Mounting Pressure

This week, I was put in a situation where I did something I don’t normally do. Actually, it happened more than once, and I broke personal rules. In each case, I felt secure in my decision, for a variety of reasons.

My husband muttered something about my need to over-think everything.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with exercising caution. Okay, it can paralyze you from time to time. One thing I was asked to do this week, it took me close to half an hour of just sitting and thinking it through before I was able to proceed.

I know I can over-think things, but I also know something else. The trust it’s taken a lifetime to earn can be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

Now, nothing that came up was quite that serious, but still. There have been times in the past when I’ve had to break confidences, and those were difficult situation, but the decision was the result of my obligations to one thing being more important than my obligations to another. Specifically, I was the boss and one of my staff told me about a medical condition. I was leaving the job and had to make an assessment of fitness of the staff… I didn’t put it in writing, but I did tell my boss. Ultimately, I had a greater obligation to the children we were responsible for than the staff member. If silence would jeopardize the safety of the staff, as well as kids, I had to break that confidence.

Those are horrendous situations to be in, although I suspect we’ve all had a few along the way. Part of the reason this has been on my mind is because I started working on a guide for readers for Suspicious Circumstances, and because of some things that are coming up in the media.

Namely, the fact that the RCMP is coming under mounting pressure to take swift action to restore public confidence in the force in the wake of a damaging public inquiry report into the Arar affair.

The RCMP has a squeaky-clean image. Most of the international community sees them as Dudley Do-Right. Do no wrong. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to have a good reputation, but the RCMP is an organization, like any other, comprised of people. And when people are involved there can never be perfection.

We’ve had our share of RCMP who made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Officers charged with murder, for example. But for some reason, the Arar case is a political hot-potato, I suppose because it connects directly to terrorism and because this man was imprisoned in another country as a result of the actions of the RCMP.

And now, it’s been established that the RCMP passed incorrect information to US authorities. As a result, Arar was detained on Sept. 26, 2002, during a stopover at New York's JFK airport as he was returning home after a vacation. He was held for two weeks in the United States, then flown on a private plane to Jordan and driven across the border to Syria where he was tortured, questioned and held for a year without charges.

Right now, I’m not sure if I should be grateful or worried. You see, my Canadian series centers on the RCMP, and I’m not pandering to the squeaky-clean image. The department if made up of real, flawed people, who don’t always get along or get things right. It was part of the reason the book was a harder sell.

I’ve always believed that people will warm to a sense of honesty. Watch a movie like Dudley Do-Right, or watch Due South, and you’ll see that people can’t really take the flawless Mountie reputation seriously.

Now, personally, I’ve never met an RCMP officer I haven’t liked. Those who helped me research for the book were fantastic. I have nothing against the RCMP.

I just wanted a healthy dose of realism in the book.

If the first Canadian noir book came out next year, the timing could be good. With a case like this fresh in people’s minds – even reaching international press – it paves the way for people having an open mind to what I’ve done with the book. (And no, I haven’t vilified the RCMP – my protagonists are RCMP officers. It’s just that they certainly aren’t perfect.)

But if a fair bit of time elapses between the backlash on this and my book release, the RCMP may go on a campaign to restore credibility and take a dim view of anything that doesn’t portray them in the most favourable light.

I have to admit that I never thought about any of this when I started the book. In fact, it was almost two years ago that I finished the first draft on it, having finished the first draft of Suspicious Circumstances in June and Past Transgressions in August.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. It will also be interesting to see how the book is received.

And if will be interesting to see how much I cringe when I do the edits on that book this fall.

As I noted, I didn’t write Suspicious Circumstances and the Canadian book back to back, but there are some similar themes.

Trust is definitely one of them.

Maybe, when it comes to some themes, we take things that are important to us, things we feel strongly about, and keep handing them over to different characters to see how they deal with them. A betrayal of trust is one of the most serious offenses in my book. Not just friend to friend, a country betraying the trust of citizens, a religion abusing the trust of followers. Trust on all levels.

There are other themes too, but we don't need to talk about them today.

I will suggest to you writers that when you work on edits, you give some thought to reader guides for book clubs. It is a bit tricky.

Now, a question for you guys. How do you decide to trust someone you’ve never met in person? I mean, what would prompt you to give me your phone number, or not, if you’ve never physically met me?

Asks she who just arranged to drive from Milwaukee to Madison with someone she’s never met before next week. But he has a nice telephone voice…

For laughs, it’s Dar Wednesday.

** And I have to warn you. I might make another tweak to the blog design. One of my regulars can't read white on black, so I'm going to see what I can do...