The Narrows – Belinda (THE RAYMOND HATCHER STORIES) By Mark Zvonkovic Book Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway! {Ends 10/28/22}

Other Books in the Series:

A Community of Characters

I think of the characters in novels as members of a community, some of them interacting casually and others intensely. This occurs through the plot of course, which can span a time of days or one of decades. In my novel ‘A Lion In The Grass’ the story covers the lifetime of the protagonist, Raymond Hatcher, while in each of my other two novels, the events take place in little more than a week. A few of the characters appear in all three novels, but no one of them is a protagonist in more than one of the books. Raymond Hatcher is the common connection to all of them, but he is the protagonist only in ‘A Lion In The Grass’.

Character development is what really interests me in a novel. Some readers may not find characters as engaging as fast and exciting plots, where the background of a protagonist is not as interesting as the action taking place. These novels would include very popular thrillers and romances, generally, although there are plenty of genre blended novels with very well developed characters. Readers who want to make deep personal connections with a story often enjoy novels with mixed genres and complex characters. In E.M. Forester’s words, one must “only connect” to find meaning in relationships, and how wonderful can it be for a reader to make a strong connection with a protagonist. A literary novel in any genre, from thriller to romance, must in my opinion have a carefully constructed balance of action, dialogue, and character development.

My character development involves a great deal of research about people, whether that be through people I have known personally or through biographies, or by my own reading of fiction. The characters in the communities created in my novels are a combination of all that kind of research. Developing a character is how I start a novel. As I get to know the character in my mind, I invent a plot as a means of further development. That’s how I balance those two. The dialogue is how the characters and the plot are combined.

The primary genre of ‘A Lion In The Grass’ is historical fiction. Several authors I like do a great job of what I like to call “literary spy fiction,” because it is a fiction that puts the protagonist first and the plot second. Three great authors who inspired me in this regard are John le Carre, Charles McCarry, and Graham Greene. But I would say that spy and mystery novels are only a small piece of good literature. Great novelists who are masters of balancing character and plot in literary fiction are for me–and only to name a few–Somerset Maugham, E.M. Forster, and Wallace Stegner. And, of course, there are modern writers who are really damn good! It would take pages to talk about all of them. I read a lot, which every writer must do.

‘A Lion In The Grass’ takes the reader through Raymond Hatcher’s decades-long journey from idealist to pragmatist. Along the way there are wartime dangers, romances in Croatia and on Catalina Island, disappointments of the post-war bureaucracy, lies and secrecy, the mentoring of protégés, murder of colleagues, and at the end a last chance to make things right. All of these events lead back to the development of Raymond’s character as he interacts in his fictional community and reflects upon the circumstances in which he finds himself.

In my novel ‘The Narrows ‘there is a tangential connection between the protagonist, Larry Brown, a junior high school teacher, and Raymond Hatcher. A colleague of Raymond’s during World War II, Bradley Wright, is part of an extended family of the Clements sisters. Bradley marries one of those sisters and they have a child, Herrick, who Raymond gets to know in difficult circumstances. Another sister has a child, named Bradley after his uncle, and the third has a son, Larry. Herrick is taken into Bradley’s family during ‘A Lion In The Grass’.

In ‘The Narrows’ Larry grapples with the cultural upheaval of the 1970’s, which is exemplified by his efforts to get back his cousin Bradley from a religious cult on Cape Cod. In the Part II of ‘A Lion In The Grass’, Herrick is recruited by Raymond into the spy world.

In my novel, ‘Belinda’, I took a lot of time putting myself in the place of the protagonist Belinda Larkin. Of course, this was particularly difficult for me for no other reason than that Lyn was a woman and I a man. But I had the advantage of working for almost forty years in a law firm, where a lot of the novel’s action occurs, and I was very lucky to have mentored a number of young women associates during those years. It made a tremendous impression on me that these women in a professional setting always had to overcome the fact that the prevailing ethos around them was so male slanted. It wasn’t just the blatant misogynistic attitudes, like the ones displayed so prominently in my novel by the antagonist, Patrick Brashner. The more difficult obstacles grew out of subtle attitudes and proclivities of many men, which often made the women feel as if their bodies were being evaluated as much as their brains, if not more, something often referred to as “lookism.” And for me this is what Belinda is about, how dedicated this woman was to her profession and how elegantly she managed to make herself a success despite the male ethos she encountered daily.

Belinda Larkin appears only once in ‘A Lion In The Grass’, as a brief romantic encounter with Jay Jackson, who was Herrick’s roommate in college and then a protégé of Raymond Hatcher. ‘The Narrows’ is written in a first person point of view, which focuses most of its character development on Larry Brown. Similar to‘ A Lion In The Grass’, ‘Belinda’ is written from several points of view, one of those, Jay Jackson, appearing in both novels. Both Jay and Belinda are lawyers, as I was for almost forty years. It took some hard work on my part to cast off my legal training (all those years of writing contracts and indentures) and make my writing show, not dictate. It was the men’s points of view that I used to display the male ethos that appears in both novels, particularly the subtle attitudes that some of the men were barely conscious of. In ‘A Lion In The Grass’, the antagonist Piquart, and in ‘Belinda’, the antagonist Brashner, display blatant misogyny. But it is the character Will Baines in ‘Belinda’, a decent young partner in fact, who displays how a man’s actions and thoughts can create an uncomfortable environment for women.

Through Will’s thoughts, the reader sees how his unmanageable, even adolescent, observations about two women colored his attitude toward them. Of course, sexuality can have tremendous power in social settings, particularly those arising in a professional context, where it is combined with competition and ambition. These attitudes are pervasive in all communities, whether acknowledged or not, and so they play an important role in all three of my novels.

Readers sometimes ask me, What next? I don’t have a ready answer. I’m a recovering lawyer
and I have no intention of ever again filling out a time sheet. Whatever the next story, it will of course focus around a complex protagonist, and there are plenty of characters from my three novels who may catch my attention. One of them is Larry Brown from ‘The Narrows’. A lot has happened in the world since the events of the 1970’s depicted in that novel. Perhaps it would be interesting to see how Larry has made his way to the present day.