Robert Riggs
As I stood in the LA office of the FBIās bank robbery coordinator,
veteran FBI Agent Bill Rehder pointed to a wall plastered with bank surveillance photos.
Rehder ticked off the nicknames of a rogueās gallery of serial bank robbers.
The baby bandits, the big nose bandit, the big ears bandit, the skunk bandit, the ponytail bandit, the grandpa bandit.
Hello, Iām Robert Riggs with a story from inside the crime scene tape at what was the bank robbery capital of the world in the 1980s and 90s. Los Angeles, California.
Robert Riggs
I met Bill Rehder in 1997 while doing a series of stories about the upsurge in violent bank robberies across the United States.
Bank tellers were being shot, and customers were taken, hostage. Californiaās takeover bank robbery epidemic was spreading across the nation.
Rehder, who spent most of his 33 years with the FBI on the bank robbery squad, dispatched agents to the scenes of robberies. Twenty-eight in one day alone.
After he retired, Rehder wrote a book about his favorite cases titled Where the Money Is: True Tales From the Bank Robbery Capital of the World.
He also provided technical advice for Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can. Rehder advised how actor Tom Hanks should dress and talk like an FBI agent did in the 1960s and 70s. And what a bullpen looked like back in those days when button-down FBI agents worked together in an open office at their desks.
Rehder assigned colorful monikers to wanted bank robbers based on their appearance, clothing, MO, or unusual habits.
For example, the Spiderman Bandit didnāt scale walls. Rather, spider web-like tattoos on his forearms earned him the nickname.
Robert Riggs
The colorful and quirky nicknames helped generate more news coverage and more tips by creating a picture in peopleās minds.
Rehder told me that the tradition of assigning memorable nicknames dated back to Jack The Ripper, who killed and mutilated prostitutes in late 19th Century London.
As Rehder and I scanned the wall, he stopped dead on a surveillance photo of two bank robbers clad head to toe in black body armor and armed with assault rifles.
Rehder dubbed the pair āThe Hi Incident Bandits.ā They had shot up two banks in the San Fernando Valley a few months early.
With an ominous foreshadowing, Rehder told me they were not just dressed for a bank robbery but for a confrontation.
Robert Riggs
Indeed a month later, the two heavily armed gunmen dubbed āThe Hi Incident Banditsā by Rehder shot it out with police after robbing a bank in North Hollywood.
The running gun battle lasted 44 minutes. The pair were armed with thousands of rounds of ammunition and fully automatic assault rifles.
Wounded officers lay bleeding, pinned down. Armed with 9mm pistols and 38 caliber revolvers, the police were no match.
An order crackled across police radio transmissions to shoot for the head as officers realized their rounds were bouncing off the robber's body armor.
Robert Riggs
In the end, both robbers were killed, and twelve police officers and eight bystanders were wounded.
It was a case of life imitating art.
Robert Riggs
Two years earlier, the movie Heat featured a similar paramilitary-style robbery and shootout in LA.
Written and directed by Michael Mann, Heat is a classic American crime film. It pits Al Pacino as an LAPD detective against Robert De Niro, who plays a career thief and the gang's leader.
Now, Mann has teamed up with award-winning author Meg Gardiner to write a suspenseful novel titled Heat 2.
It tells the back story of the character in the years before and after the iconic movie.
Meg Gardiner is my guest on this episode of True Crime ReporterĀ®.
She is a New York Times bestselling author of sixteen thrillers. Her previous novel, The Dark Corners of the Night, features FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix, which is in development by Amazon Studios for a television series.
Hereās my interview with Meg Gardiner. (Guard-Ner)
Robert Riggs
Meg welcome to the true crime reporter podcast um I want to talk to you about heat too because heat the movie was really became something of life imitating art I was doing a bank robbery series across the country and 2 years after heat. We had the north hollywood shootout which is the the biggest bank robbery shootout in the history of the us how much of you of heat to the book now with Michael Manna is inspired by real life events.
Meg Gardiner
So.
Meg Gardiner
Enough to give ah to authors ah a head start in creating a ah thriller that we hope has feels authentic to the lives of the people who are on all sides of the law. So yeah heat the movie ah famously is about a crew of Highline Bank robbers headed by Neil Mcauley played by Robert De Niro and the Lapd homicide detective who is hot on their trail Vincent Hannah played by Al Pacino and we wanted to make sure that the lives these people would be really living ah feel that um feel three-dimensional feel vivid feel. Ah real that. But you could we could have readers understand through a thriller. How people came to embrace ah bank robbery as their as their vocation in their minds or as their the the way they yeah put the food on the table or. Look to a way to escape eventually ah around the world to someplace. Ah soft and dreamy and how men like Hannah ah come to find that their purpose in life is hunting people who carry off huge bank scores.
