Crime Writer Michael Harvey on Chicago: The L, The Cops, and The Watering Holes

Michael, thanks for chatting with me about The Third Rail.

Your narrator tells his story in first person, but we get a bad guy’s perspective in third person. Why did you choose a double point of view?

Good question. My first two books, The Chicago Way and The Fifth Floor, were both written in the first person, from Michael Kelly’s point of view. I enjoy writing in Kelly’s voice and wanted to keep him in the first person. My plot for The Third Rail, however, called for multiple crime scenes that unfold almost simultaneously across the city. In order to maintain and feed the dynamics of that story line, I felt it was critical to get into the killer’s head at certain points and allow him to drive the action forward. So I kept Kelly in the first person, and used the third person for my killer.

This decision is not without risk. But I figure nothing ventured, nothing gained. I will be interested in readers’ reaction to the switching. Did it bother them? Did they like it? Did they even notice? We’ll see.

Your plot involves some real-life events, including a 1977 el-train crash that I remember seeing on the news. Were you around when this crash happened? When did you decide you wanted it to be a facet of your novel?
I was a kid living in Boston, so, no, I don’t remember the 77 L crash. I first heard about it when I was working as a journalist for CBS in Chicago. At that time, I took the L just about every day and certainly recall many days when I thought our train was going off the edge as it negotiated a turn in the Loop.

I decided I wanted the accident to be part of the novel about halfway through writing it. I knew my spree killer was going to attack the city through the L system. I just didn’t know exactly how. Or why. As I ran through different possibilities, I remembered the old L accident. I was especially intrigued with the idea that the accident could be used as a vehicle to tie into Kelly’s childhood, and help strip away a little more of his character. Once I saw that possible tie-in, I knew the 77 crash was going to be part of the book.

Many a cop (both fictional and real) is willing to walk into danger despite the wishes of their loved ones. The same is true of Michael Kelly, a former cop and now a private investigator. What makes Kelly determined to do it despite his girlfriend’s desire for him to find a safer job?

The easy answer is... that’s just Kelly’s job. The better answer is... that’s his nature.

I have interviewed a lot of cops, firemen, EMT workers, military personnel -- people whose job it is to put themselves in harm’s way. They understand the risks inherent in what they do and, for the most part, don’t assume those risks lightly. Their comfort level comes from a belief in their own abilities and an implicit trust in the people they work with every day. They figure if everyone does their job, chances are nothing bad is going to happen. Do bad things happen? Yes. Do people die? Yes. Do these folks realize that? Yes. But they don’t dwell on it. Their nature allows them to tolerate a considerable amount of risk, and do the jobs no one else in society wants to think about.

Interesting! One of your more evil characters saw active duty in Afghanistan. Is the reader to deduce that he was twisted by war, or was he a warped individual before he went overseas?

That’s up to each individual reader to decide.

One of the great things about writing (and reading) novels is that each reader brings his or her life experiences to the novel, and essentially completes the story with their own interpretation of events and character.

I believe Robles was twisted well before he hit Mogadishu. As I said in the book, he was born in a toilet in a Greyhound bus terminal. And it went downhill from there. His experiences overseas probably didn’t help things, but he was already in trouble before he joined the military. At least, that’s my take.

The mayor of Chicago is fictionalized in your book, but he’s very similar to Mayor Daley—-especially with that intensity that seems to border on insanity. Did one inspire the other?

Wilson is based on my impressions of a number of different politicians. Most tend to be highly driven and a little paranoid, with an unsettling mix of ego and insecurity. These folks like the spotlight, crave power and know how to use it. Scary? Sometimes. Interesting? Without a doubt.



You paint a negative, almost a sinister vision of the Catholic church. Is this Michael Kelly’s perspective, or is it yours?

It’s Kelly’s experience, more than perspective. And it’s an evil that is not limited to the Catholic Church.

One of the subsets of the Kelly series is the idea that the major institutions of society -- government, big business, the Catholic Church etc., -- are morally bankrupt, act only in their own self-interest and are not to be trusted. I think this reflects a feeling many people have when they look at the real world these days. Katrina, the war in Iraq, Wall Street’s meltdown, the Catholic Church’s ongoing abuse scandal -- the examples are, unfortunately, almost too numerous to list.

