I'm Ann Bocock and welcome to Between the Covers.

My guest is Hank Phillipi Ryan, bestselling author of 12 thrillers.

She has won multiple awards for her crime fiction, including five Agathas, three Anthonys, the Daphne, and the Mary Higgins Clark award.

She's also an on-air investigative reporter for WHDH TV in Boston, and get this, she's won 37 Emmys for her work.

Her latest novel is a chilling psychological standalone, "The First to Lie."

I am so happy to welcome Hank Phillipi Ryan to Between the Covers.

How are you?

I'm great.

I'm sitting right here, well, as great as anyone can be.

I'm sitting right here in Boston at my desk where I write every day, a beautiful day outside with the gorgeous trees and the sun shining.

So I'm very happy to be here and thank you.

It is so nice to see you.

I wanna get right into the book, "The First to Lie."

First of all, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna quote a little something from the epigraph that reads, "Everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head, all ways, all the time, and that story makes you what you are."

So would you, could I get you to continue on and read what comes next?

Because I'd love to hear your good words.

Oh my goodness, yes.

Thank you.

Well, The First to Lie begins with a sort of night prologue, but sort of just a little thought-provoking element that I wrote to have you sort of think about what the book might be about, see the world through your own eyes a little bit, and here's how it starts.

"Without any sneaky fine print and knowing everything you know, if you could start your adult life over as someone else, would you do it?

Say you could choose the person, where they live and what they do.

You could choose what parts of your prior knowledge to retain and what parts to forget.

Family baggage, discarded, friends and lovers and commitments, erased, along with your vanished past.

Obsession?

Obsessions could stay.

How you look and how you sound, your goals and motivations and deepest desires, whatever you want, you could do it.

Be it, love it, lose it.

Sound good?

I fibbed.

There is one little bit of fine print, you.

Every time you'd look in the mirror you'd remember.

Mirrors make such false promises.

They tell you, 'Look here and you'll see yourself,' but that's the first lie.

You see a face and a body, sure, but a mirror doesn't show your true self, that you have to find out on your own by looking inside, and no seductive piece of silvered glass can help you.

Still I know all it takes is a tweak here and a tweak there to become someone else.

So would you do it to get what you always wanted?

Sure, you would.

All you have to do is lie."

"All you have to do is lie."

First of all, I love this book.

There is so much misdirection.

There are a lot of lies, a lot of liars.

Writing this, first of all, it had to have been fun to write, but is there a challenge in trying to know who's telling what, who's telling the truth?

I mean, it's complicated.

Well, thank you for that.

I'm just sitting here soaking up your praise.

Thank you very much.

I'm so pleased you loved The First to Lie.

And it was so much fun to write, on the days that it wasn't terrifically difficult to write.

So one or the other of those things.

But you know, lying is such an interesting thing.

So these people in my books, just as you said in the epigraph, and just as I offer in the beginning, it's sort of, how far will you go to get what you want?

So what I know at the beginning of the book is what each character wants and how far they'll go to get it.

So is that lying, or is it just motivation, or is it just a decision making process?

You know, lying, and we can talk about this.

This came from my going undercover as a reporter so many times.

Lying is a decision we make, it's so situational, isn't it?

Because if we're lying for the greater good, is that bad?

And that's what I sort of been trying to explore in this.

So yes, the characters are completely reliable though, aren't they?

They absolutely tell you exactly what they want you to know and no more than that.

So, yes.

And it's interesting, because as an author, I know what each character knows, and I know the reality.

So really, Ann, the difficult part was remembering to keep myself out of it.

To remember that I'm only in one person's head at a time.

There are four points of view.

Only in one person's head at the time at a time.

And that's cool because it lets the readers know more than each character knows, because the reader knows everything, and the characters only know their own little bits.

And that dramatic irony, that ability for a character to make a mistake, but the reader says, "Oh no, that's wrong.

Oh no, that's not what she means.

Oh no, that's not what she's trying to do.

Be careful.

Don't go down there.

Don't respond that way.

That dramatic irony, I think, is one of the things that makes a good thriller such a page turner.

It makes, you know, I write cat and mouse games.

The First to Lie is a cat and mouse game, but which character is the cat, and which character is the mouse?

And you have to read it to find out.

I'm just going to remind our viewers that if they have questions for Hank, they can drop them in the Q and A, and we will get to them.

Ellie, who is one of the main characters, is an investigative reporter, which you know a little bit about, since you've won 37 Emmys.

Ellie goes undercover.