Robert Riggs
M.
Meg Gardiner
Dan More dangerous ah the crazier the darker the better in their mind that that's what makes them go. So um, we talked to a lot of police officers and retired I will say retired bank robert.
Robert Riggs
Me.
Meg Gardiner
To find out what what their lives were like Michael Mann grew up in Chicago where much of the early action in the novel is set and he became very good friends with a number of detectives on the Chicago police force. So that's where the some of the ideas. Poor heat ah originated and grabbed hold of him and have never let go even over the decades so that we carried on.
Robert Riggs
Well, it was the quintessential american crime you know going back to Bonnie and Clyde and pretty boy Floyd and those types but it seems today it's it's waned.
Meg Gardiner
Bank robbery? Yes, there was as you as you mentioned, especially in the 80 s and ninety s there was a huge surge in bank robberies especially in Southern California for a number of reasons including the. Ubiquity of freeways and bank branches placed conveniently close to a lot of getaway routes ah bank robbers who um, who stole for money for to feed their drug habit perhaps or ah.
Robert Riggs
Right.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, use their drug habit as an excuse to get the rush from carrying out bank robberies. But ah the yeah law enforcement wised up Banks took ah extra precautions against ah against that kind of thing and it maybe it just went out of fashion.
Robert Riggs
Did you happen in your research to talk to to Bill Rader he was the legendary head of the bank robbery squad in l a for almost thirty three years
Meg Gardiner
Did not ah but that's that's a name I I guess I should keep in the keep in my back pocket because um, it's it's fascinating and I know readers and viewers get really interested in figuring out.
Robert Riggs
Move.
Meg Gardiner
Why people do this how they would carry it off I think sometimes people enjoy the idea of watching a bank score thinking as ah as Macaulay tells bank customers in heat. We are not here for your money. We're here for the bank's money that that your money is insured. Which is ah a way of calming people who are being held at gunpoint while he's actually stealing a whole bunch of money. But but that's that's part of the the reason people might be curious about the these stories.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, yeah.
Robert Riggs
Well and you talk you mentioned earlier the the the thrill of the hunt for the in that case, the l apd detective played by Al Pacino um that you can still see that if you and we we've hung out with them us marshals.
Meg Gardiner
M.
Meg Gardiner
Right.
Robert Riggs
The fugitive hunters that still is out there. What do you think that is that that are they live it. They're they're obsessed just like the character in the movie and and the and the book.
Meg Gardiner
There are a lot of reasons why why people find that purposeful as well as exhilarating. Maybe that's the the combination for for people who can do this job in the in the Story hannah. Um.
Robert Riggs
Um, yes.
Meg Gardiner
In the prequel section. It becomes clear. He grew up in rural illinois essentially and knew he wanted to be somewhere else. Didn't know how to what he wanted to do but knew he wanted to get ah, get out and so. Running chasing trying to figure out what it was he was after like leads him into the Marine Corps leads him to the police force. But finally he gets so caught up in the idea of the chase and he's a he is a brilliant detective. So the the. Those rare moments when it's not just accumulating data or sitting at a desk sorting through you know evidence logs when when they when the when the pieces of evidence ah click and ah light up. Ah his understanding of the case and how to find someone that's.
Robert Riggs
I.
Meg Gardiner
What makes him go and I think that holds true for a lot of people. Plus you don't sit just behind a desk ah going through Facebook profiles on your computer these days so you know US marshals are out there.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, so as you know I do nonfiction with a podcast and our television series. But you doing fiction. Do you give us a sense. How do you get in the head of these characters you create and. Do you use is is a lot of fodder for this detectives and investigators you've met during your writing career. Where does this come from.
Meg Gardiner
The the love of writing has always been with me and the I've always been a fan of thriller fiction as well as ah as well as and nonfiction ah crime and suspense but ah telling stories about people who. Are on the edge of life and death who where the stakes are extremely high and ah losing can be deadly and there's intense conflict. There's ah and incredible passion. There's you know the roller coaster high octane pedal to the metal ride to find out. But's going to happen at the end that always that always thrilled me as a reader So. That's what I wanted to write and yes, talking to people who do the jobs who live in that world is.
