Roger recently returned from filming a special feature for BBC's Inside Out in Washington. During his visit he met several real-life characters like those portrayed in his latest novel A Simple Act Of Violence. Here are a few of their stories in Roger's words...
"Dr Death": FBI Agent Brad Garrett
Brad Garret was one of the very few FBI agents ever asked to stay beyond the official retirement age. This was requested by the Director of the FBI himself. Known as ‘Dr. Death’ it is generally accepted that there is not one murder case in the entirety of the Washington DC area that has occurred in the last twenty-five years that Garrett does not know about. He is the only known FBI agent to ever track a terrorist back into Pakistan, bring him out again, see him through to arrest, arraignment, trial, conviction and execution. The terrorist was responsible for the assassination of two active CIA agents in the US.
Garrett is a quiet man by all appearances. Perhaps ‘calm and measured’ best describes him. Together we drove around Washington, and he detailed to me the many and varied cases he had investigated during his working life. He took me to a branch of Starbucks where a very famous multiple murder took place in 1997. If you click the Starbucks link over on the right hand side you will see the Washington Post article that covered exactly what happened.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of my time with Brad were his words about his attitude and lifestyle when working for the FBI. ‘You get drawn into things,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you can lose focus, lose perspective on the rest of your life when you are working on a case. It can be very intense, and it demands extraordinary focus. You can work on a case for three or four years, and then have it fall apart in your hands. This affects your personal life, your family your social interaction. It is not a job, it is a vocation and a lifestyle’.
Despite the exceptional level of personal sacrifice that people such as Brad Garrett make, it was reassuring to appreciate that he had not lost his sense of humour, nor his humanity. I did not feel that he believed people were fundamentally bad, but that they were good. The small minority that created difficulty for others was where his work took him, and that came through in his manner, his words and his viewpoints.