"THE VICTIM HAS TO BE A BELIEVABLE PERSON": AN INTERVIEW WITH FIRST DO NO HARM'S S.J. ROZAN

S.J. Rozan puts her P.I. heroes Lydia Chin and Bill Smith when they help Lydia's doctor brother, in trying to clear a diener (morgue attendant ) accused of murdering a nurse in the hospital. The cast takes them into the politics of the hospital with a labor dispute between the nurses and administrators. S.J. was kind enough to answer some questions about the book, its medical backdrop and her characters.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: What drew you to take on a hospital as the backdrop for a detective novel?

S.J. ROZAN: Three years ago Mt. Sinai Hospital nurses were negotiating for a new contract. A nurse on the negotiating committee was a friend of mine. She gave me a password so I could watch the negotiations on video. I was struck by how the attorneys for management could have been working for General Electric or General Motors instead of General Hospital. Their job was to make sure labor got as little as they could get away with giving them -- never mind that labor was a highly skilled, highly educated work force that made life and death decisions on a daily basis. I started looking into hospital administration and realized that the doctors and nurses are trying to do the job they're trained for -- saving lives and sending people home healthy -- in a world where virtually everyone else is in it for a different reason and a lot of those reasons are money.

S.M.: What did you enjoy about the setting when you are writing in it?

S.J.R.: The doctors, nurses, deiners and techs I met. They were inspiring.

S.M.: What was your biggest surprise in your research in hospital life?

S.J.R.: How complicated a hospital is and how many things go on in one that have absolutely nothing to do with patients.

S.M.: You have an interesting victim who provides a lot of meat for the story. What goes into creating a great murder mystery victim?

S.J.R.: The victim has to be a believable person, even if, as in this case, you never meet them when alive. They need to have more than one person with a reason to want them dead. They need to be complex, also, not just a one-dimensional evil villain.

S.M.: Are there things that determine a case voiced by Lydia and one voiced by Bill?

S.J.R.:Bill is darker, so his cases are darker. Also Lydia's cases tend to be family-related, or at least Chinese-related.

S.M.: What do you enjoy about writing for Lydia?

S.J.R.: Lydia's more cheerful and energetic than Bill. She can be snarky and that's fun to write. Also her books tend to have more food in them, and that's always fun.