Robert Riggs
Yeah.
Meg Gardiner
Absolutely invaluable that shows us what really goes on in their minds. Their hearts their workaday lives their their family lives and drama so talking to people who do the job is really the very best way to, um.
Robert Riggs
Ah.
Meg Gardiner
To really get inside the world and this was something that Michael Mann has always insisted upon in all his work and through television and film and now the novel is really understanding. Um, ah, a culture whether it's the culture of law enforcement the culture of of. Of of outlaws in a particular venue to to to ground the story in something that ah feels authentic. so so yeah we and for this book we did talk to we we wrote out with the Lapd and as I said we um, got some inside the. Expertise on how to carry out a bank tunnel job.
Robert Riggs
Well I don't want to spoil the book but will we see another shootout.
Meg Gardiner
Another shootout of if readers are are curious. Well golly let's this. It's set in an era when certainly um, ah the bank robbers weren't walking in with Nerf guns and.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, well.
Meg Gardiner
It's it's not too spoilery to say that that the Macaulay's crew goes up against a drug cartel and those those folks aren't known for handing out ice cream comes and.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, okay, well now they walk into banks with computer cyber tools.
Meg Gardiner
Exactly and and likewise the Chicago police ah department is in the story. They're after a home invasion crew which is very violent and so yes, they they are armed and ready. Yeah.
Robert Riggs
Okay.
Robert Riggs
Well you talked earlier about the the life and death glimpse of that and stuff are those the elements you think that make true crime. So popular words whether it's fiction or nonfiction.
Meg Gardiner
Um, that's definitely part of it that um these are big issues. This is what what's bigger to those of us walking the earth than questions of life and dad and um.
Meg Gardiner
We have families. We have communities and we want to know and understand partly to protect ourselves and partly just to get ah a glimpse of you know transgression because it's it's it's. Fascinating sometimes shocking sometimes baffling we want to understand what makes ah people ah commit outrageous crimes and ah certainly in true Crime. We Want to see how how actual cases are. Resolve because we still have a hunger for ah for Justice and we have the ah certainly in in real life as in a lot of crime fiction. We. We believe that Justice is something that exists and can be sought and sometimes can be ah.
Robert Riggs
Yes.
Meg Gardiner
Can be reached So that's why we want to to find out about these stories. So.
Robert Riggs
You're a graduate of of the Stanford law school you practice law in Los Angeles and then you taught writing where did the transition to crime novel author come in all of this.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, it came from ah knowing from very early on that writing was something that I absolutely loved and hoped to be able to to do at some level in some way some day because.
Robert Riggs
Nothing.
Meg Gardiner
Giving up on that even if even if it only became a hobby that that seemed like it would be wasting um, wasting something that something that was wonderful. So I I practiced law I was it did commercial litigation in lots of Los Angeles I I wasn't a criminal lawyer. But so.
Robert Riggs
Now.
Meg Gardiner
Eventually when I was young and newly married and quickly had 3 small children I was I decided that arguing for a living going to court every day wasn't wasn't what I wanted to do burning the candle at both ends and the middle all the time. So. I was offered a position teaching legal writing at the University Of California and I got to basically I had carte blanche to create a course and it was it was ah it was absolutely wonderful and that kept me alive in the idea that that somewhere I was teaching writing that was keeping my head in the game of writing and that. Um, once I got the babies to sleep. Maybe I could write on the side.
Robert Riggs
So when you were teaching had you already started writing articles or are they more scholarly legal issues.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, well I did a lot of ah every every trial lawyer does a whole lot of writing as I'm I'm sure you you know that to that every every brief you submit to the court is ah is a narrative. It's ah ah, it's a story of how things have gone.
Robert Riggs
Right.
Meg Gardiner
Terribly wrong between people and it's your job as a lawyer to ah tell that story in as compelling and persuasive a way as you can. Ah I was then writing articles for ah for small magazines that paid in the paid in copies. I was writing short stories I had the idea for ah for a caper novel that I was I was desperate to write and and that's when I realized I had no idea how to write a novel that I had spent years writing every day and so I had presumed that well. I know how to write ah but turning a story into a compelling plot with gripping characters that holds readers on the edge of their seat for for 300 pages is a different discipline and takes a lot of practice.
Robert Riggs
Well and not to mention the discipline of just sitting down at the keyboard in writing. Ah you know I have to find that time of day and turn everything off I'm sure you do too.