She's in disguise.

She is visiting doctors' offices.

Now, did you, have you ever done the full undercover disguise in your other career?

Oh, absolutely.

And that's sort of the genesis of where this book came from.

My books are not my investigative stories turned into fiction, not at all.

But my books are sort of an amalgam of experiences, and understanding, and things that I've seen, and thought, and experienced, and stressed out over, and been responsible for and attempted.

And yes, I have gone undercover and in disguise.

I've wired myself with hidden cameras and confronted corrupt politicians, and chased down criminals, and gone undercover and in disguise, and carried a hidden camera.

And I did that in a series of stories that we worked on here in Boston, about whether doctors would reveal, honestly, their legal history, their history of malpractice losses.

And very, very quickly the story began when I tried to find out the history of a certain doctor's malpractice losses in Massachusetts, and found out that was not public record, easily public record.

You would have to go to each individual doctors' county and courthouse and find out whether there had been any cases filed.

And then even then it was very difficult, just a morass, a molasses of looking into something.

So I went to the Board of Registration in Medicine very quickly and asked the director, "How has a potential patient supposed to know if their doctor has a history of malpractice losses?"

Now I know malpractice is just sort of the cost of doing business for many doctors.

It doesn't mean they're bad.

It just means it's a situational thing that sometimes happens.

So I'm not being judgemental about that.

I just think it's all about disclosure.

And the the head of the Board of Registration in Medicine said to me, "Well, a patient, a potential patient should simply ask the doctor if they've had medical malpractice losses and the doctor will tell them.

And I thought, "No, they won't."

No, they won't.

So my producer and I disguised ourselves as a couple who wanted to get pregnant.

And I had my hair up in a bun and no makeup and glasses, that you would not recognize me, and three sweatshirts and a work shirt.

And my producer, Chris, a man, dressed up as my husband.

He didn't have to do much to pretend to be my husband.

And we went into this doctor's office and in the buttonhole of my shirt was not a button, but the lens of a camera, and behind that lens was a wire snaking down through my sweatshirts, and out the back where I was wearing a fanny pack with a hidden camera in it.

And we went in, I know, you gotta picture that.

I was terrified.

I mean, there is, it is not illegal to carry a hidden camera in Massachusetts.

You can't tape someone's audio without their permission, but you can take their video.

So I wasn't doing anything wrong or illegal, but it's very stressful, because I didn't say to that doctor, "Hi, I'm Hank Philippi Ryan from Channel 7, I'm here to find out if you'll tell me the truth."

I went in pretending to be someone else, and therein lies the key.

And fast forward, he lied up one side and down the other, completely lied about his massive history of malpractice losses, huge amounts of money, and repeatedly so, and completely lied about it.

And I was so unnerved by that, as a result of our story, by the way, the rules were changed in Massachusetts to require doctors' malpractice histories to be easily available in their records in the Board of Registration in Medicine.

So the lives of people changed as a result of that story.

In your story, you have Ellie who is the reporter, she and a fellow reporter have a conflict and it has to do with ethics, what's fair, what's legal.

From a journalistic standpoint I found that very interesting, because this is real, and I am sure that this is in newsrooms all day long.

You want the story, especially now when there is 24-hour coverage.

Stories can get on the air extremely fast without it being vetted.

Well, you know, in an investigative story, and I have done investigative stories for the past 43 years in television, which is so crazy to think about.

But one of the things I love about writing books that include reporters and include journalism, is that I can kind of come out from undercover as a real person.

You know, when you see my stories on television, you don't realize from just seeing that little three minute story that lawyers have looked at this, management has looked at this, you know, three editors have looked at it.

We have cross-referenced, and researched, and followed up, and you know, confirmed sources, and, you know, this all goes into that.

You also don't know if I'm afraid when I put the story on TV, whether I think it's a good story.

You don't know what I left out.

You don't know how much information you'll never know, because I didn't have time to put that in.

You'll never know whether I was unhappy with the result that went on the air.

All those kinds of emotional things, you don't know, because what you see on TV is this perfectly vetted, pristine, gorgeous, investigative story.

But as a fiction author, I can reveal to readers what it's really like to get a high stakes, life-changing, multimillion billion dollar story on the air.

Something that could ruin a company and ruin lives.

What does it take to put that on the air?

And when are you doing more harm than good?

And all those kinds of things from legal to moral, to ethical, to the calculus of, you know, is it okay if a drug helps so many people, but then harms just a few?

Do you tell them that or not?

