Reality Writes

Joseph Finder is someone who, by his own admission, enjoys reading Jane Austen and listening to Bach sonatas in his free time. At age 47, he has written seven novels, including the bestseller High Crimes. Yet from time to time, he departs his beautifully appointed apartment on Commonwealth Avenue and visits the Boston Gun and Rifle Association to blast away on his stainless-steel .357 Smith & Wesson 686p revolver. Finder's motivation, he insists, is literary authenticity.

His latest novel, Killer Instinct, is due out on Tuesday. The story is set in Boston, and its narrator, Jason Steadman, is a 30-year-old salesman at a fictional Fortune 500 company called Entronics. Jason's career, his marriage, and his entire life are in a slump until something unexpected happens: On his way home from work in Framingham, he drives off the road and into a ditch. Forty-five minutes later, a bright-red tow truck pulls up. Its driver, in a mullet and a Harley-Davidson jacket, is Kurt Semko, a former Special Forces officer just back from Iraq. Jason takes an immediate liking to Semko and helps him get a job at Entronics. Soon after, Jason's fortunes begin to turn. He starts landing deals and promotions while his rivals within the company mysteriously botch routine assignments and get into freak accidents. Jason gradually realizes that Kurt has been orchestrating his successes -- by whatever means necessary -- and when Jason objects, things turn ugly.

In one of the novel's many riveting sequences, Jason acquires a handgun for protection. This inspired Finder to hit the shooting range. "Guns had always been scary and alien to me," he says. "When I wrote about them in my books, I had these experts whom I'd call, but I got tired of doing that. I felt a little like a virgin writing sex scenes."

To better understand the psyche of his villain, Finder spent months interviewing Special Forces veterans in the Boston area. "Thank goodness for the Internet," says Finder. "I found a website for a local chapter of these vets, and then I just sent them an e-mail." Finder met Kevin O'Brien from Lynn, who is known to his Army mates as "Hognose." "If you looked straight at my face, you see up my nose like you can with a hog," O'Brien explains. "I was relieved when I learned that a hognose is also a type of snake." Like Kurt Semko, O'Brien had just returned from a tour of duty, though the similarities end there. O'Brien, who is both articulate and quite sane, shared his Afghanistan war stories with Finder and explained how Special Forces soldiers are trained to think, act, and kill. "Finder was always e-mailing with questions," recalls O'Brien. "He'd ask, 'If a guy like Kurt were going to kill someone, how would he do it?' Then he'd e-mail back and ask, 'What would make an S.F. guy be insubordinate and punch an officer?' I'd say that doesn't really happen. Then he'd come back with some news story from Iraq showing that it did happen, and he'd ask, 'What do you make of that?'"

During his conversations with Finder, O'Brien described several Special Forces soldiers who turned out to be "bad apples." One of these was Jonathan Keith Idema, who trained for the Special Forces but ran into trouble after leaving the military. By most accounts, Idema was a charismatic, swaggering, sunglasses-wearing maverick -- a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Rambo. In 2004, Idema was convicted of operating a private jail in Afghanistan where he held and tortured prisoners. These stories fascinated Finder, an alumnus of Yale and Harvard, the son of college professors, and the brother of a top editor at the New Yorker.

Finder didn't limit his research to guns and gunmen. He also hung out at EMC -- the behemoth data-storage company based in Hopkinton - to get a sense of what life might have been like for Jason Steadman as he climbed the corporate ladder at a technology firm. Finder picked the brain of the company's chief financial officer, William Teuber Jr., who dutifully points out that none of escapades in Killer Instinct ever occurred at EMC. Instead, Teuber helped Finder describe corporate life more plausibly. "I help him test the believability factor of his plots," Teuber says. "And I think this makes for a better read."

Others agree. Malcolm Gladwell, who often writes about the business world and whose books include The Tipping Point and Blink, is a big fan. "Novelists are addicted to things like police departments and armies because it's easy to understand the narrative and dramatic possibilities of those worlds," he says. "Getting a grip on the modern corporate America has always been a little more difficult, and I think Joe Finder does it better than anyone."

Perhaps the most unusual thing about Finder is not that he does his research so well, but that he discusses it so openly. "Every writer, no matter how literary, does research," he says. "Gathering information was hugely important for Balzac, Flaubert, Bellow, Roth, Pynchon and many others. This is part of what makes their writing feel so real. But a lot of writers don't like to admit this, because they fear that showing their bag of tricks will somehow remove the mystique from their work."

If there is any pitfall to Finder's thoroughness, it is that sources often feel deeply invested in his work. O'Brien, for example, outlined scenes -- complete with dialogue -- and entire subplots he had hoped Finder might adapt. Finder, of course, came up with his own clever lines and plot turns. And for the most part, O'Brien has no complaints. "I would probably rather not have my Special Forces unit associated with villainy," he says. "But this was his story to tell. My job was just to give him the details, and, let me tell you, his characters will be believable."

Boston writer Jake Halpern's new book, Fame Junkies, will be out this winter. E-mail him at halpernwriter@yahoo.com.