Meg Gardiner
Exactly.
Robert Riggs
And I I presume you have a word count. You're trying to achieve every day.
Meg Gardiner
Um I do and ah because I've been fortunate enough to have for many years to have book contracts then I know when my deadline is I know how long a novel ah is generally going to be 9200000 words in my case.
Robert Riggs
Um, go.
Meg Gardiner
I know how many how long it takes to type those many words and then to revise the big steaming pile of um of junk that you initially create with your first draft and so when I'm doing first draft I try to do 2000 words a day and i.
Robert Riggs
Um, yeah.
Meg Gardiner
Taught myself to do this by saying don't edit. Don't worry about it. They're just words get them down get to put the story on the page and then you can fix it.
Robert Riggs
All right Meg. We're going to pause for a moment and when we come back. Let's talk about your other work. Okay, now pick up here. We're talking with Meg we're talking with Meg Gardner and we're going to pick up with her series called. Unsub and for our listeners um sub is the Fbi term for unknown subject make the the first book on sub I've read. It's kind of based on the zodiac killer is that correct.
Meg Gardiner
It is every novel in the series has a a kernel of a real case somewhere buried in it and as ah as a spark as this genesis and ah I grew up in California. And can remember vaguely. Ah my parents being alarmed by this this creature this killer called zodiac and being shocked to to have them tell me that this was somebody who killed people just because he enjoyed it. And that really rocked me as a little kid and um later on when I was thinking about writing ah a thriller it came to me the the idea that the you know the zodiac. Ah, went quiet but was never identified may still be out there. The zodiac has never been identified or apprehended officially and has certainly not been brought to brought to justice. So I thought being an author who's let's her mind spin out to okay, if a if an.
Robert Riggs
Yeah.
Meg Gardiner
Infamous a notorious cold case suddenly went hot again after 20 years what would happen so that was the origin of unsub about a bay area serial killer cold prophet who disappeared and seems.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, yeah.
Meg Gardiner
2 have been resurrected now 20 years ah after after his his last killing.
Robert Riggs
And of course he taunted police and everybody with these cryptic messages and symbols that you know as a group recently have said they've decoded them some people think they've identified someone that's deceased. Do you buy it? Do you think we really know who this was.
Meg Gardiner
I Think the I think law enforcement has ah some top suspects I don't know that they are ever going to ah definitively, um, name name that person I know that.
Robert Riggs
Um, yeah.
Meg Gardiner
And member of retired detectives still feel haunted by the case that they were never able to identify the Killer and bring him to Justice and that it is um it clings to them even in retirement.
Robert Riggs
So you introduce Caitlin Hendrix a narcotics detective in unsub and then she evolves into an Fbi profiler in your ah your second book into the black nowhere which I also read was inspired by Ted Bundy it's set in Texas. But it really sounded a lot like the serial killer Kenneth Mcduff that we've done our television series about the podcast about really fit him what he was doing tell us about how that serial killer was operating and how much of it is inspired by real life.
Meg Gardiner
I was fascinated ah by the way someone like Ted Bundy completely masked his homicidal mania of. not not psychiatrically but how he masked his killings under a veneer of being um, seemingly the kind of young man that a lot of parents would have been happy to have their daughters bring home for Sunday dinner.
Robert Riggs
Um.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, in in that era that he was he was polite he was well- spokenke. Well-d dressssed he he was well-ed educated he volunteered and well no he what he he worked for a suicide ah crisis hotline. And apparently was his co-workers including anne rule ah thought that he was an empathetic and effective ah counselor under extreme stress. He worked for the governor of Washington.
Robert Riggs
Bright I do anne.
Meg Gardiner
So people were looking at this seemingly ah model of um of clean cut ah manhood and thinking he had promise. But of course it was all a mask and I I wondered at a.
Robert Riggs
Um.
Meg Gardiner
How would you? How would you strip that mask off of someone and Kaitlyn and the the heroin of the series hunts seial predators. So I thought here's ah, here's someone who's charming who is seemingly successful who nobody wants to believe could be ah. Ah, killer how would she and and her team go about undercutting that and getting the evidence and bringing him to justice.
Robert Riggs
And she becomes a profiler. How did you kind of get into head of profiling to be authentic and as you do with her and what she does. Um, yeah.
