Comments on Writing Concrete Evidence

In Concrete Evidence, Dr. Frenzel was on firm grounds with personal experience in testing and qualifying materials destined to be used in nuclear facilities. And, she might add, though without offering any details, that she has had personal acquaintance with the kinds of intrigues and sometimes violence that orbit around any large project with all of the loose money, morals, and practices that so much largesse seems to engender.

The setting is ten years later than The Blue Vase and Morgan Nightwing has grown up into a mature business women who owns Nightwing Laboratories. As always, the settings are taken from surroundings that were familiar to us: the houses that used to line the upper end of Canal Boulevard, for instance, and the old Italian neighborhood that once stretched along Polk Avenue.

Also, both of us have sailed in and around the waters of the area and supplied various workboats and crews in the region between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. We can say with certainty how it would be to meet at night with the British agent on his boat anchored off the banks of an industrialized bayou. One of Lydia Frenzel's companies manufactured paint, so she can speak with authority about what happens when a warehouse full of paint and chemicals is torched.

"I'll never forget arriving at my office door and being intercepted by my very kind business neighbor who owned the sheet metal shop next to my laboratory. I listened to his warnings and then unlocked the door into our front office with considerable apprehension. The door opened into a lightless pit. Inside, the coating of soot from the fire had left everything absolutely black. I can still feel the cold knot of anger in my stomach as I looked at the damage."

Chandler Thornton