Crime Novel? Women's Fiction? Literary Thriller?

Kelsey Rae Dimberg on genre and her new novel, "Snake Oil."

I’ve always been a sucker for a good suspense novel. Who isn’t? But I find that a lot of novels pitched to me as suspenseful, just aren’t, or that the suspense generated is built on flimsy characters or unbelievable situations. 

Kelsey Rae Dimberg’s newly released novel, Snake Oil, managed to clear all the bars for me in terms of suspense, character, and believability and because of that, I wanted to talk to her a bit about the book.

John Warner: Let’s start with a bit of a biographical introduction.

Kelsey Rae Dimberg: I’m Kelsey Rae Dimberg, a novelist living in Chicago. My first novel, Girl in the Rearview Mirror, was published by William Morrow in 2019. A modern take on classic noir, the novel follows the nanny of a powerful political family in Arizona as she discovers a scandal that might bring the family down. My next novel, Snake Oil, has just been published. A literary thriller set in a wellness startup, it was inspired by my own work at startups, as well as my struggle with a chronic illness for several years in my 20’s. 

I received my MFA at the University of San Francisco. Before leaving to write full-time, I worked as a writer for Google and Groupon, then as an editor for Taste of Home magazine. I’ve lived all over the west coast, but now I’m in Chicago, where I write novels, do some freelance food writing, and hang out with my son and husband. You can find me sporadically on Instagram @kraedimberg and at kelseyraedimberg.com. 

JW: My first thought as I picked up Snake Oil was that I was going to experience a fictional thriller version of something akin to the real-life story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos (so vividly exposed by John Carreyrou in Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley). It struck me that my own response indicated that the Silicon Valley milieu is now sufficiently known culturally to provide a pre-existing backdrop for a novelist to slip into and make work for their purposes. You’ve also worked in this world. I realized I don’t have a succinct question, other than to ask how you conceived the novel as a rendering of a specific culture in a specific time, a specific place?

KRD: I loved Bad Blood! Elizabeth Holmes symbolizes a type of Silicon Valley personality: she wanted very badly to be like Steve Jobs, but when she couldn’t make it authentically, she faked it. Laura Lippman calls the classic noir anti-hero a “dreamer-turned-schemer,” and that’s spot on for Holmes. Writing Snake Oil I was also inspired by stories about Silicon Valley power struggles, like Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, or the classic The Social Network.

Silicon Valley is a fascinating place for many reasons, but a big one is that the people who work in tech have a major habit of self-mythologizing. They love to hype themselves as futurists, visionaries, and solvers of society’s problems—even if they’re selling, like, wool sneakers on the internet. During economic boom times, the broader culture largely accepts this vision (Steve Jobs and Apple is the premier example), and then in downturns, all that hype falls flat, and the people spinning those stories start to look like fraudsters or fakes (think Adam Neumann and WeWork, or Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse). 

I moved to San Francisco at an interesting time, just after the subprime mortgage crisis had tanked the economy. In 2008, the city itself wasn’t a tech hub; the industry was largely based in the suburbs. But the city persuaded them to move downtown, and Twitter came in, and Salesforce built a huge tower, and within a few years, a pretty desolate stretch of Market Street was transformed into a bustling, wealthy neighborhood packed with techies. This was the era of the app, when inventing a program for people to play with on their phones could make you rich. (For example, Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars in 2012.) As Marc Andreersen somewhat awkwardly put it, “software is eating the world”. This was a hugely optimistic era for tech, and money poured into the industry via venture capital. Venture capitalists really love to give money to companies with grand visions, so this created an atmosphere in which CEOs were making bold, even wildly exaggerated claims, and getting rewarded for it. (Obviously, today, in the wake of Theranos and other companies crashing, we see this era more cynically.)

I see Snake Oil taking place in this optimistic boom time, pre-pandemic, when there’s lots of money sloshing around in the city, and private investors reward big promises with big checks. My own feeling of the industry came from those fizzy years. When I lived in San Francisco, I worked as a writer for an app called “Ask a Stylist,” which was acquired by Google and was, for a little while, very popular. (Sadly I didn’t get stock options!) 

Then, in 2011, I moved to Chicago to work for the online coupon startup Groupon. This was near its peak of success and popularity. The editorial department was profiled in the New York Times, and we were growing fast—the company employed hundreds of writers and copyeditors and fact checkers; it was like a newspaper in scale. Groupon went out of its way to cultivate a cool startup-esque brand culture, but often in embarrassing ways, like using a cat spaceship for a logo. They splashed out on parties and decorated the huge open office space with swings and couches and ping pong tables, where people hung out after work drinking free beer. It was an exciting place to work, and it seemed like we’d just keep growing. 

Not long after we went public, the company lost momentum and started spiraling, and the public response surprised me. People had been enthusiastic about the company’s success, but became downright gleeful as we started to falter. At first, internally, there was a defiant attitude, but eventually the negativity took over and the mood became fatalistic. The fickle nature of public opinion, and the energy and comradery and self-mythology inside a startup, directly played into writing Snake Oil.  

JW: It seemed clear to me that the three point of view characters (Rhoda, the driven CEO; Dani, the “quester” who idolizes Rhoda; Cecilia, the “quasher” who doesn’t see the culture offering anything of value) provided a vehicle for exploring the way women are viewed in this milieu, as well as how these women view themselves. Did you conceive them as these types and flesh them out from there, or did you have the individuals in mind and have to figure out how they fit into the story?

KRD: Radical is an unusual Silicon Valley company for having a female founder-CEO, and of course in the story, there’s plenty of pressure on her to perform to a very high standard, from her customers, her employees, and her (mostly male) board and investors. 