Kelly, in some ways, represents the little guy whose job it is to jump in the water and swim with these sharks. He gets bitten a lot, and is understandably wary. But he wins some of the time. At least enough to pay the bills and keep him in beer.

Everyone in your book has an agenda, either political or personal. Is this Kelly’s cynicism, or is this the way you view Chicago?

Both. In my experience as a journalist and documentary producer, I have found most people in positions of power tend to act in their own self interest – with the prime directive being save one’s own skin at all costs. There are exceptions -- but that’s what they are....exceptions.

Did you study the history of Chicago’s elevated trains before formulating your plot, or after?

I knew about the 1977 train crash, but did not initially think I’d use it in the book. As I got into the writing, I kept coming back to the crash both as a way to tie Kelly’s past into the plot and as a tool to strip away more of his character.

Overall, I have always thought the L would make a wonderful crime scene. It’s a huge, mobile, daily undertaking that runs through the heart of the city and connects all its component parts. It’s a place where a killer can find anonymity – be it on a crowded platform, in a dark tunnel, or tucked up in a building that overlooks the tracks. It’s an exciting place, a place every Chicagoan recognizes, and, whether we like it or not, a sometimes dangerous place.

One of your scenes takes place in a ruined building in Cabrini Green. Did you visit this site? The details seem very specific.

I lived in Cabrini for three days as a journalist. We did a report documenting living conditions in the housing project in the early nineties. Cabrini was a dangerous place. It was also a place a lot of wonderful people called home...a place where a lot of families lived, loved and cared for each other. Gunfire be damned.

Such a sad truth. You have a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. Do you live in the Chicago area?

Yes. I live about a half mile from Wrigley Field. Another place of great tragedy in the city.

Haha. I'm married to a Cubs fan, and he's either angry or sad for most of the summer. :)

The Third Rail is the third Michael Kelly crime novel; will there be more in the series?

Yes. The Third Rail leaves a couple of story lines unresolved. Some people probably won’t like that, but it was done intentionally. Why? Because that, more often than not, is how life works. Even when a homicide detective clears a case, it’s rarely tied up into a nice, neat package. It might appear that way, but appearances can be deceiving. There are usually questions in even a closed file that linger; certain facts that still don’t make sense; suspects that might not have killed anyone...but are suspicious nonetheless. Homicide detectives look at all of this as extraneous and a headache. They usually just want to catch the killer, close the file and move on to the next case. As a result, these lines of inquiry often remain open, unresolved and, for lack of a better word, messy. That’s just how it is.

Anyway, the next book in the Kelly series takes one of these unresolved, messy story lines from The Third Rail and follows it to its logical...or perhaps illogical conclusion. I guess that’s the long way of saying the next book is a bit of a sequel to The Third Rail.

Kelly’s girlfriend is a judge, and sometimes in the narration she is referred to as “the judge” rather than by her name. Is this symbolic?

I don’t think so. “Judge” is just more likely to come up when Rachel is being talked about in her capacity as...you guessed it... a judge.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer said you have “done for Chicago what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles and Dashiell Hammett for San Francisco.” Wow! Were you surprised by this accolade linking you to the biggest names in crime fiction?

Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald essentially created the private detective genre and were three of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. I could write another five lifetimes and not touch any of their work. But it’s a nice thought, and I appreciate it.

Your novel contains a great many details that only Chicagoans might recognize: Tom Skilling giving a weather report, someone reading Michael Sneed’s column, the typical behaviors of Irish south-siders. How do you decide which details to include? Do you ever put in homages to your personal favorites?

I own The Hidden Shamrock, Kelly’s favorite watering hole, and get my coffee at Intelligentsia, so I guess those are two favorites. Otherwise, I try to find places in the city that people might relate to, or find interesting. I especially look for scenes that convey the intangibles and atmospherics of Chicago. It’s a great city, so why not!

Good question! How can readers find out more about Michael Harvey and the Michael Kelly novels, especially The Third Rail?

They can go to my website www.michaelharveybooks.com or my Facebook page.

