Jeffery Deaver on survivalists, cults, his new suspense novel

Author Jeffery Deaver, known best for his Lincoln Rhyme series, wrote his first book at age 11. He has always known he wanted to write and, as a thriller writer, feels it’s his responsibility to take each of his characters on an exciting, suspense-filled journey.

His newest novel “The Goodbye Man” is no exception.

Professional tracker and survivalist Coulter Shaw makes a living traveling the country as a rewardseeker, collecting compensation offered by the police for the capture of an escaped fugitive or by parents for the return of a missing child. Using his survival skills, he tracks down these individuals,

“and then gets in his Winnebago and drives off on another adventure. That’s his job,” says Deaver.

On his newest adventure, Coulter Shaw’s reward-seeking will lead him to a mysterious organization located within Washington state’s vast wilderness. Although he may claim otherwise, the charismatic “Master Eli” is nothing more than a dangerous cult leader. Shaw will first have to get inside this insidious organization before he’s going to get anyone out.

I had the chance to speak with Deaver about “The Goodbye Man.”

Deaver

A: I knew nothing about survivalism, except what was in popular media. Generally, survivalists were presented as pretty wacko, with bizarre beliefs like: The moon landing never happened, John Kennedy is actually somewhere in the basement of Congress, and there’s going to be a revolution of some sort, a new Civil War. There are certainly survivalists like that, but what I was struck with is that there are many people who simply want to be self-sufficient.

With the corona situation, there is something to be said for that. These are folks that don’t have any odd religious beliefs. They simply want to be able to live off the grid. They may use cellphones; they may have internet. Basically, they don’t want to be dependent on that. They want to be able to live by their own means, and that’s one of the things that surprised me. That’s the kind of survivalist that is Coulter Shaw.

A: It’s important in all of my fiction to have a personal subtext about the character. It makes them more real. In Lincoln Rhyme’s case, for the bulk of the series, he’s disabled. How does he deal with that very extreme condition? In Coulter Shaw’s case, his father and mother, both brilliant scientists, escaped from the San Francisco Bay area for reasons we don’t yet know, but I have a whole arc planned out for Coulter Shaw. They have moved to the Sierra Nevada, the wilderness in Eastern California, to prepare for what might be an attack or something worse. We don’t know at this point, but we will. So, what we have is a situation where Coulter Shaw is wrestling with this trauma of his childhood, and yet we don’t know what’s coming.

A: I had a little experience with a cult. A long time ago, someone tried to recruit me. It didn’t go very well. In fact, it was a nonthreatening experience, but I did go to a recruitment meeting where all the other followers were there. It had to be 100 people in a ballroom in a hotel in New York City, and I was terrified.

What scared me was how when the leader walked out on stage, brightly lit, wearing a white outfit of some kind. The cult followers went absolutely crazy. They were not human beings anymore. They were a creature. A mob. He wasn’t even saying anything, but to see people, many of them professionals, many of them otherwise welladjusted, kind of sell their souls to this fellow was a frightening thing.

I thought, I’m going to put that in a book. I want to have a cult leader have this power over people, and he’s going to go head to head with my hero.