HOW TO SLIT THROATS (AND OTHER USEFUL THINGS AUTHORS SHOULD KNOW)

I was on one of the myriad flights of my book tour, sitting in the window seat of a crowded commuter plane. In stagnant moments like that I try to catch up on the more mechanical parts of my writing, particularly research. I had twenty minutes before takeoff and a friend had given me the phone number of an emergency room doctor to answer a few questions I had for the book I was writing at the time, The Last Promise. There’s a part where (spoiler alert) a man is falsely accused and imprisoned for murder. The research I needed was for the somewhat grisly but necessary backstory of the murder scene.

I took out my notepad and pencil, then called the doctor. Surprisingly, he was available to talk. This is what the conversation sounded like from my end.

“Hi, this is Richard Paul Evans… Yes… Thank you for taking my call. I just have a few quick questions. Thank you. My question is, if I wanted to kill someone with a knife, and I wanted to be sure that they died but not have their death be immediate, where would be the best place to cut them?…

“Let me write that down… the carotid artery… both sides of the neck. About where you would take a pulse. Okay, I know where that is. How deep would the blade need to go?… Okay. And you think they’ll last how long?… Would they still be able to scream?… Perfect. That’s all I need to know. Thank you so much for your time. You’ve been very helpful. I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

I hung up my phone, turned it off, and put it in my pocket. I looked over my notes, then put my notebook in the seat pouch and sat back, fastening my seat belt. That’s when I noticed the man sitting next to me. He looked pale. He was looking straight ahead, pretending he hadn’t heard anything.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“No worries,” he said, his voice trembling. “I didn’t hear anything.”

I went back to writing. A moment later the man turned to me and asked, “Are you a lawyer?”