A PLOT THAT weaves together the world's first murder, the birth of Superman and an 80-year-old unsolved crime would seem an unlikely premise for a successful novel.
But best-selling author Brad Meltzer's latest, "The Book of Lies," proves he is more than up to the challenge.
Meltzer, in Philadelphia recently to promote his book, which was No. 6 yesterday on the New York Times best-seller list, said he did painstaking research into the two crimes at the center of his tale - the biblical Cain's murder of his brother Abel and the 1932 gunshot death of Mitchell Siegel, father of "Superman" comics author Jerry Siegel, by an unknown assailant.
Meltzer, who says he's been waiting his whole life to write this story, saw an eerie parallel between the two murders - the weapon was a mystery in both. The Bible never reveals how Cain killed Abel and the gun that killed Siegel was never recovered.
"I actually started this book 11 years ago," said Meltzer. "I had finished my first novel 'The Tenth Justice.' Then I went into my editor and told him what I wanted to do for the follow-up book . . . and that's a scary moment. That's when you have to say whether you have another magic trick in you or not."
"I told him, 'I want to do a story set in the modern day but using the great story of Cain and Abel,' " Meltzer said. "And he said to me, 'You're an idiot . . . We just got you on the best-seller lists, you're an unknown author, we're marketing you as the next John Grisham. Why are you going to go do that?'
"I had this moment where I could either be really strong and stand up for what I believed in - or I could cave. And I caved faster than anyone in the history of caving, because I had just paid off my student loans and I wasn't going to risk [everything] on this idea that he felt was crazy."
So Meltzer put the idea on the back-burner for two years. Then, during a book signing for his novel "The Book of Fate," fate intervened - in the person of Marlene Goodman, Jerry Siegel's niece.
"She stands up at a book signing and says, 'I know more about Superman than you'll ever know,' " said Meltzer. "I said, 'Lady, there's no way you know more about Superman than I know.' She said, 'I do. Because Jerry Siegel, who created Superman, is my uncle.' "
Meltzer was blown away by the revelation. Goodman eventually introduced him to the rest of Siegel's family.
When he first called her, it wasn't for book ideas, but he became fascinated with her stories, particularly about her grandfather's death.
"It's through her that I learned the full story about this murder that nobody learned about," Meltzer said excitedly. "Because in 50 years of interviews, when people asked Jerry Siegel, 'Where did you get the idea for Superman?' he never once says, 'My father died in a crime.' "
Indeed, Mitchell Siegel was killed during a robbery at a store he owned. The killer was never apprehended and the murder weapon was never found.
"His father dies in a crime and weeks later he creates the world's greatest crime fighter and he leaves that little detail out," said Meltzer. "You'd better believe there's a story there! So the mystery buff in me sees the mystery and says, 'I want to find out more.' "
Meltzer interviewed several members of Siegel's family, including his daughter.
"His daughter says to me, 'Of all the people who have written about my father, you're the only one who has actually come and spoken to us.' And that to me is ridiculous! We're a country founded on our own legends and myths, but we never want to stop and see where those myths come from. We're just happy to have Superman."
Meltzer could probably have written a nonfiction book about the case, but wanted to incorporate it into a larger tale. Yet, the mystery surrounding Siegel's death itself is so deep and complex that the two sides of his family argue over whether he died of a heart attack or shooting.
"I actually don't get caught up in the controversy," said Meltzer. "What matters to me is that he dies in a crime."
Still, Meltzer noted, Siegel dying as the result of a shooting would definitely help explain why a grieving son would create a character whose main attribute when he was created was that he was bulletproof. The original Superman did not yet have X-ray vision or heat vision. Heck, he couldn't even fly - he could only leap tall buildings in a single bound.
But he couldn't be killed by bullets.
One other interesting clue Meltzer picked up while researching the book is that in the newspaper the day after Jerry Siegel's father died, there was a letter to the editor about why vigilantes were bad for society and it was signed "A.L. Luther."
Lex Luthor, perhaps?
"One letter different . . . Is this where Lex Luthor comes from? Nobody's ever found it before because no one is as big a loser as me and cares about this."
Armed with this knowledge, Meltzer then set out to tie the murder into something even bigger - Cain slaying Abel.
"I love the Superman story. But it's still just a cold case that I find interesting. It's nothing more than that," said Meltzer. But then he remembered the story he wanted to tell about Cain and Abel.
"A friend of mine challenged me by asking, 'How did Cain kill Abel?' I said, 'I know that. A rock.'
"He asked, 'Where does it say that in the Bible? The Cain and Abel story's 16 lines and it doesn't say anything [about a weapon], it says that Cain slew his brother.' "
Meltzer grew to see Cain as the ultimate villain who might not actually be the bad guy in the story. And he views Superman, a character founded on strength, as actually being very vulnerable.
"That's where the themes overlap to me," he said.
Meltzer weaves these two mysteries with a fictional present-day mystery in "The Book of Lies."
"Not to compare comic book characters and biblical characters, but these are the great stories of our time," Meltzer said. "Cain and Abel and Superman as stories persist for a reason - and they persist not because they're interesting. They persist because they say something about us.
"That's how 'The Book of Lies' was born, out of looking at that theme and saying, 'These are our stories.' " *