They can also follow me on Twitter at TheChicagoWay, and can go to Knopf’s home page.

Thanks for the conversation, Michael.

Books and Society

"A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."

--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"To read too many books is harmful."

--Mao Tse Tung

(photo: South Haven, Michigan, 2010)

Thriller Writer Mark Terry on Good Novels, Recurring Dreams and Charmed Life

Mark Terry's new Derek Stillwater novel, The Fallen, comes out this month from Oceanview Publishing. Terry lives in Michigan.

Your new book, The Fallen, has received much praise, and the Lansing Journal suggests that you write “like Lee Child on steroids.” Is this true? Are your books about action first and foremost?

That was a particularly flattering comment from the Lansing State Journal. Well, “action first and foremost,” I’m not sure. But they are very action-oriented and I really have no problem calling Derek Stillwater, my main character, an action hero. I tend to describe them as action-adventure thrillers, although they’ve been called political thrillers and even espionage thrillers.

This book is your third Derek Stillwater novel. Tell us a bit about this character.

Derek Stillwater, PhD, is a troubleshooter for the Department of Homeland Security. His particular areas of expertise are chemical and biological terrorism. He is a former Special Forces expert in biological and chemical warfare. That’s his resume, but he’s a bit neurotic, something of a hypochondriac, has some superstitious tendencies (he believes in luck, both good and bad, wears ju-ju beads, a St. Sebastian’s medal (patron saint of plagues), and a four-leaf clover). He has panic attacks. His parents were missionary physicians, so he was raised on missions in various countries around the world like Congo and Sri Lanka. He lives on a cabin cruiser on the Chesapeake Bay and routinely puts in his letter of resignation, but always comes back when called on.

He lives on a boat; is this an homage to Travis McGee?

Sort of. I've always found the concept appealing, and in my novel, Dirty Deeds, the character of Jack Bear lives on a boat as well. I don't know if I'd like living on a boat or not, but I do like boats, and I think it says something interesting (perhaps it means different things for different people) about the character. There must be something satisfying in knowing that you can just haul anchor and move your home anywhere you want without a lot of planning.

Will Derek be back for a fourth book?

Yes, the fourth book is written and scheduled for September 2011 by Oceanview Publishing. The title is THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS. It takes place over a 48-hour period leading up to election day in November as Derek and a terrorism task force attempt to prevent attacks in Los Angeles that they have intelligence about.

You yourself are a very action-oriented person; when not writing, your website informs me that you “study sanchin-ryu karate, lift weights, bike, run, and kayak.” Would a novel about Mark Terry have an exciting plot?

I seriously doubt it, since I otherwise spend most of my time in front of a computer screen. I didn’t always used to be this active, but since I became a full time writer about 5-1/2 years ago, and my schedule freed up a bit, I started going to the gym and just kept adding other things that I liked to do. I’d studied the American Karate System in college for a year or so and had to drop out when I got too busy. Then life took over. Then about six years ago my kids started taking Sanchin-Ryu. About a year later when my schedule permitted I started going, too. I’m now a first-degree brown belt. The next level is black belt. My youngest son has dropped out, but my wife has started. That black belt is probably on the near horizon.

On your blog you wrote about some recurring “stress dreams.” The first one, ‘the college final exam,’ I’ve experienced before (although sometimes it’s high school). But I’ve never experienced your second one, the ‘writing career’ dream. Can you expand on this one?

Hmmm. Sure. There appear to be two varieties to it. First, it’s probably helpful to know that I worked for 18 years in a cytogenetics laboratory at a major metropolitan hospital. I really didn’t like the job or the work, although for the most part the people were fine. My “day job” now is as a freelance writer—I write magazine articles and market research reports and newsletters and many, many other things, in addition to writing novels (I’m also collaborating on a nonfiction book).

I love it, as a matter of fact, at least as much as the novel-writing and sometimes even more. So my two versions of a stress dream involve, 1) the writing didn’t work out and I had to go back and work at the hospital doing cytogenetics. Ack! And 2) for some reason my wife and I decide to go back to college full-time and I have to look for a job and I typically find myself looking for a cytogenetics job (there’s a lab at Michigan State, where we both graduated). But usually that dream ends with me realizing that I can still freelance write and don’t have to look for the lab job. Our brains are funny things.

