Bookpleasures.com welcomes our guest, Kevin G. Chapman, whose newest novel, The Other Murder, has just been published.

Kevin is an accomplished attorney specializing in labor and employment law and a prolific independent author. 

Currently immersed in the creation of the Mike Stoneman Thriller series, Kevin’s debut novel, Righteous Assassin (Mike Stoneman Thriller #1), earned accolades as one of the top 20 Mystery/Thrillers of 2019 by the Kindle Book Review and was a finalist for the Chanticleer Book Review CLUE award. Since then, Kevin’s books have been the winners of the 2021 Kindle Book Award (Lethal Voyage, Mike Stoneman #3), the 2022 CLUE Award - best police procedural (Fatal Infraction, Mike Stoneman #4); and the 2023 CLUE Award - best suspense/thriller (Dead Winner). 

Residing in central New Jersey, Kevin is a proud graduate of Columbia College (’83), sharing a graduating class with Barack Obama. Additionally, he holds a degree from the Boston University School of Law. 

Good day, Kevin, and thanks for taking part in our interview.

Norm: How did you develop the idea for The Other Murder, and what inspired you to explore the intersection of media, law enforcement, and personal biases in the narrative?

Kevin:  I’m a lawyer who works for a media company and writes crime thrillers, so the three most significant elements of my professional life all come together in The Other Murder.

The story sprang from my non-original observation that pretty, affluent White girls who are missing or killed tend to dominate the news cycles. 

We often hear statistics about the number of murders and violent crimes in a particular city, but seldom (if ever) see significant media coverage given to a minority victim who isn’t rich and famous. 

This phenomenon, could be called “unconscious bias,” but is likely more a conscious choice by producers and media executives to feature stories that will tend to get the biggest ratings. 

Particularly in broadcast news, including 24-hour cable news networks, getting eyes on your story is the most important thing. 

The story that can be made sensationalistic and which involves a victim that your viewers will sympathize with and relate to is the story you feature. 

That’s good economics, but leads to a slanted presentation of the world. I wanted to make this murder mystery a story that gets inside that culture and lets my readers see all sides of the story as it unfolds.

Norm: The story involves two journalists and two homicide detectives. How did you approach developing these characters, and what challenges did you face in creating complex relationships between them while navigating the intricacies of the murder mystery?

Kevin: The real “leads” of this story are the two journalists. Each of them has positive and negative attributes and each makes choices that are both selfish and noble – the two being not mutually exclusive. 

I wanted my cable news producer to be understood in the context of her job, her bosses, and her ambitions. I wanted the print journalist to be understood as someone who could have a “better” job, but who has a calling both to journalism and to his community. 

Their interactions disclose their similarities and differences as well as the nature of the business in which they work. And, of course, it’s a murder story so there must be cops. 

Here, the cops don’t have all the information and need the help of the journalists. The two partners have their own problems, including a recent incident that set them at odds. 

Through their eyes, the reader learns things the journalists don’t know and sees the way the media coverage affects the police investigation. Making the characters the focus of the story lets me tell the mystery story through interesting eyes.

I have always loved the mysteries of Sara Paretsky, whose characters are the heart and soul of her books. In the Mike Stoneman Thriller series, I had a fixed set of main characters to be my narrators. 

They, and their minor-character companions, gave me a universe of backstories to weave into the mysteries. Here, in this stand-alone story, I had to create brand new characters and get my readers to relate to them and care about them. 

My goal, like Ms. Paretsky, is to make my readers as interested in the stories of the players as they are about the underlying “main” plot. 

The plot needs to hold them together, but the characters need to behave in a way that is both realistic and interesting.

I’m always disappointed in a book when the characters are stupid, make irrational decisions (for the sake of advancing the plot), and where the logic of the story doesn’t hold together. 

I want my plots to make sense – in the context of the fictional facts. This past year I read a best-seller called Just the Nicest Couple, by Mary Kubica, who has a big publisher and whose new book sold a zillion copies based on her stellar reputation. 

But the plot was a mess, the characters made nothing but bad decisions, the key bits of information made no sense, and the ending was entirely unsatisfying. 

And, along the way, none of the characters were likable. I didn’t care whether they all ended up dead or in jail because they were all idiots. I’m hoping nobody thinks that about The Other Murder.

Norm: How did you handle the portrayal of racism in the novel, and what message do you hope readers will take away from this aspect of the story?

Kevin: The main plot here involves the subtle racism that permeates the media and, to some extent, the police and the city officials, who are driven by publicity (positive or negative) and public perception. 

When the media tells the public that a situation is a horrible tragedy and an example of a huge problem that needs to be fixed, crowds gather, memorials are created, politicians and activists make speeches, and the media feeds on itself to amplify the story. Government officials like the mayor and the police commissioner react by making that crime a priority and devoting resources to solving it. 

Catching that killer matters because everyone is watching. In this story, the second murder involves a Latino boy with a history of gang membership. 

It garners no media attention and would have generated minimal police interest – until the cops discover that Javier Estrada’s murder may be connected to the White girl, Angelica Monroe. 

The immediately reported story is that Angelica was an innocent victim of urban gun violence. She becomes a saint. Javier Estrada is ignored.

Meanwhile, the two detectives on the cases are a White man and a Hispanic woman. Mariana is the only character involved in the police investigation who cares about Javier’s story. 

Similarly, only Paulo Richardson, the local newspaper reporter, cares about Javier’s portrayal in the press. Paulo wants to make people see the truth about Javier. 

Mariana wants her colleagues to see that the White girl isn’t always the victim and the Latino boy is not always the criminal. 

The investigation also lays bare the recent rift between Mariana and her partner, Dru Cook, arising from an incident of police brutality. Was that incident racially motivated? Dru didn’t think so. Mariana saw it differently.

