{"id":9097,"date":"2021-07-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-06T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9097"},"modified":"2021-08-05T07:53:48","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T11:53:48","slug":"survival-signals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9097","title":{"rendered":"Survival Signals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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photo: Charles Nadeau, creative commons license<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The situation described by the writer of a recent letter to Carolyn Hax, Washington Post<\/em> advice columnist, sounded to Hax like \u201cabuse.\u201d I would never have guessed that, which is why she writes a successful newspaper column, and I don\u2019t. One of the sources she suggested her correspondent consult was Gavin de Becker\u2019s book, The Gift of Fear<\/a><\/em>. At least I\u2019d read the book! And grateful to be reminded of it. Perhaps it\u2019s timely to repeat my review. The cover says, \u201cThis book can save your life,\u201d and, whether that\u2019s true, it sure can save the lives of the characters you\u2019re writing about and suggest ways to put them in peril.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gift of Fear<\/em> is a 1997 classic on recognizing the subtle signs of personal danger in many situations. So often in news stories about the capture of a murderer, people say, \u201cWe had no idea. She didn\u2019t seem the type . . .\u201d This book, like a 2018 FBI report<\/a>, says baloney to that. There are signs. You just have to recognize them and accept their validity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a crime fiction writer, I hope those signs might be usefully incorporated in my stories, whether my bad-guy characters were aware of sending them and whether my good-guy characters perceived them. Or not. Especially or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book\u2019s author is Gavin de Becker<\/a>, who has worked with government agencies and law enforcement and as a private consultant on personal threat assessment for media figures, victims of stalking, and others. Much of the book is written in the annoying \u201cyou can do it!\u201d style of a self-help book, but his examples are excellent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially useful was the chapter on \u201csurvival signals.\u201d In it, he deconstructs the experience of a young woman he calls Kelly who encountered a helpful stranger in the lobby of her apartment building. When one of Kelly\u2019s grocery bags spilled, he insisted on carrying the bags for her. He followed her into her apartment, then held her captive for three hours and raped her. She barely escaped with her life. Other women had not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the outset, Kelly received numerous signals that something about the man was \u201coff,\u201d which made her uneasy, though she couldn\u2019t say why. De Becker says, \u201cthe capable face-to-face criminal is an expert at keeping his victim from seeing survival signals, but the very methods he uses to conceal them can reveal them.\u201d The signals in Kelly\u2019s case are easily adaptable to fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven Key Survival Signals<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n