John Mail wasn't always a psychopathic pyromaniac playing a macabre game against Lucas (or at least, he thought he was playing a game). When the character was first sketched out, he was more of the neglected loner, the stereotype of the socially awkward nerd who is driven by fantasies of revenge and finally being the Strong Guy. He was more into Star Trek than arson, and quoted Mister Spock often [3]. Or at least, he would have eventually.

This character was loosely based on a real person, who I'll call Bill [4]. Bill was a computer programmer and mathematician who the author interviewed for the Pioneer Press in the mid-80s, for a series about computer programmers and hackers. He had a lot of qualities that show up in movies and television as stereotypical nerd traits: he wore ugly glasses [5], he was awkward around women [6], he was always right about everything (even when he wasn't) [7]. I'm a nerd myself, and I wear my nerd badge with pride, and I don't have the stereotypes he did [8].

I'm also not a killer. Bill was.

I'm not going to go into the full details of the case [9], but when the author interviewed that Bill for the computer hacker story, Bill had already killed someone. It was a nasty murder, and the police had no clue who had done it. He'd gotten away with it clean. The murder itself revolved around lust, obsession, an explosive temper, all familiar elements in thriller novels.

But, again, he had that stereotype trait of always being right about everything, even when he wasn't [10]. That overconfidence in his own reasoning and his skills was his critical problem: he was so sure that the police could never catch him, so sure that he was smarter than everyone, that he screwed up. The police set a trap, he walked right into it, and he was sent to jail for a long, long time [11].

It would have made for a good book on its own, but it would have been in more in the True Crime vein. But that character almost writes itself. You can see it now, the unassuming, meek, ineffectual guy everyone picks on. The one who knows every episode of Star Trek backwards and forwards [12]. The one who has been bullied and abused his entire life, but who is seen as so weak that nobody expects that he could actually do anything when he finally snaps.

But then he shows up at someone's house at two in the morning, whacks that someone in the head with a crowbar without anyone ever waking up, and nobody has a clue [13]. Nobody knows where to even start.

That could be John Mail. It very nearly was.

But, again, there's the action component to worry about. A character like that might like to play games, but he'd probably be too afraid to do anything like that in real life. Despite what Hollywood believes, the kids who played Dungeons and Dragons did not go to steam tunnels to act it out in real life [14]. If nothing else, it was too much work. A character like this would probably be too afraid to confront the police. And while you could make a smoke-and-mirrors sort of chase, that didn't fit the tone of what the author wanted.

But what if he wasn't the quiet nerd? What if he was actively engaged with Lucas? What if... he thought they were playing a game, the two of them?

Change the character. Get rid of a few of the stereotypes. The new version isn't unassuming and bullied, but extroverted and the bully himself. Not the loner who watches Star Trek, but the loner who tortures neighborhood animals. The one who sets fires just to watch things burn. Still smart, but a cruel and angry cunning instead of logical deduction.

And someone like that, the sociopath and psychopath, the one who has always been the bully, the one who knows — knows — that he's smarter than everyone, that's not somebody who quietly plans a crime. He's the one who taunts the police. He's the one who thinks that he and Lucas are playing a game.

And then you have John Mail, and a lot of the book falls into place.

In the first draft, she didn't survive. She's nine years old. The author's editor balked at this. "Don't kill the kid," he said. "You can't do that. The book's mean enough as it is."

So the author checked around, and everyone agreed with him. His agent, his friends, his family. Everyone thought he was crazy for even trying. Don't kill the kid. So he poked the situation a bit, rigged a bit of ingenuity on Genevieve's part, stirred in a bit of luck. In the end, Genevieve survived [15].

This is necessary for fiction, but it went against a lot of his experience in reporting. When it comes to real crime, there's nothing in particular that saves kids. In truth, they're usually the easiest — and most tragic — victims. Saving Genevieve is the happy ending that doesn't happen, the thing that we enjoy so we don't see that the way crime works in the real world is much, much worse [16].

It's something that I'll bring up when someone writes in to complain that the books are too violent, or that the crimes are too gory. Perhaps they honestly believe that most murders are of the Agatha Christie "cozy" type, where someone quietly passes [17] by drinking poisoned tea.

The real world, I say, isn't like that. It doesn't conform to your personal preferences or biases about what murder should be like, or how death should happen. Reality is strange that way, so much so that people would never believe it if it was put into a novel.

There's a quote attributed to Mark Twain: "Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."

Genevieve's survival is like that. It makes sense in the structure of 20th century thriller literature. In the real world, her survival wouldn't be just strange; it would be downright unbelievable [18].

And that's kind of a downer of a message, so now I'll talk about a funny mistake and everyone can laugh again.

In chapter 30, John Mail needs to get a car, and he assaults a woman in her house to get it. Before he goes into her house, he's got a pistol and a shotgun. He leaves the shotgun on the stoop of the house, goes inside, hits her with the butt of the shotgun, leaves, and picks up the shotgun on the way out.

It's not a typo — nothing is misspelled — but it's not a mistake from moving things around while editing. It's a misspelling on a whole-word-substitution level, and there isn't a word for that in English.

This kind of thing happens all the time and they're hard to spot. It's like blanking on someone's name when you've known them for years, or getting two people's names mixed up when there's no reason to [19]. It's that moment when you want to refer to "President Reagan" and instead say "President Nixon" [20] and the conversation goes deliriously off the rails in a mess of confusion. This happens to everyone. To everyone.

But it's weirder when you've typed it and you're editing. Your brain actively doesn't want to see the error. You'll see what you think is supposed to be there, or at least you won't see the hole in the logic [21]. On the occasions where you do spot it, there's a momentary panic, and sometimes you wonder, Am I having a stroke?. You're probably not having a stroke [22]. It's just a brain glitch. Happens all the time.

The editors are good at catching this kind of thing, but sometimes it slips by. And it's not just John Sandford. Again, this happens to everyone, and of course that includes writers. Every now and then I'll see a completely inexplicable mistake in an otherwise fine novel, and I'll chalk it up to a brain glitch, and that's good enough.