Meg Gardiner
Um I read all of John Douglass's books mind hunter the rest of that number one. That's that's that sounds flip but it's ah it's true. You you you read up on ah the work of people who spent decades developing the. The profession and doing the work and I I also have taken a couple of um of workshops run by the Fbi specifically for for for writers to to help us understand. What the what the bureau's work is like in various fields.
Robert Riggs
Yeah I knew one of the original profilers for sex crimes was Roy Hazelwood Roy is his past but he really was able to help me when it back thirty years ago when I was chasing Kenneth Mcduff and it was just amazing. The.
Meg Gardiner
Um.
Robert Riggs
Insights at how they could examine a crime scene and extrapolate a profile of the criminal.
Meg Gardiner
Um, yeah, it's working backwards. Um from ah from crime scene evidence. Ah because it's a it's a um, it's a.
Robert Riggs
Um.
Meg Gardiner
Simple but not obvious insight that the criminal and the victim must cross paths and that you're going to find evidence of that at the crime scene and you can you can use that intersection to ah to extrapolate as much as possible and.
Robert Riggs
Um, to know.
Meg Gardiner
And narrow down the pool of people who you can focus your efforts on.
Robert Riggs
So your third book in the ah un subseries dark corners of the night. Ah, now you've got a yeah serial killer named the midnight man who is killing parents but leaving the children unharmed what is it? You think that. Is so compelling about serial killer stories and in in my podcast that they're the the top listened to and in our television show. That's what really everybody you know was was just taken by What do you think that psychological phenomenon are we all sitting there wondering is there is there a serial killer inside me potentially or my sign another asleep next to me.
Meg Gardiner
And.
Meg Gardiner
1 one hopes not but I've I've spoken to psychiatrists and asked them what they think the yeah the the intrigue is and their 30 pool we're we're as fascinated as as as everybody else part of it I think is ah is. Wanting to ah to see a glimpse into people who are so transgressive ah, who have who have who break every bound that so that society sets who who kill for. Ah, thrill. Ah, or for some kind of mission or for some kind of pleasure. Not the ordinary seeming stoves of ordinary motives such as money or money or love or revenge that. Um, there. Most people who I don't think are looking to find out if they think they fit the mold of a serial killer. Although the the family of the happy face killer has said that he did watch a lot of true crime shows. Ah. And possibly to because he thought he was so much smarter than all the yeah killers who were getting caught on those shows that in in hindsight that's why he loved those shows but I think part of it is um ah the idea that if we can possibly understand what.
Meg Gardiner
Make someone ah a killer who who lives among us who is generally part of society who might be your next-door neighbor. How can we protect ourselves that if we are if we educate and keep ourselves ah alert that so. We won't become a victim.
Robert Riggs
Well I always get to ask the question. Why what is making them tick. Why do they do these things and I really can't ever come up with ah any kind of an explanation that makes any sense.
Meg Gardiner
No, um and that makes them extra scary because it's nothing that you could forestall or head off ah and um in a ah in a novel that makes them of course a a ruthless antagonist.
Robert Riggs
Are.
Robert Riggs
Me.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, someone who is not just going to suddenly decide that ok maybe instead of you know doing Killings I'm going to you know, open a pet Rescue center instead. So ah, but we as a people I think are are just fascinated with.
Robert Riggs
Kill sure.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, getting a glimpse into a world that we want to reassure ourselves. We would never fall into in a way and again the stakes are very high if you have a Killer who's who can't be dissuaded from from what they're doing.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, well now you have another series Evan Delaney those novels and that features a journalist ah, tell me how you approach that me being a journalist makes me interested.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, that was my first series. Ah my first novel china lake I was extremely delighted to won the edgar for best paperback original and that was a novel that I just had an idea for a story and I set out to write it about a young woman who. At the time I was like I'm got to I got to start writing crime series thrillers. Yeah, what will I do I lived in Southern California I'll set it in Southern California ah I'm a woman I'll have a I'll have a female protagonist I was in law and ah and and am not writing so. So I don't have to do too much research. Perhaps I'll have her be be a journalist with a legal background. so so I don't stumble over over anything and I just had an idea for a story about this young woman who was was caring for her first grade.
Robert Riggs
Are.
Meg Gardiner
Nephew while his while his dad was deployed as a naval aviator and that that his his the the little boy's estranged mother. Ah Joins an apocalyptic cult and decides that she wants to bring her son into it as Well. So then it becomes ah. Ah, family Drama A yeah, a Protect- the- Kid Drama and ah, how to ah how to ah sort out several murders Drama and I had no idea what I was doing except I wanted it to be a a thrilling story and I knew that I had to.
