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PRESS ROOM

About a Woman Scorned
Author Shirley Palmer talks about her highway to the Danger Zone
by Brent Simon

Reprinted from Entertainment Today

Veiled Journey, originally published under her mother's maiden name of Nell Brien, was about a woman who goes back to Saudi Arabia, and it detailed the plight of veiled women and talked about the Taliban before those topics ever became the subjects of CNN roundtable discussions or Cosmopolitan special investigative reports.

Her latest tome, Danger Zone (Mira), provides ample support for the old adage that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned… particularly as it relates to her children. The thriller deals with a tough, bright young New Orleans woman, Maggie Cady, and her husband Sam, whose idyllic life together is shattered when their 4-year-old son is kidnapped. Palmer is also currently in the middle of a book that will be called The Trade, a thriller set in the world of human trafficking, which, improbably, is still a $12 billion-a-year industry, and growing. It's a combination, this mixture of fictionalized plot within a sometimes harsh reality, that allows her to comment on topics she feels strongly about without crafting overt treatises or manifestos. After sharing a few pleasantries over the pleasingly overcast weather, the London-born Palmer took some time to answer a few questions from Entertainment Today. The conversation is excerpted below.

Entertainment Today: We hear that the rate of kidnappings has remained basically the same for many years now, and that the media reporting is what's creating this heightened sense of danger, but what's it like for a writer to have a book out, or about to come out, when these stories of children being kidnapped are, as they have been the past year, all over the news, sweeping the nation and creating a panic?

Shirley Palmer: It was a very significant experience obviously. It took three years to write the book, and when I started it was not at the forefront of our consciousness as it is now. I chose the theme to show the depth or extent to which parents—and a woman in particular—would go in defense of a child. That was my intent. So when we had this summer of absolute tragedy behind us, it really threw it into a much more personal [realm] from the child's point-of-view. There's no doubt that in a way I thought I'd found a different way of showing this woman's resolve and courage and resourcefulness because that's what the book was really about as I saw it. …But I also felt glad that I had shown no ghastly stuff going on, because I really did think deeper, I must confess, about what was happening emotionally with the families.

ET: This isn't meant at all as a trap, but is there the impetus for a sensational hook when you're kicking around characters and possible plots for a book?

SP: No, I just mull over "what ifs." In a family life, what would kick a woman into action? I wanted a marital situation, and what would really galvanize two people? Well, a child. And then: well, what do you want to happen — a serious illness? No, this is not the movie-of-the-week. Well, my God, if a child was taken… And since I was writing a thriller, that's sort of how it evolved.

ET: Movies where we've really seen a woman seize control have historically found a decent audience, from Sally Fields' Not Without My Daughter and An Eye For an Eye to something perhaps more overt, like Double Jeopardy. Do you see Danger Zone as being potentially ripe for a film adaptation?

SP: Well I would hope so because that would make some money for me. (laughs) So certainly I would love to see that. But I have to say too that my interest really is literary. If it can be made into a movie, I will be tap-dancing in the street, but it's such a long shot. The whole thing is a long shot, Brent, you know that. Getting published is a long shot. And getting a movie is a long shot. People tell me they have a visual feel about the book, which is fantastic. I try to give my readers their money's worth so they can connect and identify with the characters, but it's not an outline or skeleton for a movie. Although, yeah: if it was made into a movie, I certainly saw Alec Baldwin—a slimmer Alec Baldwin—as Sam Cady, sort of a man in his mid-years who has reached his place in life and is comfortable in his skin.

ET: And who would you see as Maggie?

SP: Well, this is crazy, but I really would have liked someone like Winona Ryder, simply because I wanted to show this fragile woman — I mean, she's only 102 pounds, 5 feet 2, but with the heart of a lion. I don't want a big, strong woman you could expect to be out there, I wanted a fragile-looking woman who has the strength to shove a man down the stairs because her child is threatened. But apart from all her other problems that she's going through now, that would be so against type [for Ryder], so if Ashley Judd would ever consider this book, I would do a double tap-dance.

ET: You did quite a bit of research for the book, interviewing special agents from the FBI and ATF. What did you glean from them?

SP: I had a friend who was an undercover cop in the Chicago Police Department who gave me Mario Fontana's number, who now I think may be in charge of Homeland Security for all of Los Angeles. So I told them what the situation was and they were terribly helpful, very interested. I try to have my ducks in a row a bit before I called them so I wasn't constantly [pestering] them. But I formed such a nice relationship with them that I could call them up and they were very forthcoming. But of course this was in the days before Al Qaeda, so I'm not sure you'd get the same sort of cooperation now because they're too busy. But the Coast Guard proved to be the hardest to track down; I don't whether they were all out at sea or what. But once I did get them, they were certainly willing to tell me what the name of their J-Hawk was, and what their cannons were on coast guard cutters and where they operate within the sound.

ET: Is the research process dry and boring or do you get a charge out of it at all?

SP: No, I hate it. [With] a lot of the research I don't use the material, but I need to have it just in case, to give myself what we would call in England some "bottom," to have a foundation to rest on. If I should I need it, then I have a sense of confidence. …I work by solving the problem that's right in front of me, not learning how to do it first and then structuring it [around] what I've already learned. It doesn't seem to work for me that way, I wish it did. I think maybe that was why I was so bad at algebra in school.