When we were talking about this, an idea for this master vigilante, it was an urban guerilla. One of my ideas was that he would be a member of the police force who turned on the government.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
I find the idea of vigilante justice very attractive. I like the idea that the murderer decides that this person has gone too far, and nothing will happen to him unless she does something to stop him.
Some of the bravest and the best men of all the world, certainly in law enforcement, have made their contributions while they were undercover.
I decided that if the police couldn't catch the gangsters, I'd create a fellow who could.
Who do you call a civilian in a guerilla war? I mean, it might be a farmer by day or a merchant, a housewife, and by night the housewife may be helping to make landmines and booby traps and who knows.
Chopper Read attended a writing school I gave for inmates at Risdon Prison in Hobart many years ago. Even if I hadn't known about his hacked-off ears and his criminal history, I'd have found him powerful and compelling.
My grandfather was a cop in Long Island. I often try to draw on things that I've heard about him.
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.
It seemed to me... that the only valid people to deal with crime were cops, and I would like to make the lead character, rather than a single person, a squad of cops.