school friend, John Chambliss, a/k/a Johnny Careless. Johnny, known for his wealthy and reckless lifestyle, was a clear contrast to the stable Jeep Mullane. However, the two lost contact when their adult lives moved in different directions. With recognition of his old friend, questions instantly arise in Jeep’s mind, including whether Johnny’s death was an accident or homicide.
In a fast-paced mystery filled with colorful characters, social class issues, political conflict, and a richly developed protagonist, readers are taken on a riveting journey to an unexpected conclusion while experiencing the investigation of a contemporary case and learning the historical relationship between the cop and the victim.
Author Kevin Wade seamlessly weaves past and present to bring to life the multi-dimensional characters, revealing their quirks and secrets in such a manner as to leave readers starved for a continuing series featuring the astute, complex, and likeable Jeep Mullane. Taking place on the Gold Coast of New York, the contrast of the monied class with the not-so-fortunate class adds another layer of interest.