Agreed. You live in Michigan. Have you lived there all your life? Have you ever fantasized about living somewhere else?

I have lived in Michigan my entire life and went to college at Michigan State University in East Lansing. And yes, I’ve fantasized about living somewhere else all the time, especially from about the month of November through April when winter strikes Michigan. There are many places I’d like to live, including Texas and Florida, and who knows, maybe someday I will.

You have a dog named Frodo. Does this mean you’re a Tolkien fan, or someone else in your family is?

Well, yes, at least, I’m a fan of the movies. I’d read the trilogy and The Hobbit a couple times when I was in high school. And the films are pretty much favorites. I think it was my sons who named him, though. He’s a very good dog, a chocolate Lab.

Will you be very busy while promoting The Fallen?

Yes. At the moment I’m scheduled for 8 or 9 signings. I’m doing a blog tour for a couple weeks. I did a cable TV interview show last week and we’re still in the process of scheduling some other events and interviews.

What’s the best fan response you’ve received to your books?

I loved your book and I’m going to go out and buy the others.

You mentioned on your blog that Sue Grafton’s I is for Innocent influenced you greatly, as well as a couple of Robert Parker and Stephen King books. What makes Grafton’s letter I novel so influential?

I’ve often thought that “I” is for Innocent was the almost perfect mystery novel. A lot of it has to do with the structure, which is this beautiful three-part story structure. Kinsey is hired to review a murder case for an attorney, and about a third of the way there’s a major reversal, then about 2/3s of the way there’s yet another major reversal, and then it wraps up with a very exciting finale, which is not always the case with a Grafton novel. I just think it’s a beautifully crafted novel that does everything right.

If you have any spare time for reading, what are you reading right now?

I just finished Erica Orloff’s FREUDIAN SLIP and started reading Jonathan Kellerman’s DECEPTION. I’m also reading David McCullough’s biography of John Adams.

Like you, I have two sons, and I find that I borrow heavily from their expressions for my dialogue. Do you ever do this with your own boys?

Not so much. They’re 12 and 16 and I don’t have too many kids in the Derek Stillwater novels. I spent some time the last year writing some books aimed at middle grades, but they never got picked up. They were fun to write, though, and I think I learned a lot, not only about writing for kids, but by writing for kids, probably learned a thing or two about kids in the process.

If you could have your fantasy, what would be an ideal day for you?

In a lot of ways I’m already living it. I get up, take my youngest son to school, come back, walk the dog, then head for my home-office to write for a couple hours. Then I go to the gym or go outside for a bike ride, depending on the day and the weather, have lunch somewhere, walk the dog again, then back to the office. I write for a couple hours, then pick up my kids, then work for another couple hours. Then I’ll have dinner with the family, practice the guitar, write if I need to, hang out with the family or go to a karate class or some other activity like a band booster meeting. It’s a charmed life. Aside from that, I wouldn’t mind being on a tropical island in a hammock with a tropical drink close at hand.

Both versions sound great! How can readers find out more about Mark Terry and The Fallen?

Visit my website at www.markterrybooks.com

Thanks for chatting with me, Mark!
Thanks!

Reflections for the Day

"Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!"

~Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"


The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amid the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

~Joseph Addison

(photos: South Haven, Michigan April 2010)

That Idiot April

Edna St. Vincent Millay said that April "Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers." So here it is, beautiful in its foolishness of flowers and green buds. This is a day that one should inhale the air and examine one's weltanshauung.

Did I know what weltanshauung meant ten minutes ago? I did not. But I am a subscriber to Wordsmith's word of the day, and my vocabularly is expanding mightily thanks to their intelligent daily e-mails.

Today my weltanshauung and I will be enjoying spring by getting away from it all; glorious pictures to follow. :)

Some Paradoxes are Eternal

"It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

--From Charles Dickens' A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Farewell, Robert Culp

The world has lost a whole lot of cool.

Image link here.

