Joe Wambaugh's A Friend. I

America Was Never Innocent. We Popped Our Cherry On The Boat Over And Looked Back With No Regrets. You Can't Ascribe Our Fall From Grace To Any Single Event Or Set Of Circumstances. You Can't Lose What You Lacked At Conception.

When I Look At Perfidia, I Think, "that's A Pulitzer Prize Winner. That's A National Book Award Winner." It's Not Going To Get It. It's Going To Be Shelved In Crime And It's Just The Way It Is. I've Done Something That No One Else Has Ever Done; I've Started Out As A Mystery Writer, A Police Writer, And A Crime Writer, And I Became Something Entirely Different.

I Don't Have A Cellphone Or A Computer. I Deliberately Circumscribe My Mental Life Within The Periods That I Write About, And The Power Of Perfidia Is That It's The Result Of Complete Immersion. I Was There For The Two Years That It Took Me To Write That Book.

My Father Actually Went To College, And My Mother Went To Nursing School, So, You Know. I Wouldn't... They Were Actually Too Square And Right-wing To Be Hip, Too Well-educated To Be White Trash, Too Sexy To Be Square. They Really Didn't Fit Any Mold. They Weren't Really Hipsters. They Were Just - They Were Two Of A Kind, Those Two.

I Work Within The Framework Of A Very Concerted, Purely Driven Protestant Christian Mindset. I Had Dark Early Circumstances. I Went Inward. I Have A Sturdy Will. I Have A Big Heart. I'm A Decent Guy. And I Have A Great Gift. It's Blunted Me To The World In Many Ways.