Robert Riggs
Oh.
Meg Gardiner
Set the bar extremely high and clear it so that I could reach a publishable level and fortunately did and then I was shocked when they said how about a sequel my publishers said how about a sequel So that's how it became a series and.
Robert Riggs
Well Stephen King sureley likeed it. He said it was the finest crime suspense series. He've ever come across in the last twenty years at the time boy that must have made you feel great. You know, just coming out of the gate with this.
Meg Gardiner
And it ah it it's yeah it knocked me flat and it you know Stephen King I have nothing but gratitude for him that he he really pays it forward to so many other other writers. An artist and that that opened a lot of doors for me and he'll always be the man in my eyes.
Robert Riggs
And then you have another series Joe Beckett and Joe Beckett is a forensic psychiatrist again, you've got to become a forensic psychiatrist creating and working on these crimes. Did you have to talk to a lot of forensic psychiatrists or read a lot of material.
Meg Gardiner
I Spoke to a lot of psychiatrists. Ah and found one forensic psychiatrist who who I could rely on to to be willing to to ah to extend his expertise and knowledge and insight to me. So ah.
Robert Riggs
Letter.
Meg Gardiner
That was really important to me to understand again what the job is really like ah to to to give respect to the people who who do the work to give respect to the the the doctors the the law enforcement the families of Victims. And make it an exciting and entertaining. Um an informative story but that also feels grounded in the real world and it was just it's just fascinating to ah to get inside the minds of people I mean I'm sure you know that as Well. That.
Robert Riggs
Yes.
Meg Gardiner
A psychiatrist friend says they went into this that that specialty because they can think of nothing that is more fascinating than the human mind.
Robert Riggs
Well was there anything you learned from them about the criminal mind that just like knocked you out of the chair.
Meg Gardiner
Nothing about the criminal mind in particular um it was more about how they approach ah victim understanding victims because what? ah what Joe in the novels does and what it's like. Forensic psychiatrists sometimes do ah perform psychological autopsies which means that ah they're the last resort in cases that the the evidence can't can't identify whether a death is literally accident natural suicide or homicide. So it's ah how they understand psychology how they understand death statistics how they reconstruct a timeline of the person's life how they investigate whether someone had enemies I mean you know you you get crushed by a bust. Ah did you trip off the curb. Um.
Robert Riggs
Right.
Meg Gardiner
Did you throw yourself there in despair or did someone push you So. That's so that was fascinating to me to see how you would try to ah sort out all those threads and come to a conclusion that could help the family and so the Justice system Determine. Um. What had really happened.
Robert Riggs
Well I know the fans of heat the movie listening to this or they've got to be wondering heat too. Is there another movie coming. What do you think.
Meg Gardiner
Well, ah, Michael Mann my brilliant co-author and progenitor of the entire project ah has said that he he sees this as a as a big movie and who am I too. To contradict anything that he says and.
Robert Riggs
And what was it? What was it like collaborating with him.
Meg Gardiner
It It was brilliant. It was um, it was it was challenging. It was I felt a lot of responsibility felt a weight on my shoulders knowing that I was going to be working with someone who had who was an icon of mine to begin with. Ah, for all his so work in film and television and who had written a directed heat which is the greatest highest movie ever ever made and that he knew these characters. He knew their stories and that he wanted to expand something that has become a classic.
Robert Riggs
Um.
Robert Riggs
Yes.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, into the before and after of of that world and that if I was going to take on his characters and get inside of them that it it was a it was a privilege and a responsibility but working with him was was exhilarating and I know I had to bring my a game.
Robert Riggs
And.
Meg Gardiner
Every single minute which is a great challenge to have.
Robert Riggs
How did the 2 of you meet or come together to collaborate.
Meg Gardiner
He he had the the the concept for writing ah heat too as a novel and um, we have the same literary agent and after Michael reads unsub he ah he wanted to speak to me about that I mean he he he's an extraordinarily accomplished writer. Ah, until now his work has all been in has been in film and television which is quite a different discipline than writing and a story in novel form at 400 pages. You know one 20000 words so he ah wanted to ah collaborate as he's done on film. He wanted to collaborate with a. But the writer who had experience working in that in that arena and so we just ah we we know we circled each other and and talked and ah worked it out and you know threw ourselves into the task.