So all that kind of ethical, moral, legal, medical balance.

I mean, I write fast-paced, page turning, compelling thrillers.

I want you to miss your stop on the bus, because you can't put it down, But underneath I want you to see the world in a different way.

I want you to understand our lives and our responsibilities and our decision making process in a different way.

And I want to empower you, all of us to stand up for ourselves in medical situations and in pharmaceutical situations, all those kinds of things that matter so much to our lives.

So writing fiction, I can come out from undercover and show you more than I can as a journalist.

A couple of things that, and we will just touch on this, because we never spoil anything.

But I do want to get to a couple of things that you just said.

And one, reading the book, and you did, to me, come at this as a journalist, because I believe you want the reader to determine what is possibly right or wrong, or what they're comfortable with, well, two things.

One was that I sense that the women in this did not have, the women in the doctor's offices, the ones who were being treated didn't have that power, couldn't voice that power that perhaps they needed.

And the other was the pharmaceutical companies.

There is a questionable drug.

I'm not giving really anything away here.

What are you comfortable elaborating on with those two things without getting too far into the plot?

Yeah, isn't that interesting, Ann?

Because I write thrillers, and then I realized that I've written a book that I can't discuss, you know, so so much for that.

There's a funny thing on Twitter that said, "Tell about your book in four words."

And so I thought, okay, maybe that's the way to do it.

So the words I chose for The First to Lie were betrayal, motherhood, obsession, and revenge.

And that's what The First to Lie is, betrayal motherhood, obsession, and revenge.

You know, it's a devastating childhood betrayal, an undercover reporter who's in too deep, a beautiful sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay, a rich and powerful family that runs a pharmaceutical company, and an ice pick that is not used for ice.

So really The First to Lie is this cat and mouse thriller about two women, as you say, facing off to get their revenge for a devastating childhood betrayal.

But when you examine something big like the pharmaceutical industry, that's a little bit off-putting, but what makes the stories interesting, what makes my stories fascinating, and relatable, and understandable, and compelling is that they're about the people involved.

And that's why I chose to have the essence of this book be about family, about having a family, about wanting a family.

What if someone promised you a family and then pulled that rug out from under you?

What if your own family betrayed you when you were younger, what would you do?

How would that sorrow fester and grow?

And what would that turn into?

I also wondered, you know, in thinking about those big pharmaceutical companies and all of the problems that so many of the drugs have engendered.

And, you know, I don't want to make a big statement about this because so many wonderful drugs come out of the pharmaceutical companies, lifesaving, fabulous, good.

But I just wanted people to understand what the power, you know, what power those drugs have over people, and how we have to do our best to know what we're what we're doing.

So what if in one of those families a member of that family knew something terrifying about the drugs her family was manufacturing?

Would she or he tell that, and potentially ruin their family, and all this money, this big corporation, this big industry, all the people's jobs, and everything that went into it, and all of the people who were helped, if some people were very harmed?

You know, what is, you know, what is the ethical, moral family loyalty?

So my book is about family loyalty and family betrayal, and how sometimes people say, "I was just doing what I thought was best for you," and maybe it wasn't.

So I put this very personal.

You know what, I'm actually quite surprised that you gave us this much of a look into it.

So kudos to you.

That's excellent.

One thing, by the way, if you have questions, let us know on Facebook and we will get to them.

You write thrillers, but there's not really graphic, there's not this violence.

To me as a reader, I find psychological manipulation is even more disturbing to read.

Is that how you approach it?

Oh, Ann, I so agree with you.

You know, it's interesting.

Someone a long time ago told me to write the kind of book you love to read.

And if you write the kind of book you love to read, when that passion comes through on the page, the reader will feel that, the reader will love the book as much as you do, because it just sort of oozes into the pages.

You know, I don't know what's coming next to my books.

We can talk about that if you want.

So that's what gets me to the computer every day, is sort of, "I wonder what's gonna happen next?"

And I don't know what will happen until I write the next sentence and the next paragraph and the next scene.

It's a surprise.

So when I read a book, the kind of book I like to read, I don't like graphic sex in books.

I don't like graphic violence in books.

I mean, why?

I don't like inappropriate language in books.

I just don't think it's necessary.

I mean, I don't mean to be all prissy about it, but when it's necessary, fine, but just, you know, I won the Mary Higgins Clark Award and I've been nominated several times, and you know her whole aura was, I mean, her books are suspenseful and scary, and, you know, don't read them with the lights off.