Roger Hudson on Ancient Athens, Dark Monasteries, and The Land of the Forever Young

Roger Hudson’s career has covered many forms of researching and writing--from journalism to publicity to careers books, plus scripting corporate videos and TV documentaries. This wide life experience has fed into his acclaimed debut historical mystery novel Death Comes by Amphora (2007), set in ancient Athens, and its anticipated sequel, Fraud Under the Akropolis. Hudson grew up near Guildford, Surrey, worked many years in London and Dublin and now lives in Drogheda, Ireland.

Roger, thanks for chatting with me.

Your historical crime novel, Death Comes by Amphora, is set in Ancient Athens. You are the third author I’ve interviewed here who has set a mystery in Ancient Greece or Rome. Does this setting go hand-in-hand with mystery?

My period, Ancient Athens around 461BC certainly does. In fact, it was a mystery that first interested me in the year. Who assassinated the radical politician Ephialtes? They nailed a foreigner for it but, as Ephialtes had brought in the reforms that took power away from the aristocrats and gave it to the rest of ‘the people’ (demos), chances are other people were behind it. Many of the mysteries of the time are puzzles for the writer rather than unsolved crimes and are down to the general shortage of hard information, so quite a bit of detective work for me in piecing together the background story and filling the gaps.

Should I interpret the title to mean that the death in question is IN the amphora, perhaps in the form of poison, or that the amphora itself becomes the murder weapon? Or is it meant to be ambiguous so that I’ll read the book? :)

In my case, the amphora is the murder weapon but I did want that sense of ambiguity. I think I was also after a touch of the incongruous, of an everyday object (for the period) being the cause of death – like ‘Death by Saucepan’.

How did you happen to choose the mystery genre?

I mentioned to a friend in the publishing business that I had long wanted to write about the events surrounding the assassination of Ephialtes (a lot of other exciting stuff was going on that year) and he suggested that the best way to get a historical novel published was to make it a detective novel. So I came up with a plot and the characters of Lysanias and Sindron as my Holmes and Watson and it proceeded to grab hold of my imagination.

Your town, near Dublin, contains “the only surviving medieval barbican in Ireland.” Did this lovely piece of history inspire you to write about the ancient world?

Afraid not, nor the even more ancient site of Newgrange just outside the town, which is older than the pyramids. I was living in Dublin when I wrote the first draft, though Dublin has plenty of history too. But I must admit seeing that barbican reminding me of the past every time I walk down the street is a great inspiration generally.

And seeing old paintings and prints of Drogheda when its medieval stone walls were still in place creeping up the hills and along the ridges with fortified gates like the barbican at intervals has helped me visualize what Athens may have been like. It could have been a similar size.

How wonderful, really, that it's a part of your everyday life. You are also a poet, and you write, on your blog, about “poetry that’s really poetry and not prose in short lines.” Can you expand on this distinction?

I joined a poetry group a while back where someone inferred that my stuff was really prose not poetry. I was very offended at the time and walked out but it did make me look at it again and, as I was meeting up with a younger published poet and swapping ideas and knowledge, I somehow acquired the ability to make integral use of poetic idioms – repetition, asonance, alliteration, onomatopeia, rhythm and so on. Even the previous memoir-like pieces gained a new vitality when re-written this way. That said, I have since come across recognized poets whose work seems very prosaic to me and where the poetic element is in the subject matter and way of seeing rather than the style.

Have you always been a poet? Does your poetic instinct drive the way that you write prose?

No, it’s relatively recent, though I do remember writing a little bit of doggerel at primary school. But it seems there are some things I wanted to say about life and my experiences that could only be expressed that way. It’s a whole different ballgame though, very little overlap. I like to think my prose has a rhythm to it, that my choice of words is apposite and elegant, that incorporation of the world of the senses, sight, sound, smell, feel is comparable to that of a poet, but none of my characters, through whose eyes the reader sees ancient Athens, lays claim to being a poet (unlike Nick Drake’s Rahotep) so no poetic phrasing for their thoughts.

Do you read mysteries as well as write them? What’s the best mystery you ever read?

