A Crime Novelist Steps Back into the Real World: Guest Post by Keith Raffel

Over two decades ago, I turned to writing crime fiction as a way to escape the world as it is. I loved my family and my friends and sometimes my job, but I didn’t much care for real life where violence, poverty, prejudice, and injustice ran rampant. 

What better way to get away from it all than concentrating on the creation of fictional realms, where justice (usually) triumphed and I had (some) control over what happened? I started thinking of myself as a crime fiction novelist following in the footsteps of heroes of my youth like Franklin W. Dixon, Carolyn Keene, and Erle Stanley Gardner. I’ve had five thrillers published, and my agent has the sixth in his hands. 

For years, writing fiction was enough. In the past few years, it hasn’t been.

I lived in this world. I had to face what was going on in real life. I sent off an op-ed to the San Jose Mercury News suggesting the country would be a whole lot better off if only women voted and another to the New Haven Register asking why certain graduates of Harvard and Yale Law Schools sought to undermine democracy. I told the San Francisco Chronicle that Trump acted like a Russian dupe and Harvard Magazine that college students cared more, a lot more, about making money than the state of the world they would live in after graduation. Finally, I collected my scattered writings and sent them to Creators Syndicate, a company that could distribute my essays to newspapers and websites across the country. Bingo! Creators signed me up, and since 2023, I have been writing a weekly column that runs in papers from Maui to San Diego to suburban Washington, D.C.

So nowadays I write a rough draft of the column on Tuesday morning, send a semifinal version to my wife early the next day, and submit it Wednesday afternoon. Without those two days of articulating my concerns and frustrations, of ranting, I’d explode. On the outside, I might look a lot older than I appeared in my 20s, but on the inside I’m an even angrier young man than I was back in those days. 

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warned against spitting into the wind. Sometimes it feels as though that's exactly what I'm doing on a weekly basis. My column has not stopped gun deaths, terrorism in the Middle East, government roundups on American streets, or corruption at the highest levels. My column on reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace did not appreciably increase sales of the masterpiece that contains so many gripping passages and life lessons. Still my column lets me vent for 28% of the week, and I can get back to novel-writing, teaching, advising, and doting on my grandkids the other 72%.

An arithmetic miracle comes along with writing that weekly column of around 800 words. At the end of two years or so, there’s enough material for a book. My just-published book of collected columns, The Raffel Ticket: Betting on America, does say a lot about the perpetrators of real-world crimes and near crimes—namely, members of Congress who ignore the Constitution, a would-be king who yearns to follow in the footsteps of George III, terrorists who kill based on religion or nationality, the rich and mighty who value money gotten by any means over peace and justice, and even college students who shun the study of English, history, and philosophy. 

One of the most satisfying elements of writing about the real world has been the support I received from fellow crime novelists. The back cover of my book features a quote from, of all people, Lee Child, whom I have long esteemed not only for his bestselling thrillers, but also for his politics and generosity. When he wrote, “Keith Raffel is someone I really pay attention to—he doesn’t always change my mind, but he always makes me think,” I was gobsmacked, over the moon. 

My own novel with the highest sales, A Fine and Dangerous Season, plays out against the background of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Spoiler alert: The USSR and US do not fire off nuclear weapons, and the world is saved. Despite all, I am betting the real world that has me so verklempt will be saved, too.  

I do have faith. 

Wishing you and yours a 2026 of joy, peace, meaning, and great reads,

Keith Raffel

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Keith Raffel is a storyteller, historian, and observer of our turbulent times. The author of five published thrillers, he has now turned to nonfiction with The Raffel Ticket: Betting on America, a collection of essays examining justice, politics, education, technology, and books. Lee Child comments Raffel “doesn’t always change my mind, but he always makes me think.” Whether through crime novels or essays, Raffel does invite readers to think harder, laugh louder, and believe in better.

A resident of the Bay Area for decades, he currently spends the fall and spring as a resident scholar at Harvard University.