I mean, I guess you could, but that's what I want to convey, is this sometimes, and I agree with you, often what we do to each other, gaslighting and mind games and manipulation, you know, that is much more powerful and just as scary as a gun or a knife.

How we use, and manipulate, and deceive each other to get what we want, that sort of selfish, self-centered, focused gaslighting can really ruin someone's life.

And I think that, I so agree with you on, is just as devastatingly terrifying, you know, as anybody banging on the door and stomping into your house.

I mean, it's, we all know people who say things like, "Oh, well, you know, if that's the kind of thing you want to do," or, you know, "Oh, that's not what I heard, but I don't want to tell you that," you know, that kind of manipulation is really, really upsetting and disturbing.

So I'm really going for upsetting and disturbing without being graphic.

Something you just said actually surprised me.

You said you don't know what's going to happen.

In this particular book, how did you not know the ending before you put pen to paper?

And my vision of where you write, is like giant white boards with arrows and strings, and who did what.

But you're telling me it evolves?

It's organic as you're writing?

There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish for whiteboards and string.

You know, I wish I could think that way, but somehow my brain doesn't work that way at all.

And I think it's because, after all these years as a reporter, when I'm out searching for a story, I don't know what the result of that story is, right?

Because if I did, it wouldn't be a story.

I'm looking for something new.

I'm looking for something I don't know.

I'm looking to discover the answer to a secret, or the answer to a question, or dig up something that no one knows.

And so I think that's why I'm comfortable having no idea what's going to happen in the end or even in the beginning, or even in the middle of my books.

I think that that little nugget of a beginning, you know, how far would you go to get what you want?

And just what I started reading at the beginning, what if being someone else could get you what you want?

And then I thought, okay, let's see what happens.

And I type chapter one, and I think, okay, 99,998 words to go.

So I had no idea.

I mean, you're talking about the end.

I had no idea what happened in the middle.

And those who read the book will understand what I'm saying.

I didn't know what happened after that, or after that, or after that.

So I'm typing along.

I'm sitting, you know, as I said, I go to my computer to see what happens next.

I'm typing along, and I think, "Oh, that's what happened?

Wow, that's pretty interesting."

Okay.

That's good.

All right, then I'll just keep going.

That's a surprise."

And so one of my favorite things is I get emails from readers who say they read The First to Lie, and then they loved it, but they went right back to the beginning and read it again to see how I did it.

And that's my joy, because I think, you know, they say, "Wow, what a twist?

What a surprise in the end too."

And I say, yeah, you know, talk about a surprise twist.

I surprise myself every time, you know, talk about our surprise to us.

I was surprised.

And you know, honestly, that's one of the joys of writing.

That's one of the things that keeps me going.

Sue Grafton used to call it the magic, the magic of our imagination, that something unfolds in our writer brains, that you know, one second ago, we didn't know.

I mean, an idea, you think about an idea, how incredible that is that there's a thing, that at one point we didn't know and then we do.

And how does that happen?

And the story proceeds.

So in my fiction writing, just like in my journalism, I'm out searching for the story.

And that's what I do every day at my computer.

I'm out searching for the story.

And that's what I did in The First to Lie.

I was searching to see what happened to Ellie, and Nora, and Meg, and Brooke.

I'm seeing what happened, and it's just as interesting, and just as surprising to me as it is to the reader.

So when you say, do you have fun writing?

I say, yeah, it's really fun, because I'm telling myself a story that I don't know the answer to.

Now, I can say parenthetically, that since I write mystery thrillers, sometimes in writing it feels like, oh, no, I don't know what happened.

You know, I've set up this mystery for me to solve, and now I can't solve it.

But, you know, Thomas Edison had a great quote, and he said, supposedly said, "When you think you have exhausted all of the possibilities, remember this, you haven't."

And so when I don't know what happens next, I just think, well, okay, I'll think of it soon.

And so far, I'm in the midst of writing my 13th book now, so far that has worked.

Oh, I'm still surprised that you didn't know the ending, or the beginning, or the middle, because it is such a fun, wonderful psychological thriller.

I wish we had more time, but we don't, but I'm gonna tell you, Hank, you may need to make a little more room on that shelf, because what I read, and I'm quoting from Publishers Weekly, "Hank Phillipi Ryan could win a sixth Agatha with this one."

The book is The First to Lie.

Hank, I wanna thank you so much for spending time with us today.

This has been so much fun.

My complete pleasure, and next time in person.

Absolutely.

I'm Ann Bocock.

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