Marshall Karp

Marshall Karp is a multi-faceted, #1 New York Times bestselling author. From a successful career in advertising to success as a feature film and TV writer, documentarian, and playwright, he currently writes popular novels in the crime thriller category. His five-book Lomax and Biggs series features a pair of LAPD detectives. With James Patterson, he co-authored the first six books in the NYPD Red Series. With Book No 7 in the series, Karp became the sole author. His latest release, Don’t Tell Me How to Die, is a stand-alone already collecting critical acclaim. He believes it is his best work to date.

Q: What was the seed from which your new book, Don’t Tell Me How to Die, grew?

Marshall:  I had created the NYPD Red series with James Patterson and had written, at that point, six books and knew that NYPD Red Book 6  would be the last one. We worked out a deal where I would take over the series. I had basically created it. Then, I had this desire to break away from that and do something out of my wheelhouse—something completely out of my comfort zone. And one day Maggie Dunn popped into my head. The only thing I knew about her was she was this force of nature and got what she wanted. Maggie’s a firstborn. She’s successful, and she’s likable. And now she’s gone all the way to the top of her game, and I didn’t even know what her game was. She said [to me], “I have this great husband and two great kids.” And I said, “Lady, you don’t have a book.” But then, she said, “I have three months to live, and I am not going to let them pounce on my husband and my children.”

Q: Who did she mean?

Marshall:  I said, “By them, you mean the women with casseroles?” She said, “Yeah, yeah. I am going to find my replacement before I die.” And I go, “Wow! How are you going to do that?” She goes, “Hello! That’s why I’m here.”

Since I didn’t grow up as a teenage girl, I said, “Maybe you should go knocking on some nice woman’s brain.” She said, “You don’t really understand the concept of a muse or inspiration. I’m in your head, dummy.” “Oh, oh, that’s right,” I said. “But I usually write thrillers. Yours is this passionate drama about love and family, and doing the right things, and legacy.” She says to me, “Did I happen to mention that in high school I was voted the most likely to kill someone to get what she wants?”  I go, “Now, you’re talking my language.”

Q:  What came next?

Marshall:  To my amazement, the first draft of the book was me starting with Maggie at 17. But I asked fifty women, I’m not exaggerating when I say fifty, “If you were age forty-three,  top of your game, wonderful everything, and you were dying, what would you do in your last three months?” They were going to Europe, going to Disney World, throwing family parties—doing the most wonderful, expected things. None of them wanted to do what Maggie was doing. Not one of them was willing to spend the rest of her time on the planet looking for her replacement, which was great. You don’t want a character that’s like a hundred other characters. You want someone who’s got a mind of her own and that readers can fall in love with, and then go, “I don’t like that.” And then she wins your heart. She’s flawed because, spoiler alert, everybody’s flawed. It’s just that some people hide it. Maggie does a good job of hiding it, but she can’t hide it from the reader. In a lot of books, you say, “Who am I going to kill today?” And then you figure out why, who, how? That’s not an inspiration. But when Maggie Dunn comes into your head and says, “I’m dying, and I am going to find my replacement before I die,” That doesn’t happen to writers every day.

Q: In your opinion, what is most important in a novel, plot or character?

Marshall: Having worked in television. I learned from some of the masters. I remember this guy, Dick Dorso. He was brilliant. I met him when he was eighty and sharp as a tack. He said, “Do you know why people watch the same television show week in, week out? Because they want the predictable emotional experience of being with those characters. Cheers was the first concept of a bunch of people sitting around a bar with nothing to do but drink and getting into stupid situations. It was the characters. Writers and directors in television bring the characters to life. Give them [the audience] characters they want to be with, and they will come back. Because, seriously, how many stories are there? It doesn’t matter. It’s who’s living the story.

Q: You have such a great sense of humor that shows in your characters like Maggie’s sister Lizzie. Is that your personality or something you’ve learned through your work?

Marshall: That’s me. I was the class clown. My father was funny. My son is funny. My grandson is funny. It apparently doesn’t skip a generation. I see comedy in everything I do. Publishers are confused by it. I had an early publisher say, “We don’t know how to market you. You’re killing people.” James Patterson said, “Marshall Karp is the only one I know who can murder someone and get laughs.”

