By By KATHIE HEMPEL / Niles Daily Star
NILES – "Doesn't everybody like to think up ways they would kill someone?"
The question was met with a mixture of heads vigorously shaking their disagreement and faces mocking a wide-eyed innocence.
Barbara D'Amato, Michigan native and crime writer, is a storyteller. She is also a fascinating conversationalist as a group of Niles readers and writers discovered Wednesday afternoon.
D'Amato was the second guest in Niles District Library's Michiana Author's Day, May 16. She is a playwright, novelist and crime researcher.
"We had out a lovely display for our author's day and the books were all checked out within a week," said Kaye Janet, reference librarian, who orchestrated the event.
"Oh, thank you for telling me that," said D'Amato. One of her books is "Hard Case."
"I found out that the best place to research for 'Hard Case' within a level one trauma unit, was not the place victims are brought in, but in the lounge. In the room the technicians, doctors and nurses hang out, has a refrigerator with a sign on it that says, 'no specimens.' I had only to say I was writing a book and looking for ways to kill someone.
"A nurse carefully explained that if she were going to do it, she would introduce potassium directly into the IV line. She said that if it were detected during an autopsy, it would just be seen as part of a natural kidney failure."
D'Amato had shared she once was corrected when she wanted to kill a victim by a fall from the top of a famous Chicago skyscraper. She had the victim falling from the top of the building. However, her law enforcement expert told her there was a ledge just a couple of floors below.
"He let me know that I would have to have the fall occur from the ledge floor, in order to make sure the victim would die and not be caught on the ledge," she said.
This led to a lively discussion of mysterious falls. One case brought up was that of falls from cruise liners with tiered decks.
"In recent years I suppose all the attention to the environment has changed things. Ships used to have garbage shoots on ships. You could just stuff a body in the shoot and send off into the ocean," D'Amato said, matter-of-factly.
One reader questioned whether or not a body might get caught in a ship's propellers. D'Amato suggested that might not be a bad way to make sure the victim died with a two-for-the-price-of-one certainty.
"One of the biggest problems can be trying figure out how to kill someone safely," she said.
To the delight of the dozen individual attending the discussion, D'Amato continued to speak with the group for two hours. She spoke not only of plot but also, of the marketing challenges facing an author with less than million copy sales.
"Three of us used to do what we called the budget tour. We all got in a Jeep and trekked across Ohio, Kentucky, and New York and went into Washington. We stayed in Super 8 Motels and dined at McDonald's and Wendy's," D'Amato said.
Questioned as to how many books an author has to sell before publisher's picked up the tab of promotions, D'Amato said she was not sure. However, the author estimated that point would be somewhere over 15,000 hardbacks and over 100,000 paperbacks.
D'Amato writes two mystery series. One stars investigative freelance investigative reporter Cat Marsala and the other stars Chicago patrol cops Suze Figueroa and Norm Bennis.
"I've spent a lot of time with Chicago cops," she said.
After signing books for a couple of her fans, D'Amato was off to her home, north of Holland. There she is planning a weekend dinner with friends – a coroner and his archeologist wife – and her eldest son, also an author.
"I want him to be there because they share all the interesting yucky bits," she said.
The author includes among the accolades for her work: the 1998 Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction; the first Mary Higgins Clark Award in 2001; the Anthony, the award of the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, twice; the Agatha, the award of the Malice Domestic Convention, also twice. She is a past president of Mystery Writers of American and Sisters in Crime International.