Bookwild - Bonnie Kistler: The Cage

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

On this episode, I talk to Bonnie Kistler about her legal thriller The Cage.You can also watch the episode on YouTubeAuthor LinksInstagramGoodreadsWebsiteCheck out the book hereThe Cage SynopsisOn a cold, misty Sunday night, two women are alone in the offices of fashion conglomerate Claudine de Martineau International. One is the company’s human resources director. Impeccably dressed and perfectly coiffed, she sits at her desk and stares somberly out the window. Down the hall, her colleague, one of the company’s lawyers, is buried under a pile of paperwork, frantically rushing to finish. Leaving at the same time, the two women, each preoccupied by her own thoughts, enter the elevator that will take them down from the 30th floor.When they arrive at the lobby, one of the women is dead. Was it murder or suicide?An incredibly original novel that turns the office thriller on its head, The Cage is a wild ride that begins with a bang and picks up speed as it races to its dramatic end. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

Hi, my name is Kate and I love to read. Like, I was carrying books around with me before Kindles were a thing. So I decided to start a podcast where I interview the authors of some of my favorite books, ask them all of my questions so that I can read between the lines of the books. Welcome back to another episode of Between the Lines. I'm here with Bonnie Kistler today, the author of The Cage, a fantastic legal thriller that I finished a couple weeks ago. So I'm super excited to talk to Bonnie. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for inviting me, Kate. Yeah. So before we get into the book, just wanted to learn

a little bit about you and what your processes are kind of all like. But what was the first time that you knew you wanted to be an author or that you wanted to write a book? You know, from childhood, I was writing my little stories. When I was 11, I actually wrote a teleplay. for a TV show that I was watching at the time and somehow figured out what the studio address was and sent in a handwritten teleplay to the studio. I love that. Who sent it back with a nice note saying we don't accept unsolicited manuscripts and they were kind enough not to say, you know, from children. So I was undaunted and I kept writing. Just kept writing since then. Yeah, yeah. That is a, I love that story. That's probably my favorite story so far

for that question. So what is your writing process like now as an adult? So do you know how the story is going to go when you sit down to write? Do you just kind of have like some people say they like playing off of a twist? What do you do? I always start with a premise. Some kind of premise, you know, jumps into my head. In the case of the cage, what happens if two people are trapped in an elevator?

Yeah. And one of them maybe has a panic attack and kills herself or maybe the other. the other one sees this as an opportunity for murder. So that was the premise that I started with. I always know the starting premise, and I know where I wanted to end up. So I do know what the ending is going to be. And I know I very quickly populate the story

with the main cast of characters. But from that point on, I do not do a scene-by-scene chapter-by-chapter outline. I sort of see where it takes me and discover new things in the process as I'm going along. Okay. So you kind of know your beginning in your end and then you just fill in the middle.

Exactly, yeah. Cool. Cool. So what about characters? How do you map them out? Do you, like, do you a lot of planning beforehand or do you kind of discover them in that middle part? No, I think I have a pretty good handle at the beginning on who these people are, what their

backgrounds are, what their crisis is, what, you know, what, what draws me most to writing thrillers is character. Character is the most interesting part, I think, of a book. and I think the best way to reveal character is to put somebody in extreme peril or under a lot of pressure and then see what emerges. Their true colors come out. So I, in the case of Shea, for example, Shea Lambert, the main character, I don't exactly say protagonist because we're not always sure, but she's the main character of the cage. I very quickly decided her backstory, which is that she came from this kind of squalid home life as a child, but it was very smart and had a lot of

determination and a mentor who helped guide her out and she manages to get, you know, a first class education and land in a top law, Wall Street law firm. So that's where, you know, her backstory took her up until the year 2008 when the Great Recession comes along and she's laid off as a lot of young professionals were. Yeah. In her case, it's pretty devastating. There's a real downward spiral. And then as the story opens, it's five years later and she's just landed a job with this company who's the central, you know, corporate, corporate entity in the story. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You did kind of have to know all of that about her to really even get started writing it, I would imagine. How would you describe the cage in just a couple sentences?

It's been called a psychological thriller, a legal thriller, a corporate thriller. Some people call it a locked room mystery, which I think is a misnomer. I think a locked room mystery, if I understand the term correctly, is when a dead body is found in a room locked from the inside. And there's a physical impossibility that has to be cracked before you can solve this. Yeah. The cage is what they call a closed circle mystery, which is that there are only two people in that elevator. You know, one of them is the culprit. Yeah.

