Try Dying Page 30

  She bounced the ball once. “Try me,” she said.

  Why I Named the Character Ty Buchanan

  Tyler is from Fight Club. Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt in the film) is primal, nihilistic, violent. In Try Dying, the first book in my series, Ty Buchanan has to contend with similar feelings as his world is turned upside down. An up-and-coming lawyer in LA, Ty has it all. But his fiancé is killed (on page 1) and when he goes looking for answers, he’s forced into a street existence that both engenders and requires a hard-edged response.

  Buchanan is from a favorite Western of mine, Buchanan Rides Alone (1958, directed by Budd Boetticher), starring the iconic Randolph Scott. He is, in the best western tradition, an anti-hero and loner, but with a strong inner code of honor. He doesn’t look for trouble, but when it finds him, he fights. And he always displays an insouciant good humor.

  I wanted these two dynamics to play out within Ty Buchanan. They provide counterpoint and inner conflict, as the Buchanan side is often at odds with the Durden aspect. Thus, the name.

  Why I Write About Los Angeles

  My Town

  I have a number of writer friends who set their novels in exotic locations––Hawaii, Europe, Australia, the Amazon. They do this because they get to travel for research, have fun, and take a fat tax deduction in April.

  They chide me because I always set my books in Los Angeles. My tax write off consists of some mileage and the occasional day pass on the Metro.

  So when I started a new thriller series featuring an L.A. lawyer named Ty Buchanan, they howled that I was, once again, missing out one of the great perks of the writing life.

  I tell them I wouldn't have it any other way.

  Because Los Angeles is my town. It's where I grew up, got educated, got married. Here I've waited tables, sold office supplies, practiced law, raised kids. I've shaken with the ground and wiped out in the waves.

  L.A. is where I choose to live.

  This my friends cannot believe.

  So I call them from Gladstone's as I look out at the Pacific Ocean; or from the Hollywood Bowl on warm summer nights before the concert begins.

  "How are things in Oklahoma City?" I'll ask.

  They try to laugh it off, but as the lights come on and the city moves, I know the last laugh will be mine.

  My history is all Angeleno. My dad was an L.A. lawyer. He went to Hollywood High and played baseball at UCLA with a teammate named Jackie Robinson.

  My grandfather put down roots in Hollywood in the early 1920s. Built a house on Nichols Canyon Road that's still there. I drive by it sometimes, remembering when I played in the front yard as a kid. The tree I climbed is bigger now, gnarlier. Sort of like our city.

  Yes, we've got traffic and crime and have it more intensely. But that's part of our vibe. It always feels like anything can happen, and often does.

  That's why I like walking down the streets like the quintessential L.A. novelists John Fante and Raymond Chandler. From Pershing Square to MacArthur Park, Silver Lake to Koreatown. Throw a stone in any direction and you're likely to hit a plot or colorful character.

  I take the Red Line downtown to hit the central library. While there I might hike up Bunker Hill, then head down the stairs next to Angels Flight.

  My Dad was instrumental in keeping Angels Flight alive around 1960 or so. I even made an appearance on the local news. A reporter asked me what I thought of the historic funicular and I said, "It's funner than Disneyland."

  Cute kid. My contribution to the city I love.

  I've done time in Chicago and New York. Fine cities both, but they don't hold a palm tree to L.A.

  Let's just take celebrity trials.

  Ours started with Clarence Darrow, who defended the McNamara brothers back in 1911 on charges of blowing up the Times building. Then Darrow was charged with the attempted bribe of a juror.

  So who else to defend him but L.A.'s own Earl Rogers? In the same courtroom at the same time, the two greatest trial lawyers who ever lived.

  Darrow was acquitted.

  It happened in L.A.

  Here, Errol Flynn was tried for statutory rape and found not guilty. Robert Mitchum got popped for marijuana possession, did sixty days, then resumed his career. And of course there's O.J., Robert Blake, Phil Spector.

  We've got the celebrity trial market cornered.

  Or how about noir, my genre of choice? Can any location beat L.A.?

  Take a look at films like He Walked by Night, Criss Cross, Too Late for Tears and Collateral. Read Chandler. Michael Connelly. Robert Crais. No other city has the neon lit, burnt orange, seamy underbelly pulse of the City of Angels.

  It was really no contest on where I'd set my books. Because my narrative imagination has been shaped by Joe Friday and Perry Mason, Phillip Marlowe and Harry Bosch. By City Hall, Chinatown, and the San Fernando Valley.

  Why would I want to live or write anywhere else?

  Of course, there's nothing to stop Ty Buchanan from chasing a lead down the Amazon, if he must.

  But he'll always come home to L.A.

  Copyright ©2008 by James Scott Bell