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Palm Beach Post ArticleTED BELL: THE OTHER PALM BEACH THRILLER WRITER By SCOTT EYMAN Palm Beach Post Books Editor "Hawke was a good-looking enough sort, something over six feet, trim and extraordinarily fit. He was still fairly young, in his early thirties, with a square, slightly cleft jaw, unruly black hair, and rather startling arctic-blue eyes. His overall appearance was one of determination and resolution. It was his smile that belied the tough exterior. It could be cruel when he was crossed or took offense, but it could also betray a casual amusement at what life threw his way, both the good and the bad. "Women seemed attracted to, rather than put off by, Alex Hawke's rather bemused and detached view on romance, the war between the sexes and life in general . . . " Yup, definitely Errol Flynn. "Well, Errol Flynn meets William Powell," adds Ted Bell. Bell should know. He's the creator, and Alex Hawke is the creation, and Pirate is the third consecutive Bell/Hawke novel to get on The New York Times extended bestseller list. James Patterson has called him the new Clive Cussler, and Clive Cussler, refusing to take offense, said that Bell is "packed with surprises and great fun to read." As it happens, Bell is one of two best-selling novelists who make Palm Beach their home. As with Patterson, he's modest, engaging and good company. Bell comes from native stock; his great-grandfather was the banker A.C. Clewis, after whom the city of Clewiston is named, and who might have been the first man to bring sugar to Florida. Bell's father was an investment banker, but Ted wanted to write books. He graduated from Randolph Macon in Virginia, where the reigning motto was, "We can't all be scholars, but we can all be gentlemen." Bell's ideal path would have entailed going to Princeton to get his literature Ph.D., but the family exchequer had run dry. A year in banking amassed enough money to buy a year in Italy, where he wrote a novel, which is still occupying space in a drawer. "I had trouble with plots," Bell says drily. While visiting Milan, he met some advertising people who seemed like bright, amusing types, so he drifted into that profession. At that point, his favorite writers were Twain, Fitzgerald and Tolstoy, with John Gardner and J.P. Donleavy bringing up the rear. Ten years in advertising got him up to the Presidency of Leo Burnett in Chicago, then came a lateral move to Young and Rubicam in New York - one of the profession's top firms. "Ted was high energy, but in the nicest possible way - very easy," remembers Thomas Caplan, a founder of the PEN/Faulkner book awards, who has known Bell for nearly 30 years. "He's very excited about things that interest him, interested in other people, very positive. Not glib, but articulate. When he was in advertising, he enjoyed it. He wasn't slumming. Ted has a great sense of humor, and that's helpful in advertising." The Cameron connection Bell did a lot of work with up-and-coming directorial talent on commercials. Some of the talent never cared about making features, others were more overt about it - Michael Bay, for instance. Bell remembers one of the biggest disasters of his advertising career came when, against his better judgement, James Cameron was hired to do a Miller Lite commercial. "It was about two people at a bar who morph from the 1970s to the 1990s. I thought it needed to be a locked-down camera and he said, 'No, no, we can use the motion control camera,' and he took them out on the dance floor. It was horrible; it wouldn't cut together. It ran once and was never seen again." Bell also spent a lot of time working with the Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, during assignments in England. Bell remembers that Tony Scott "was freaking out because he was directing bra commercials and his brother was directing Blade Runner." Despite his success in advertising, Bell never lost his emotional allegiance to the idea of writing fiction. So when he finally quit advertising in 2000, he decided to scratch the old itch in his new home in Palm Beach. Although both Bell and Patterson had been major players in New York advertising, they had never met till they both moved to Palm Beach, where they became golfing buddies. (Patterson proudly claims a lower handicap). As he started trying fiction again, Bell's old problem with plots magically disappeared. He showed Patterson the manuscript for Hawke, the first novel in the series. Patterson thought the book was terrific and couldn't have been more supportive, even helping out a little on the plot. "I thought that there was a real place for this kind of fiction," says Patterson. "I thought it was unique, James Bond meets Clive Cussler, a bigger-than-life adventure thing, which not too many people are doing. So many books are the same - so many noir, Chandleresque books, so many Florida books. I thought this was different, and some of the set pieces were quite good, and even more so with Assassin (the second Hawke novel). I took Hawke to Warners and they didn't buy it. To this day (Warner Books president) Larry Kirschbaum says that he made a terrible mistake." The first novel sold quickly, and Bell hasn't looked back. He doesn't outline, tends to work off a small nugget in a newspaper or periodical, takes three months to work things out in his head, followed by nine months of writing. About halfway through, he'll realize that he needs an ending that makes some sense, and he'll start thinking about a way to tie it up. "That way, it's surprising to both me and the reader." For the current book, he saw a news report that the Chinese and the French were both holding exercises in the straits of Taiwan. China wants oil, and France wants power. Hawke must somehow stop them before they try to take over the world. 'Woody Allen disease' As is requisite for the genre, Hawke is a man's man as well as a woman's man; as Bell writes, Hawke "was the kind of man to prefer bread, water and solitary confinement to just about any kind of organized meeting." If there's one thing that people in advertising know, it's how to reach the public, so it's no surprise that Bell's books have been so successful. With Patterson, every word, every syllable, advances the story, while Bell is far more discursive, although equally entertaining. Bell's books carry the gusto of a man who's writing exactly what he likes to read - high adventure. Yet his favorite contemporary writer is Ian McEwan, with J.M. Coetzee as a close second. "Reading McEwan, that's when I'm happiest," he says. "The problem is that I'm terrified of Woody Allen disease. Something told me not to write my serious literary book right now." What would Bell have done if his first book hadn't sold? "I would have written another book. And I would have asked Peter Lampack, my agent, why it didn't sell, and I would have fixed the problem. I'm not ashamed of the books; they're exactly what popular fiction is supposed to be. The way I keep myself entertained is to throw in an occasional Wodehousian scene." (The affection for Wodehouse is obvious by Bell's use of "Pelham," Wodehouse's first name, for the name of Hawke's factotum.) "Ted has always had the same personality," says Thomas Caplan. "Very few people have stayed a kid and Ted has, in the best possible sense. He's interested in everything, and makes everything an adventure. The key is to be interested in other people - he's always sort of delighted." Besides the house on Palm Beach he shares with his wife, the artist Page Lee Hufty - they met on a blind date - he has a place in Aspen. Needless to say, Bell has never regretted retiring from advertising. "I no longer have clients tell me how bad my ideas are. Or the heartbreak of pitching your brains out and having the client say, 'I don't like it.' Now, I write it the way I like it." |