How do you figure this out? It's like the classic Agatha Christie novel and then there were none where they're just a small group of people on an island and they're dying. One of them must be the culprit, but you can't quite figure it out. Anyway, that's what, that's the genre, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you say that because I had seen someone call it a like the closed room one. And if I see a book has good enough reviews, I don't really want to read too much about it anyway.

So I didn't read tons about it before I started. And when she was like outside of the elevator in the second or third chapter, I was like, wait a second. I was like, I thought this was all taking place in the elevator. Yeah. So that's cool that there's a different. Yeah. Now that's only the opening chapter. And then from there, it's what people trying to figure out what happened in the elevator.

Shea, who is the survivor, it's Lucy Carter Jones who is the victim in the elevator, the dead person. Shea tells the police that she had a panic attack and killed herself. Police are naturally skeptical and She goes to great lengths, goes into overdrive to persuade them that her version of the story is correct. And I think at the beginning the reader believes it must be, but then, certain facts emerge that don't quite jive and you know then you start to wonder is Shay lying to both the police and to us the reader meanwhile her boss the general counsel of this fashion company

when he learns of Lucy's death in the elevator he goes into overdrive to convince the police that it was not suicide that it had to be murder and like what what possible motive is that well he and other senior executives in the country in the company including Lucy were involved in a pretty awful corporate crime and if Lucy was feeling guilt-ridden because of her the role she played and that led to her suicide well the police are going to dig deep until they find out what corporate crime this was so he's yeah he's working across purposes to Shea the two of them both involved in the sort of cat and mouse game to see who can persuade the police and the reader of which version of what what happened in that elevator yeah I really enjoyed having because his perspective it's not necessarily like

alternating in chapters, but having his perspective throughout it really like, it just made you question even more things that Shay was saying, and then you're kind of questioning him. So you're kind of stuck between both of them because both of their motives are a little bit different or a little bit. And suspect, right. Yeah, yeah, I really liked that aspect of it. What prompted you to write it? Like, what was the thought that was like, I want to write a book about this? Well, that, that opening seen in the elevator was sort of set up that I'd had in my head for a long time. And that was directly inspired by my own work life. I practiced law for many years in big law firms in Philadelphia in high-rise buildings. So I spent endless hours going up and down in elevators. I used to just

sort of imagine, you know, well, first of all, I should explain that I was a trial lawyer, a litigator, and so I had adversaries all over town. And I wasn't always on good terms with people. Oh, wow. There always be a little friction, a little hostility. And occasionally I'd find myself in an elevator with such a person. Oh, yeah. And a terrible trait for a trial lawyer like myself is that I have a fear of confrontation. I really did not like to be in a situation where it might turn into an unpleasant conversation or even just an uncomfortable silence.

Yeah. I would just imagine, oh, what if I got stuck? What if the elevator broke and I was stuck with this man? Yes. And I would just start, you know, spinning off into scenarios of terrible things happening. So that's where I got the idea of two people trapped in an elevator and a death resulting. The larger question of what led me to write this book was I was the fallout from the 2008 recession was something I've always been interested in. Because even though the economy recovered on a macro level, on a micro level, there were a lot of people who never quite recovered, who never got back on.

on the same rung of the ladder of success that they would have occupied had they not lost their jobs. This happened to a lot of young lawyers I knew, happened to a lot of journalists, and I'm sure people across the labor spectrum. And the whole theme of the exploitation of labor, how labor is treated in the corporate world and the capitalist society, and from the executive suite

all the way down to the sweatshops where fashion clothes are actually made. I wanted to cover that whole gamut. And that was the sort of overarching theme of the book. Yeah, you really did. Like, it did get into, that was an interesting part of having her as a lawyer at a fashion company. You were able to kind of touch on that stuff as well.

Yeah. That's why I chose fashion as the industry, because you have the great glamour at the top of the ladder. But then you have the sweatshops in Southeast Asia where for, you know, since an hour, people are actually making the clothes of the glamorous people. wearing. Right, right. There's a big discrepancy. Yeah. Have you ever thought about who you would cast for the main characters if it was a book or a TV show? You know, I don't cast when I'm writing. I don't, some people do mood boards and actually think of, I have clear images of who the people

are as I'm writing, but they're not movie stars or people I know. Beyond that, I can't answer because the book has actually been optioned by Hollywood with some talent attached, so I can't say who I would cast because there's somebody for real. That is amazing. That's super exciting. People are tried to guess and I say, please don't guess because my face will give it away. So just don't guess. Okay.

