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For the week of June 28 through July 4, 2000

Lou Boldt comes alive at reading

‘Middle of Nowhere’ heading toward big screen


‘Ridley, I’ve read everything you’ve written, and I know I’m Lou Boldt.’


By PETER BOLTZ
Express Staff Writer

Ridley Pearson and Lou Boldt are back, and they’ll be at The Community Library tomorrow at 6 p.m. for a reading from Pearson’s newest novel, "Middle of Nowhere."

Although the event is called a reading, Pearson said he doesn’t read at his readings.

"They’re called readings because most authors read at them," he said in an interview. "I like to make personal contact with the readers, and to me that’s the fun of it, because I do spend so much time behind the screen."

In "Middle of Nowhere," the seventh volume of his Lou Boldt detective series which recently landed in bookstores, Pearson develops the idea of correctional facilities being used for telemarketing campaigns.

"When you place your call to L.L. Bean, and they take your credit card number, you’re often giving it to an inmate," said Pearson.

"I was rather appalled at the idea that you give out your credit card to one guy in a room, and he gives it out to another guy who knows you’re going to be in Hawaii for a week.

"Has anyone put this together? So I put it together in a book."

Even though inmate telemarketers are only a small part of the story, he said, "it is at the heart and soul of the crimes in the novel—and the characters and their conflicts spin out and away from this central idea."

Another central element of the novel is the "blue flu"—that is, a police sickout. Tensions between striking officers and those "loyal to the badge" lead to an awful question Boldt must answer. Is someone inside the Seattle police department helping the suspect?

Tension between him and police psychologist Daphne Matthews leads to a different but more tantalizing question. Will Boldt resist the temptation that would destroy his family?

When Pearson created this character, he had no idea so many people would care about him or his family.

"Boldt was never intended to be a series; he just developed into one. I didn’t start out saying, ‘Okay, I’m going to write nine books about this guy.’ I wrote one book about him and then four years later I decided to write a second. Now I’ve written seven."

The eerie thing, said Pearson, is "well, he is living. I thought I created him, but then I met him and that was really an interesting hour and a half.

"It was quite amazing because I walked into the homicide division of the Seattle police department [years ago] to interview their most senior detective (Don Cameron), and it was Lou Boldt.

"Instead of taking me to his office, he took me to an interrogation room where we spent an hour and a half interrogating each other.

"At the end of it I said, ‘You know, I hope I haven’t just stumbled and fumbled my way through this because this has been disconcerting. I’ve written this character named Lou Boldt, and you are so much like him.

"And this huge grin went on this otherwise stern face, and he said, ‘Ridley, I’ve read everything you’ve written, and I know I’m Lou Boldt.’ And we’ve been very close friends ever since."

For the first time, Boldt fans will be able to hear Pearson play the audio part on a book tape, and things look good for Richard Dreyfuss to play Boldt in an A&E movie.

Pearson recorded "Middle of Nowhere" as a book tape in unabridged and abridged editions. "So if anybody wants to hear me read, all they have to do is either rent it from the library or buy it."

As for the movie, Pearson delivered a beat sheet, or condensed outline, to his producer last week, and she liked it right off the bat. On June 20, the outline went to Richard Dreyfuss for his approval.

If he likes it and A&E likes it, Pearson could be working on the script by July 4.

 

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