The accidental trouble shooter
From globetrotting corporate lawyer, and for his sin, the internationally acclaimed writer on crime novels set in Asia, the American writer, Jake Needham said he eventually 'ended up running a broken-down little television company’ writing scripts for Hollywood for 15 years before becoming the ' accidental novelist.'
That's how Jack Shephard was conceived.
The accidental trouble shooter.
I know, a play on Jake Needham’s, ‘I’m an accidental novelist.’ If this isn’t Hollywood, then I don’t know what is.
From hanging out at sets, discussing turning The Big Mango into a HBO production, to sundowners in Hong Kong, after a hard day on the streets reporting Hong Kong’s last stand against China, dodging rubber bullets and nearly chocking on tear gas, either way you look at it, Jake Needham is Hollywood, whether he agrees or not, he even admits that The Big Mango, that has been optioned nine times for film rights, was written in what he calls ‘script’ form, hence its popularity, right down to the Soprano star who up till the time of his death, was going to act, produce and film The Big Mango for HBO, who Gandofini insisted , HBO foot the bill.
Who would have thought that his career, from corporate lawyer (think tax havens and acquisitions), to screen writer and administrator, or as Jake says, the man ‘that got things done,’ would have segued to a novelist who based himself on the Pacific Rim’s Ring of Fire, with some of the most explosive human eruptions, from military coups, to terrorism, drug cartels and disposed prime ministers (think Thailand), appearing in his books, from the Inspector Tay series ( THE DEAD AMERICAN) to the Jack Shephard series (MONGKOK STATION).
If Jake were ever to write about a trouble shooter, he’d know about it intimately. And that’s how Jack Shephard came about. Disclaimer: Any similarity between the fictional characters and real-life characters is purely coincidental. Or as Jake usually says, at the end of his books, ‘I make this shit up.’
It’s not his fault, though, as a novelist, that his books hit the mark in the real world. And that’s the hallmark of a novelist doing his job. Jake never wanted to pander to the publishers, many based in New York, with their Eurocentric views. His hunch to cover the story, the story he knew intimately, which was geographically anchored in Asia, was a good hunch. Anyone can catch out a writer, who decides to pander to the publisher and take root in a foreign landscape. Jake has hung on, like an old barnacle now, that Old Asian hand has unique insights into an Asia that not only has died, but evolved, into another variation of itself.
Singapore and Hong Kong, two desolate lumps of rock, one on the equator, residing next door to Hell’s Residence, the other, on a hurricane swept coastline only a fifteen-minute ferry ride to Mother Ship China. Who would have thought that Jake Needham would have decided to prospect on those islands. His pay dirt are novels that weave in the fabric of everyday life as observed by a corporate lawyer, a script writer, and a trouble shooter, as the accidental novelist. The everyday life of street sellers, power hungry generals, shady operators, informants, pimps, megalomaniac personalities, washed up expats. It’s all there. Just open his books and you’ll see.
‘If you’re going to fight, fight like you’re the third monkey on the ramp to Noah’s Ark. And brother, it’s starting to rain.’- ON A T-SHIRT SOLD BY A BANGKOK STREET VENDOR.
‘Christ,’ he says, after the phenomenal success of The Big Mango, which he said was a spoof on the expat beer bar books, ‘I better take novel writing seriously.’
And Jake Needham is still doing that.