Q: Is Maggie your favorite character in the book?

Marshall: Oh, God, yeah. Well, she’s absolutely my favorite character. I also adore Lizzie because she won’t let up. I didn’t know I would come to absolutely love and respect Johnny Rollo. He grew. He was this other-side-of-the-track boy, who lived in this dingy, rundown, pay-by-the-week with his mother. And when she [Maggie] said to him, “Johnny, where is your mother?” And he said, “She’s on a sabbatical. She’s a visiting professor at Crack University.” I started laughing.

Q: Will any of the characters from Don’t Tell Me How to Die show up in any of your future books?

Marshall: I would just say you never know.

Q: You’ve worked in film and television. Do you see Don’t Tell Me How to Die becoming either a feature film or TV series?

Marshall: Yeah, a streaming series would be better. I have an agent and people who are out there starting to market it. Most studios that do book to film are waiting for the book to catch on. But I saw it as a film throughout. I want to bring it to life as a film.

Q:  Would you write the script?

Marshall:  I would want to be a co-writer and to work with a show runner who ran the show—executive produced it. I would definitely want to be the guy who was bringing these characters to life. But I’d want to work with a pro, who knows the ins and outs of crafting eight episodes for a television series.

Q:  When you read for pleasure, whose work do you read?

Marshall: I absolutely love Donald Westlake. He wrote so many books under the names Donald Westlake and Richard Starke. He’s my go-to. When he passed away, he had just blurbed my book. He lived in the area, and I had met him over the phone. We were gonna meet, but he died suddenly. I don’t necessarily follow an author, but I’ve followed a few. I will pick up Michael Connolly or David Baldacci. Frieda McFadden is good. Somebody gave me The Housemaid. I stay in the area of crime and crime thrillers.

Q: How would you sum up Don’t Tell Me How to Die?

Marshall: The reception I’m getting is so gratifying because I believed in this project. I wanted to get it out while I was still around. I didn’t start writing the book until I knew that. I knew it was going to be a thriller.

Q: If you were writing the logline for this book, what would it be?

Marshall: This woman is on an urgent, end-of-life mission. Maggie wants to control from the grave.

Q: Do you have any advice for beginning writers?

Marshall: There are a million people who can stop you from becoming a published author. There’s only one person who can stop you from being a writer. So, sit down; start writing. And my favorite quote is by Richard Bach, who wrote a lot of stuff that nobody knew about. And then he wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was a number one best seller. He said, “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” Sometimes, you’re just staring at the page. Your fingers are like steel. Nothing moves. It’s okay. Then you’ll be in the shower, and you go, “Oh, Whoa!” I dictate into the phone in the middle of night. Some friends gave me this pad for the shower. It came with a special pencil and special paper. If you have an idea in the shower, you can write it down. I had a number of titles for this book before it was this book. And then, I was in the shower when I grabbed that pencil off the shower door and wrote, Don’t Tell Me How to Die.

Don’t Tell Me How to Die is a brilliantly plotted crime mystery, wrapped in family dynamics, that startles in the beginning when a TV weatherman stumbles upon a dead body while reporting on location. The middle not only reads as smoothly as an Olympic skater on ice, but also offers moments of emotion, humor, surprise, and finally climaxes with an explosive revelation that brought forth an audible reaction from this reader.

Maggie Dunn is the mayor of her town, has a great husband, and two children. While on the surface, her life appears flawless, much is buried beneath, including a fatal, genetic disease. When her diagnosis is announced, her mission turns to making certain the future of her family will not be compromised by female predators bearing casseroles.

In a masterful manner, Author Karp weaves relevant pieces of Maggie’s backstory and family dynamics throughout, developing her character so well that the reader is invested in what happens to Maggie and those inhabiting her world. While the prose magnetically draws the reader forward, it finishes with a shocking twist that not only connects all the dots but leaves the reader in awe. Great characters combined with an amazing plot serve to make Don’t Tell Me How to Die an outstanding book that I highly recommend.