Yeah, I won't even ask. That's really exciting, though. Yeah, very exciting for me. That would be a lot of fun. I think it would be great as a TV show or a movie. Either one. So we are going to dive into the book now. So if you haven't read the book, there will be spoilers.

So just pause it and go read it and come back. But if you're listening, yes, if you're listening because you already read it and want to hear us talk about it, just, you can just keep on listening. So you kind of answered what one of my first questions was going to be because I was wondering, there was a lot of, like, technical details from both, like, legal proceedings and the kind of police side of things. So I was going to ask you if you did a whole lot of research in those fields, but obviously, you kind of did as a lawyer. So did you bring, did you just kind of bring a lot of your experience into the book to kind of just answer your own questions about it?

Certainly in terms of the corporate side of it and the shareholder litigation, that's the background of the controversy, came from my own career experience. I didn't do much in the way of criminal law. So the police interrogation was, and their research, their investigation into what could have happened, was based on, you know, new found research on my part, you know, looking into it from an outsider's

point of view. Okay. So the book is obviously called the cage, and there is, there's quite a lot of imagery about a cage. So Shea kind of thinks of the elevator as a cage. There's even actually kind of the bars on the outside of it. So it even looks a little bit like one. And then later, when she ends up actually going to prison, she thinks of the cell feeling like a, cage. And then there's the fact that like some of the women are being trafficked as well. So they're obviously in a very trapped scenario or in their own cage of sorts basically. Shea and her husband are kind of drowning in debt. They're kind of caged in their relationship that way. So there's a lot of the book that feels very like there are lots of things thematically that feel like being trapped.

And was that really intentional when you were writing it? Very much so. And I'm so happy to that you were able to identify all of the different places where that metaphor lands. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. You know, the elevator, modern high-rise building, but they've put an, they've etched a gridwork of bars on the stainless steel doors as an homage to those old style, you know, Parisian elevators where you close. So that was the first cage.

And there's a line where, where Shea is thinking, why do they call them cars? You know, in a car, you can stop. You can get out. A cage is, you know, you're trapped. And that metaphor extends all through the novel, through the squalid basement apartment that she and her husband are living in as a sort of cage. Obviously, their financial circumstances have trapped them in this life. And then the jail cell.

And then the, I don't want to give too much away, but although this is the post-spoiler parts. Right, right. These women who are being trafficked and not just the sex slaves, but something I learned in the course of my research was these fishing boats, these Thai fishing fleets where they actually Shanghai these men from these villages and keep them prisoner on these ships for up to three years. It's just, I can't believe that goes on in modern society. Right.

And that's part of the backstory of what leads Lucy to feel as guilt-ridden as she does because she's just read the newspaper, but there's been a typhoon and the Thai fishing fleet has been wiped out. Yeah. It really did. I feel like it, the intensity of the thriller, like, really got vamped up with, like, all of the scenarios that you were in. Even if you were in, is it Robert Ingram? I can only remember Ingram. Yeah, even when we're Barrett. There we go. I was like, I don't think Roberts, right?

Yeah, even when we're in his perspective, he even is like kind of getting caged in by all of the stuff. So I really, I worked so well for a thriller that like no matter who you're with and no matter what's happening, like everything feels like there almost aren't any like outside options basically. Yeah, there's no way out. Yeah. The question with Barrett, he is the straight up bad guy of the book, but I still wanted to show that he had his own pressures that led him to do what he did. And he was a man like I think a lot of people in our world who define himself entirely by his job. He had no value apart from his position and his. his income. And then at the end, where that position and income are threatened, he realizes his life

is meaningless. He's worth more dead than alive. Yeah. And I think that's, again, this whole theme of exploitation of labor, even in the executive suite, you know, the fact that this man has no value apart from what he does for this company. You're right, because you even include, like, that he has like children and he's been married and none of that mattered to him when it was coming, like, coming to get him basically. Because he believes that they don't see him as anything other than a paycheck. Yeah. And it's a pretty, it'd be, from an empathetic standpoint, like, it'd be a very sad way

