Goodreads asked Jay Brandon:

Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?

Jay Brandon My initial response is the Maples, Joan and Richard, John Updike's fictional couple he chronicled through many stories, starting with young and in love, then through unfaithful marriage ("Your Lover Just Called" is one of the titles), finally divorced but with an ongoing relationship in which they obviously still care about each other. It seemed like a very honest portrayal of an adult, sophisticated relationship. Not my own experience of marriage (30 years, no longer counting), but my post-marriage relationship, now ended, was like that. Updike, one of my favorite authors, died too young, at age 71, the same age as my mother and another of my favorite writers, Donald Westlake. I also have to say one of my favorite fictional couples is my own Chris Sinclair and Anne Greenwald, in five novels. For a couple of them I had an editor who did very close edits, but I notice that when I came to a scene about Anne, his editing stopped. I told him, "I think you're in love with Anne." He replied, "All I can say is, if she's based on your wife, you're a lucky man." Alas, that was not the case.

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