Robert Riggs
Was there a particular character for the movie that you were very interested in like mine was val kumer I'd like to know more of the the Val Kilmer story
Meg Gardiner
Exactly and lucky for you, you learn more of that and heat too. Val kmer plays chrisia hurlis the the second in command in Neal Mcaulay's ah crew there as the we find out they're very close. They're brothers from. But another mother in a sense and Chris is the loan. It's not this is not terribly spoilerish after after decades to say that Chris is a survivor the last survivor of of the crew after um.
Robert Riggs
Um.
Robert Riggs
It's okay.
Meg Gardiner
After heat. So the the book opens the next day with him near dead from a gunshot wound after this massive battle with the Lapd in the streets of downtown Los Angeles so desperate to escape ah al pacino's character is is hunting him. And what's he going to do he knows he's going to have to ah abandon his ah his life in america if he's going to live another day that he's going to have to leave his family behind for their safety as well as ah as well as his own where's he going to go. What's he going to do. So we we that sets up the story and then it goes back in time to to how he ah how he and ah neil are living big vivid lives and taking down big exciting scores.
Robert Riggs
Did Michael Mann share anything with you about the staging of that gun battle in heat which is the kind of gun battle of all gun battles in crime shows.
Meg Gardiner
Stock.
Meg Gardiner
Yes, and and but a lot of it is material that if you read interviews with him follow the director's commentary on the movie and so forth. You can find out as well that he had all the actors train ahead of.
Robert Riggs
Um.
Meg Gardiner
Filming ah with with the former essays operators at the Los Angeles sheriff department firing range with a maniacal focus on safety. He's ah he's ah keen to keen to make sure everyone understands but to to.
Robert Riggs
Scale. So.
Meg Gardiner
To learn how ah how to how to look ah look realistic and ah and they did that the ah that the shootout they had to they had to do it on weekends because they really film it on the on the it's not filled on a studio lot. It's filmed on the streets of downtown Los Angeles so they had to to close off the streets and they could only do that usually on a Sunday morning so they had to try to get the weather to match. They had to set all those shot up. Ah police cars back in place. Get everybody back in their in their costumes and um.
Robert Riggs
Um.
Meg Gardiner
I will say that as far as authenticity a friend of mine who's a former usmarinecorps officer said that they they watched that scene um to learn how to conduct a bounding overwatch by by seeing how Val Kilmer loads reloads and repels an ambush in. And and that scene in the movie.
Robert Riggs
Well Mag What's next for you is there more in the ah un sub series. Are you going another direction.
Meg Gardiner
Well I do have another unsub book that will be out in 2023 and so then setting out on. We'll see what now that heat 2 is is on bookshelves. It's ah it's time to launch myself into another thriller. So.
Robert Riggs
I have to ask as a fellow writer. Do you wake up in the middle of the night with this stuff running through your head. Oh yeah, always keep that notepad beside me and my problem is I can't go back to sleep I've got to stay up for 2 hours
Meg Gardiner
More news on that.
Meg Gardiner
Absolutely Don't you exactly.
Robert Riggs
And get it all out. You know.
Meg Gardiner
Ah, yes, and I've learned to have also have a flashlight because if you just try to scribble it down in the dark then um, it doesn't make any sense in the morning you need to make sure that your writing is legible but um, waking up is so you know your unconscious mind does a lot of work for you. Um.
Robert Riggs
Um, yeah.
Robert Riggs
On on.
Meg Gardiner
Putting connections together and solving problems that sometimes we don't see when we're um, sitting at the keyboard.
Robert Riggs
Well mag I want to thank you for coming on the podcast I want our listeners to know that you can you can find all of her books wherever they're sold unsub heat to dark corners of the night from unsub which is being made into a movie. The Joe Beettt series I recommend that all it's really good stuff. Thank you? Okay I'm going to stop but don't close it out.
Meg Gardiner
Thank you! It's been a pleasure.
Robert Riggs
Bank heists were once the quintessential American crime immortalized with the daring exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd.
In the wake of high-tech surveillance cameras that capture sharp images and hardened cages for tellers, most criminals today have decided bank robbery no longer pays.
The FBI even released a Bank Robbers app so the public could scroll through the photos of suspects to help identify them.
As a result, the bank robbery rate has dramatically dropped and gone are the days when you could get away with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Itās now largely a crime of the desperate.
But it will continue to grip the public imagination in books like Heat 2 by Meg Gardiner and Michael Mann.
