Inspiration…

I needed a cop and a lawyer fast. Connections in the Bronx D.A.'s office paid off. I was introduced to the venerable Daniel McCarthy, Chief Trial Counsel. Dan showed up carrying two Bloomingdales bags filled with a rather gruesome load of crime scene documentation that served as my entree into the world of homicide. After explaining my predicament - I was a rookie, making up a murder to go, knee deep in muck and mayhem - Dan looked at his gold cufflinks, a set of miniature handcuffs - and offered to invite another titan to come along for the ride. Enter Frank Viggiano, Detective Sergeant New York City Police Department, Former Squad Commander of the 47th Pct Detective Squad, and now Chief Investigator for the Bronx District Attorney's Office.

Someone had offed a shrink, I gravely told Frank, gassed him in his '57 Mercedes Gullwing, on the eve of a nasty snowstorm, left him for dead, tucked away in the snowy brush of Central Park. Chances were high I was assuming too much, Frank replied. Couldn't it have been a suicide? Maybe, but then what about the crispy critter that turned up in the Brambles, brutalized and burned beyond recognition? The motives and the list of suspects ran from vague to complex. I was in a labyrinth of predatory violence, my mind filled with the unsettling images of Joel Peter-Witkin, Freudian reverie and visceral sex. I had imagined all of this of course, though God knows, based on the fruit of my inspiration, it could have happened. Frank handed over Practical Homicide Investigation, a 900 - page tome by the renowned retired NYPD Lieutenant Commander Vernon J. Geberth. Every cop's Bible. I got down on my knees and prayed. End of story? Not a chance.

Back in the spring of 1909, Sigmund Freud was involved in a highly confidential correspondence with one of his disciples, Carl Jung. Seems Jung had fallen hard for one of his patients and was frequently bedding her down. Sabina Spielrein was all of 19 at the time, a beautiful, brilliant and precocious basket case. Jung was Freud's heir apparent; he was also married. Freud cautioned against the sexual liaison, Jung balked, Speilrein suffered. In the early days of psychoanalysis, it was not uncommon for male analysts to have sexual relationships with their female patients. There would be no formal Office of Professional Medical Conduct to strictly enforce standards until 1975. Back in 1909, the sex was explained away - defined simply as an effort 'to cure the woman's hysteria' - any symptoms whose 'treatment required more than marriage.' Jung was in good company. Analysts Josef Breuer and Sandor Ferenczi practiced the same sexual philosophy as did countless others. Promising their distraught patients liberation, they envisioned themselves as their mentors and saviors. Many, like Speilrein, believed they had been deeply loved rather than sexually exploited. Was it any wonder that after desperately pleading with Freud to intervene - to no avail - that Speilrein fantasized about murdering Jung…This parable became food for thought.

In AN HOUR TO KILL, I set out to explore what might happen when the psychoanalytic relationship goes horribly wrong. Deception and betrayal go for a romp in the wintry woods of Central Park, where the police in charge are reputably better known for bird watching and catching squirrels. An apparent myth - one that undergoes a dramatic change when Detectives James Gurson and Didi Kane touch down and ultimately pull each other out from their own personal wreckage. Murderers, victims and innocent bystanders all arrive on the scene carrying their own sordid histories. How does that play into how they create or recreate the very moments before them? Whose responsibility is it to recognize and extricate one self from inappropriate liaisons or life situations? Analyst or analysand? Predator or victim? And who is the victim really? Does the truth, as Caderon de la Barca suggests, depend on the color of the crystal in which one perceives it? What relationships are really real…what is the meaning of truth…trust…betrayal?

In Susan Baur's insightful book, 'The Intimate Hour', she posed this query: "How can love be included and acknowledged in the intimate (analytic) hour without leading to abuse?" Which caused me to contemplate an even grander conundrum: How can love be introduced and acknowledged in any relationship without leading to abuse? These intriguing questions propelled me as I wrote AN HOUR TO KILL. All of the characters, after all, are victims of one sort or another. Victims of their own pasts most surely. AN HOUR TO KILL probes the psychological mysteries and relationships of a diverse array of characters - black and white, gay and straight, sane and certifiable: Detective James Gurson and the suicide of his father when he was just a boy; Detective Didi Kane and her tumultuous affair with the murdered Leone; Ren and the hopelessness of a prostitute's life that began when she was 12; renegade Boyd Cleary's tormented childhood; Theodora and Tucker's long term sado-masochistic subterfuge; Dr. Isaac Collier's denial when faced with the consequences of his laissez-faire, let's say ... less than professional practices. Great minds, Bruno Bettelheim among them, have argued that 'however questionable Jung's behavior was from a moral point of view it somehow met the prime obligation of an analyst towards his patient. Namely, to cure her!' Could this possibly be a valid contention? In his brilliant essays on surviving, Bettelheim asserts that until we recognize how we ourselves contribute to our own undoing we will indisputably remain victims. True enough. This said, however, while writing AN HOUR TO KILL I felt compelled to ponder: how does one live in the truth of a situation when either emotionally unable or unwilling to recognize what the deep down dirty truth is. And then, who to trust to shed the light…Herr Doktor?

Extensive research within the New York psychoanalytic community unveiled that the majority of analysts strictly refrain from dispelling any personal information about them selves. Patients know little or nothing about their analyst's life. Should they? Personal questions directed at an analyst most often boomerang back. Analysts strive to be the blank screen that patients project their thoughts upon, not vice versa. Might it be good to know more about one's analyst— whether or not sexual complaints have ever been filed against them, for example? Recent front-page headlines, boldly announcing the arrest of a 'Predator Shrink', suggest that some things haven't changed. The public recoils in horror. Has another poor innocent patient been violated? Alas, there were no witnesses. The doctor insists he's not guilty. His past record: clean as new snow. Who's the victim?

At best, in analysis, one ought to ask oneself — with whom am I having this relationship? Ultimately, of course, the extraordinary answer is — one's own Self.