Over the last 10 years, I’ve had four novels published, and although reviews were mostly decent, sales were just south of lackluster. This recently inspired my agent to suggest that I write a blockbuster to rescue my career. She was not being facetious. I gave it one torturous week, got nowhere and ended up deleting everything I’d written, which was an opening line (“A week after Lawrence was murdered in Cleveland, he reappeared in Tijuana selling sombreros to tourists on a beach called Los Muertos, which is Spanish for ‘the dead.’ ”) Speaking of dead, there was only one other...