An Interview with Jenny Siler (2/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

Could you please give us a brief overview of An Accidental American. An Accidental American refers to the novel's main character, Nicole Blake. Nicole is the daughter of an American con-man and a wealthy Lebanese Christian woman who was killed in a car bomb in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. Nicole has spent most of her life in Europe working as a high-end forger, but after six years in a French prison, she is living the quiet life on a farm in the Pyrenees, working as a consultant for a document security firm.

The book opens in the spring of 2003, just as the US is poised to go to war with Iraq, when John Valsamis, a shady American with Defense Department credentials, arrives on Nicole's doorstep and convinces her … blackmails her, actually … into finding her former lover, another forger, named Rahim Ali, who appears to be involved in the smuggling of dirty bombs out of the former Soviet Union and into Iraq. Nicole agrees to go to Lisbon to track Rahim down, but once she arrives she quickly comes to understand that she has been set up, that neither Valsamis nor Rahim are what they appear to be, and that her life is in very real danger. Eventually, in order to save herself, she has to uncover the truth about her mother's death decades earlier in Beirut. The book is actually three stories in one, each essentially about love and betrayal, about the conflict between country and self. The first, the story of Nicole's search for Rahim, is a classic thriller. The second, Nicole's mother's story, centres on the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut by Muslim radicals during the Lebanese civil war. The third takes place during the first Gulf War. That's the story of Nicole's initial affair with Rahim.

With An Accidental American it is the first time that you've written under a different pen name. Why is it that you wrote as Alex Carr on this occasion? The name change is something I had been thinking about for a long time. In truth, I've always wanted a name that was gender ambiguous. The kind of books I write, and especially this book and the one to follow, are not books one would ever expect a woman to write. The name change is for that shit stupid reader in the airport who refuses to pick up a book with a woman's name on it. And for all those reviewers out there who can't even contemplate the idea that someone named Jenny could write an intelligent novel about politics and international intrigue.

I have a new publisher in the U.S., so now seemed like a perfect time to make the switch and they were happy to do so. Now that you are such a seasoned pro when it comes to writing thrillers, do you find that the actual writing process is becoming easier as you rack more books up under your belt? I'm not sure 'easier' is an accurate characterization. At the same time that I've become more experienced, my writing and my subjects have become so much more complex. If anything, the process is harder for me now. Plus, there's a level of self-consciousness that you simply don't have as an inexperienced writer.

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