In the end, once the reader has all the facts (or, at least all the different versions of the facts), the question of who is a little bit racist and where motives and biases get mixed together makes things a lot less clear cut. 

My hope is that the reader not only enjoys the story and cares about the characters, but that the tale makes them think a little bit about their own perceptions.

Norm: The story involves two murders on the same night—one garnering intense media attention and the other mostly ignored. How did you balance the narrative between these two cases, and what narrative choices did you make to ensure both stories were effectively told?

Kevin: It was fun weaving together the four points-of-view in the story. Through each one (and the two detectives are one joint POV), the reader has more information than any of the individual characters. 

I had to deconstruct the story at one point and separate out each POV into its own sub-story to make sure that all the events and facts stayed straight. 

When the POVs collide at different points in the book (and all of them together in the climax), it was a juggling act to make each story compelling while allowing the reader to “view” the action in a coherent way so that it all made sense.  It was even more of a challenge when narrating the audiobook, where I was jumping back and forth between the voices!

Part of the challenge was making sure there was enough of a mystery for the reader to try to figure out, and how to keep them guessing.

Norm: The novel challenges readers to guess what happened, indicating mystery and suspense. How did you craft the tension in the narrative, and what techniques did you employ to keep readers engaged in solving the mystery?

Kevin: In the first draft of the story, chapter one gave the reader a view into all the events that happened leading up to and including the murders of Angelica and Javier. 

I’ll be publishing that chapter as a “deleted scene” on my website after the book has been out for a while. I realized after the first draft was done that letting the reader know what happened and then following the investigations by the police and the journalists with that knowledge was not fully satisfying as a mystery. 

The story was: “how are they going to figure it out?” rather than “what happened?” 

So, I went back and deleted most of that first chapter and re-wrote the story so that the journalists and the police (along with the reader) are piecing together the facts, without knowing for sure who is giving them good information, which of their assumptions are correct, and what information they are missing. 

This allows the reader to guess where the characters have it right, and what might be wrong. Even at the end, nobody (including the reader) can be 100% sure they know the whole truth.

Elements of the plot changed to the point that I sometimes got confused about what had happened in the earlier chapters of the current version. 

I had two of my typokiller readers point out where one of the characters made an important observation – that was not true in the version of the facts that they could have known. (Thank you to all my typokillers and Beta readers!)

Norm: The novel highlights the danger of the truth. Can you elaborate on the significance of this theme and how it plays into the challenges faced by the characters, particularly Hannah and Paulo, as they uncover disturbing facts?

Kevin: The tag line of the book was one of the first things I wrote after outlining the basic story. “Sometimes, the most dangerous thing . . . is the truth.” 

It is a common observation that humans are significantly influenced by what is called in psychology “recency bias.” Your strongest memories and emotions are attached to the things that happened most recently.

It is also true in media that the first story is the one that gets imprinted in people’s memories, particularly if it sparks strong emotions. When asked whether one of two things is true, the one you heard first is the one you are more likely to believe.

One of the core messages of The Other Murder is that people need to be careful about believing the first narrative they hear. But the reality is that, once a set of facts is in your head, it is hard to push it out. This is especially true when the original narrative reinforces your personal views and political objectives. Telling people who are emotionally, financially, and politically invested in one version of a story that the story they heard and want to believe is really a false narrative – is a dangerous thing to do.

In the media world, once you have established your narrative and “hooked” your audience, it’s hard to switch gears and retain your viewers if you suddenly try to tell them that what you had been telling them is false and that there’s a new truth they should switch to. They are likely to switch – to a different news source that will reinforce their belief in the original story. That is part of the challenge facing Paulo and Hannah.

Norm: Where can our readers learn more about you and The Other Murder?

Kevin: The Other Murder is now available (as of February 29th) as an ebook for your Kindle via Amazon.com. Amazon can also sell you a paperback or a hardcover. 

Paperbacks and hardcovers are also available through select independent bookstores and via Bookshop.org, which supports local bookstores. 

The audiobook version is available via CHIRP, iTunes, Googleplay, Roku, Nook (Barnes & Noble), LIBRO.FM (which also supports independent bookstores) and on Audible. All my other titles are also available at all the same retailers. 

Readers can contact me and see all my content at My Website

Norm: As we conclude our interview, the novel challenges readers to guess what happened, indicating mystery and suspense. How did you craft the tension in the narrative, and what techniques did you employ to keep readers engaged in solving the mystery?

Kevin: In the first draft of the story, chapter one gave the reader a view into all the events that happened leading up to and including the murders of Angelica and Javier.

I’ll be publishing that chapter as a “deleted scene” on my website after the book has been out for a while. I realized after the first draft was done that letting the reader know what happened and then following the investigations by the police and the journalists with that knowledge was not fully satisfying as a mystery. 

The story was: “how are they going to figure it out?” rather than “what happened?” 

So, I went back and deleted most of that first chapter and re-wrote the story so that the journalists and the police (along with the reader) are piecing together the facts, without knowing for sure who is giving them good information, which of their assumptions are correct, and what information they are missing. 

This allows the reader to guess where the characters have it right, and what might be wrong. Even at the end, nobody (including the reader) can be 100% sure they know the whole truth.

Elements of the plot changed to the point that I sometimes got confused about what had happened in the earlier chapters of the current version. 

I had two of my typokiller readers point out where one of the characters made an important observation – that was not true in the version of the facts that they could have known. (Thank you to all my typokillers and Beta readers!)

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your endeavors

Follow Here To Read Norm's Review of The Other Murder

FOLLOW HERE TO READ A SUMMARY OF THE INTERVIEW