Radiologist Turned Crime Novelist May Launch TV Series
By day, ACR member, Ken Mask, M.D., reads CT, MRI, and ultrasound images for a host of radiologic practices across the great American landscape. By night, he pens detective-fiction murder mysteries and is currently in discussions regarding the launch of a television pilot featuring his crime-fighting protagonist, Luke Jacobs, P.I.
The native North Carolinian and Duke University School of Medicine grad hit the publishing scene in 2002, with the debut of his first crime novel, Murder at the (Funky) Butt. The unusually titled tome transports readers to The Funky Butt, a legendary nightclub (now defunct) located in the same New Orleans square that gave birth to jazz music nearly a century ago. The nightclub’s name, Mask notes, is a tribute to a “funky” song written long ago by cornet player Buddy Bolden, today widely recognized as the founding father of jazz.
Picture Luke Jacobs: a brilliant, hip cross between James Bond and Sherlock Holmes. Sensing something seriously amiss at the Funky Butt crime scene, the former New Orleans assistant district attorney begins his own investigation, in which readers quickly learn the murderer’s identity but must watch Jacobs race a clock as he pieces together shards of evidence to determine the actual victim.
Reflecting on the story’s genesis, Mask says, “I was sitting in the Funky Butt one night and thought the jazz musicians, gas lamps, and four walls lined with rich curtains and turn-of-the-century photographs would be a great textured environment for a mystery-detective fiction.” Today, Mask traces his literary inspiration not to any recent mystery writers but to such heavyweights as “Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Stanley Crouch, and, of course, Charles Dickens.”
Mask found the novel’s New Orleans setting a natural choice. After all, he and his pharmacist wife, Evelyn Burgos, called the Crescent City home right up until Hurricane Katrina sent its residents scrambling. As the couple sought to escape, they discovered the area’s highways gridlocked and barely slipped out on “one of the last flights.” Three months later, officials finally let them return to their devastated neighborhood. “Our home had six feet of floodwater in it,” Mask recalls. “A good friend of mine actually stayed in our home during the storm and had to wait it out up on the upper level.”
During the post-Katrina crisis, Mask, who began practicing radiology in 1995, relied on his licensures in other states to take temporary assignments across the nation.
Mask’s biography is peppered with intriguing highlights. He knew James “Big Game” Worthy and Michael Jordan throughout his college years at the University of North Carolina and has been a good buddy of noted trumpeter Wynton Marsalis since the early 1980s. “Wynton and I have taken our kids either on his tours or on vacation together for several of the past summers,” Mask says. “Last year, we crossed the nation in a Winnebago. We have a five-day vacation coming up at the end of August.” In real life, Mask says, the television-serious Marsalis is actually “a jokester, relaxed comedian, and poignant competitor.”
In 2000, Mask accompanied Marsalis and his septet on a European tour. “When we arrived in Russia,” Mask recalls, “there was a Dixieland-type fanfare band at the airport for Wynton, like something out of a movie. After a super week in St. Petersburg, they played at the Kremlin.” Another good memory saw Mask and L.A. Lakers star Worthy shoot the breeze with jazz great Miles Davis after a performance at a Los Angeles nightclub.
In 2002, Mask and a friend started an enterprise called Books to You, which got a shot in the arm after Katrina struck New Orleans and Marsalis signed on. “We take books in the back of my car to depressed neighborhoods,” Mask says. “I envisioned it as a bookmobile or an ice cream truck with books on it. We just wanted to interest kids and were amazed by their hunger to read. During a hot summer, we found that by traveling around with a bunch of books in the back of a car, we could get a much better response than you could imagine from 8-, 9-, and 10-year olds.” Pausing, he adds, “Just as politicians once promised to ‘put a chicken in every pot,’ I want to put a library in every home. Books to You has been a labor of love.”
Today, Mask is nearing the midpoint in his fourth novel. He calls writing a welcome diversion and release. “You know,” he chuckles, “when you’re a radiologist sitting in a dark room for 10 hours a day, you need a diversion. I write at night and sometimes during coffee or lunch break. I’ll spend maybe 20 or 30 minutes of any given day figuring something out or writing out a scene.” In a specialty known for physicians working at breakneck speed over long hours, Mask says he enjoys the “relaxed down time.”
Burnout, Mask says, was a looming issue in his life prior to Katrina. Today, he believes it was a “mixed blessing to get displaced from my job in New Orleans.” Bone-wearying 12-hour days, coupled with his six-year status as the solo radiologist on call, slowly wore him down physically, mentally, and spiritually. “I had burnout coming, but didn't realize it until after I was forced to not work for a couple of months. That’s when I realized, ‘Okay this is exactly what I needed.’”
Balance has been instrumental in the rebirth and revitalization of Ken Mask, M.D. Asked if his life today revolves around radiology or writing, he responds, “My life revolves around my family. My wife and I have an 18-month-old son, so wherever they want to go, I go.”
Still, duty calls. Noting talks centering on a possible television pilot, Mask says, “I can’t make it to the network discussions tomorrow because I'll be working in radiology.”
What might it take for Mask to make writing his fulltime focus? “For someone to tell me that HBO has decided to pick up Luke Jacobs P. I., and they want me to be lead writer,” he says. “Of course, I would then need to hire a staff of 20 writers, much like the guys who wrote ‘The Sopranos.’” Having penned an 89-page teleplay, he notes, “I have enough sense to know that a novelist is not a teleplay writer.”
Being an author also means pitching his books to the public on extensive tours. Before Katrina, Mask embarked on an 80-city excursion that wended him from Birmingham, Alabama, to Denton, Texas, all the way up to the Big Apple. He did promo gigs on National Public Radio and the Tavis Smiley Show. “Wynton had a party for me at his home on West 66th Street,” he says. “It was a great event for me personally, just because Wynton was there along with [writer/commentator] Stanley Crouch, and lots of good friends.”
Admitting that he has “definitely taken a financial hit” by devoting his nights and not a few days to writing, Mask says, “I have a lot of good feelings and great memories of people having read my novels and then wanting to talk about the characters. That’s the best feeling. No money can take that away from me.”
Looking to the future of radiology, he is optimistic. “I think radiology continues to get better and better. Technology allows us to do more, see more, help more. I'm upbeat about radiology, and I only see positive things coming from the technology.”