Author William Martin, “King of the Historical Thriller” shares his Cape connections.

There’s something about the attic…

New York Times best-selling novelist and master storyteller William Martin—author of Cape Cod, Back Bay, Harvard Yard, Annapolis, The Lost Constitution, December ’41, and six other exceptional historical novels—relishes this story.

As a younger man, one afternoon he overheard a benign conversation on the front porch of his Weston home, between his six-year-old son Dan and two of his young friends, talking about what their parents did for a living. Martin was in the kitchen at the time and couldn’t help but overhear. And by his own admission, he wanted to hear.

As Martin, 74, recalls: 

One boy noted, “My dad is a lawyer, and he goes to court every day to put bad guys away to make us all safe…”

The young girl seated next to him said, “My Mommy is a doctor, and she goes to the hospital every day to make people better!”

There was a pause, then young Dan, today a highly successful Hollywood script and video game writer, stated in full pride, “My daddy is a writer. He goes up into the attic every day and makes stuff up!!”

And simply put, that’s the task of an award-winning historical novelist, a master storyteller, like Martin. Says Martin in an interview not far from Brewster’s historic herring run, and not far from where he and his family vacation in summers, “In writing historical fiction, I follow the facts of history closely. My historical fiction must pass the tests of history. I need the facts, details, and artifacts of history, like hooks that you...