Rhoda West was the first character I thought of, the impetus of the book really. She is a “girl boss” type, both because as a writer I’m interested in that, and because it’s realistic: venture capital-fueled startup culture values leaders who are charismatic, persuasive, and self-assured (often to the point of being narcissistic). Rhoda draws from Sheryl Sandberg’s work ethic and emphasis on individualism, as well as personality-driven leaders like nastygal’s Sophia Amoruso (who actually wrote the book #girlboss), and image-conscious figures, like Gwyneth Paltrow. 

Though she’s inspired by these types, Rhoda isn’t a fictionalized take on Elizabeth Holmes or GP or anyone. She’s a specific character, with her own particular history and values system. Rhoda was great fun to write, because she’s so devoted to her own point of view and desires. She’s hugely charming and almost cunning. She manipulates people, but she’s not a villain. 

The other point of view characters represent opposing perspectives on Rhoda and Radical (and it was important to me that neither one was entirely correct). Dani, the believer/quester, found Radical when she was grieving and latched onto Rhoda as a guide to help recenter her life after it spun off its axis. Dani is a “type” of modern woman, I think. She’s ambitious both in the sense of wanting to succeed and feeling that her job defines her identity—but she’s also pregnant and wants a family, so she’s having to reckon with how to balance those things.  

I’ve worked in customer service, and all my own negative, snide, exasperated feelings found release in Cecelia, the quasher, who writes a Twitter account mocking Radical. In early drafts of the book, Cecelia was much more of an Iago character who mostly served to antagonize the other characters and move the action along, but the more time I spent in her head, the more I understood what had driven her to be so angry: her plan to be a journalist didn’t pan out in the reality of the 2010’s economy, and she doesn’t have the personality to succeed in a corporate environment. On top of that, she suffers from an undiagnosed chronic illness that she tries to hide from everyone. Some of her experience with illness is drawn from my own life, since I struggled with an autoimmune disorder for several years in my late 20’s/early 30’s. I didn’t have the same condition as Cecelia, but I wanted to convey that physical misery of being chronically sick, and the impact on mental health—it really makes Cecelia feel isolated, and she targets much of her rage at the world of wellness, which she sees as absolutely fake and hollow since she has so little control over her own health.

Alternating multiple point of view characters was a good way to build tension, as we’re not really sure who to root for (and I wanted that to be fairly open to interpretation). I’m interested in how we filter information to reinforce what we believe—how we tell ourselves stories, and how the tech and media we interact with influences that. The spheres of wellness, influencers, and startup hype all seemed to intersect with the topic of belief in interesting ways that played out in the story.

JW: This is going to sound like, and perhaps is a dumb question, but what kind of book is this? It’s billed as a thriller, and for sure suspense and wondering how things are going to turn out are central to the reading experience, but you have all kinds of interesting things going on that are not strictly central to driving suspense -  Dani’s experience of grieving over her mother and her excitement and fears for her pregnancy, a lot of richly detailed writing about the landscape of San Francisco. There’s definitely a version of this book that ditches some of those things in service of ratcheting up the thriller vibe even higher, but I thought these elements were important to the attachment I had to the book as I read. How do you think about striking the balance between exploration and forward movement?

KRD: I love this question, because it’s something my editor, agent, and I discussed while we were talking about revising the book. For context, my first book was what my agent calls a “literary thriller.” It had complex characters and rich setting, and so on, but it also had thriller twists. Most crucially, the main character often faced physical danger and menace as she solved the mystery. That’s where Snake Oil differs. It has a cat and mouse chase, a suspicious death and investigation, plot twists, and a dramatic ending, but the investigation is less central. The book is as interested in solving the mystery as exploring the fallout for each character.

It's interesting that you say that there’s a version of this book that leans into the thriller genre more, because earlier drafts were more thriller-ish. The police investigation played a larger role, and there was a fourth point of view character who was very threatening, a classic unreliable narrator. But as the relationships between the women became more central, these overtly thriller pieces were throwing off the overall vibe of the book. I’m glad to hear that the various character elements enriched the story for you (I agree!).

So: crime novel? Women’s fiction? Literary thriller? There’s even a boardroom drama element. As a writer, it was fun to have freedom to blend genres. The risk, of course, is that readers hoping for a more straightforward genre might be frustrated. I hope the book has some of the energy and intrigue of a crime novel, and some more literary engagement with ideas and character. 

JW: And finally, my capper question for everyone: What’s one book you think not many people are aware of, but is definitely worth reading.

KRD: The hardest part of this question is keeping it to one! I’ll call out the midcentury crime writer Margaret Millar, a contemporary of (and in fact, married to) the better-remembered crime writer Ross Macdonald. Millar wrote complex, atmospheric mysteries set mostly in California in the early days of suburbia, so it’s recognizable but still more remote and wild than today. The stories deal with race, class, marriage, economic inequality, sanity, isolation, grief, and even topics like abortion. I could recommend any of her books: the Hitchcockian Beyond this Point are Monsters or the creepy psychological thriller Beast in View, but my favorite is A Stranger in My Grave. A woman dreams of a gravestone etched with the date of her death, and hires a private detective to find out what happened to her on that date. The results unravel secrets buried in her marriage and childhood, and a dark plot between her mother and husband. 

Then, if you enjoy Millar’s California setting, pick up Joan Didion’s Run River, her moody 1960’s noir set on a sprawling ranch, which has literary soap opera vibes.    

Previous recent author Q&A’s:

Everybody Is Secretly Grieving with Alison Espach.

Observations Within Landscape with Ben Shattuck.

Teddy Wayne on Writing and “The Winner.”

Accomplishment vs. Achievement with Adam Gopnik