to be living your life. So definitely got that point across. So when we're in her, when we're in Shay's perspective, there are kind of multiple times throughout the book where she kind of says something that makes her seem a little suspicious, where we start to be like, okay, maybe what she's saying. happened is not what happened. So I guess you kind of said that you typically do know the end, but I was going to ask if you knew as you were writing what was actually going to happen in the elevator or did basically did you know exactly what was happening in the elevator when you said

you like knew what the end was and is that why you were kind of putting those in or did you kind of put them in and then decide how to conclude it at the end? No, I knew what was going to happen. Okay. But I wanted the reader to go back and forth. not, never quite being sure because different facts emerge. You know, Shea is, even though I didn't want to describe her as protagonist, but rather main character, right. She's what you might call an unreliable narrator. Yes.

In the sense that she's telling the story, but she's deliberately withholding certain information from the police, but also from the reader. And then this information emerges and the reader is going to wait a minute, you know, I thought you were innocent, Shea, and now I'm not so sure. Yeah. And I wanted it to be that back and forth until we actually find out what happened in the epilogue, which is really the last page of the book. It is. We find out. And I've been asking a lot of readers to stop right before they get to the epilogue and write down what they think happened.

I think that's a great idea. And then read the epilogue. Yeah. Yeah, I would look, because I would, the whole time I was like, is it going to be this? Is it going to be this? Like I was trying to think up like all kinds of different ways that it could have happened. I saw someone on Instagram who, when she's like 50% through thrillers, she writes down what she thinks is going to happen. And I was like, that's a really good idea. I think that's a cool idea. Yeah. So you mentioned Shea's mentor that kind of helped her get out of it.

And so kind of throughout multiple parts, she remembers advice from Mrs. Casco. And repeatedly, the advice she, that keeps coming up for her is to wear the face that you want the world to see. when you're trying to get what you want. So she uses that advice a lot throughout the book. So given how everything turned out for her, do you think that approach to help her or hurt her more in the long run? I think in the world that she inhabits, it helped her. I think that she needed to wear this mask.

She's veneer. And it's helped her, especially in the last third of the book, when she's really starting to exact her revenge and plan what she's going to do. She has to be many things to many different people. And she's able to sort of put the mask on that she needs to have on at that moment. Yeah. So, yeah.

But, you know, does she ever suffer for not being her authentic self? You know, not in this book, but in her life, I can't believe that she wouldn't. Yeah. That was kind of how I was thinking about it because that's exactly what it is. I feel like we all kind of have to put on a version, a different face when we're interacting in a really corporate situation. So in those situations, it's like, yeah, it is useful. However, if you're, like, totally used to doing it all the time,

and then you're doing it in your personal life, I feel like that's where it could end up getting messy. Yeah. So since she did use all of those skills, though, to basically kind of be running the company by the end of it, how do you think she is going to run it now that she's in charge? Yeah. She's, she ends up as general counsel.

She has Barrett's job by the end of the book. And she's giving an interview to a Wall Street Journal reporter where she's talking about how it's a new day at the company. You know, they've, senior executives are gone now. There's a clean slate. All the bad guys are gone and we're not going to do that kind of stuff anymore. You know, is she true to her word? Has she suffered enough from the whole experience, the financial circumstances that she was in

that she has a more empathetic view toward how we treat employees, or is she just after the bottom line the same as everybody else? Right. I think that's a question, you know, to be answered in his future. You know, and I think that it could go just as throughout the book, it could go either way. Right. Yeah, I would have to agree with you.

I feel like she brought, she's going to at least be better than Barrett was when he was there. But, yeah, you know. Because it's like I think the other thing that happens is when when you have struggled financially, then sometimes it's like getting the opportunity to not be struggling anymore. Like, will that make you do things that maybe you didn't think you would do beforehand? Yeah. It's hard for anyone to really know until they're in that situation. So where can people find you?

Where do you want them to follow you? Just kind of plug whatever you want. Yeah. Oh, thanks. So I'm on Instagram. and Twitter and Facebook. I have a Facebook author page. And I also have a website,

Bonnie Kistler.com. Okay. I welcome people to follow me in any of those places. Cool. I will, those will all be in the show notes so people can go look there

if they want to go find them. And hopefully they do. Hopefully they go follow you and can keep seeing what you're up to and what's next. And hopefully something about however the book gets optioned.

But thank you for talking about the book with me today. Thank you for inviting me, Kate. It's been a pleasure.