It’s strange that, once you’re an author, you read partly to see what other writers are doing with the genre and to spot the mistakes they’ve made that you need to avoid. But, yes, I do, though not as much as I’d like – not the time. I have started contributing reviews to Alan Bishop’s Criminal History ezine though. The best mystery? That’s a difficult one – there are so many I’ve enjoyed. A book that has stuck in my mind is The Name of the Rose but maybe less for the mystery (though it is intriguing) than for that strange dark monastery that becomes a character in itself and the background menace of the world of fierce beliefs and violent conflict between sects within the Christian church that Umberto Ecco incorporates. Among non-historicals, Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise fascinated me but as much for the subtle portrait of the British class system as the detection. More recently, Nick Drake’s Tutankhamun knocked me out.

You and your older son are both in some way involved in film. Is this a family passion?

I don’t think I’d put it that way. But there are long family connections. My mother was an ardent cinema-goer and took me and my sister with her from an early age. My father drove a giant cinema van during the war (WWII), parking on village greens and showing cartoons and newsreels and propaganda for people to invest their savings in war bonds. After the war it became patriotic feature films in schools and village halls. I would sometimes go with him.

More important was being at college when the French nouvelle vague arrived and seeing old black and white classics in screenings in the Biology Lecture Theatre run by the Film Society. I was hooked, though I haven’t really achieved as much in this area as I’d have liked. I guess some of it must have rubbed off on Simon.

What does running an independent film and tv production company entail?

That’s just impossible to cover briefly, especially if one includes distribution, which we do as well.

What sorts of films do you make?

Mainly documentaries. My biggest so far as director is Wordweaver, an arts documentary about Benedict Kiely, an Irish novelist and short story writer well known in Ireland but very little outside.

Our other projects are about artists, history, social and current affairs. Distribution titles range from Bloom, a screen version of James Joyce’s Ulysses, to a delightful Japanese coming of age movie directed by a Welsh ex-pat called Firefly Dreams, from the world classic Soviet-Cuban film I Am Cuba with its stunningly beautiful photography, to a forthcoming powerful Irish gangster movie on the theme of people trafficking called Trafficked.

Who is your favorite film maker, living or deceased?

Just can’t do that. So many great guys. Eisenstein probably had the most impact, with his sheer eagerness to experiment. Pabst and Renoir for their understanding of humans and sensuality. Orson Welles, Truffaut and early Goddard for the experimentation and sense of fun. But Griffith and Buster Keaton as well. And, of course, anyone who could make both Alien and Bladerunner has to be in there – Ridley Scott. And then there’s … I give up - the list is endless.

A great list! Your life, as described on your website, is rich with detail and history. What was the most interesting job you ever had (other than the present one, of course)?

I was engaged as a freelance journalist by an unusually imaginative civil servant running a small government agency publishing careers literature for schools who had decided that the information would get through to kids better as interview features in leaflet and booklet form. So, to my great delight, I was paid to get to know the manufacturing processes of a whole range of industries – engineering, construction, foundries, shipbuilding, chemicals, transport, you name it. The massive scale or intricate detail, the giant machines, terrifying noises, powerful smells. Absolutely fascinating. Not just walking round these places and observing, but talking one-to-one with technicians, craftsmen and semi-skilled workers.

The sheer skill in the mental gymnastics a turner or fitter or, especially, a foundry patternmaker had to perform to create the essentials of our world amazed me. Much of that skill, of course, now gone to computerization, but we owed those guys a lot. Finding ways of writing it to communicate to the youngsters was a challenge too. Strangely, it has had a spin-off in writing the novel.

Yes! Your book, as we mentioned, is set in Ancient Athens. What’s the most important lesson the world could learn today from the thinkers of Athens?

I think most of them have a lot to answer for in the ways their ideas have sometimes influenced the world after their time. But I’d suggest that, if our politicians, economists, businessmen paid attention to Heraclitus’ belief that change is the only constant, that all things change and nothing stays fixed, we might have avoided the belief that they could achieve some plateau where the market would regulate everything and we would all get richer and richer. Look what happened!

And what may happen again . . . Have you ever visited Greece?

Several times, but not as much as I really should and would like to. Plans to do more research there this year.

Congratulations on the birth of your new grandchild. Will you be dedicating a book to the new arrival?

Thank you. His name is Oisin and my next poetry book, Greybell Wood and Beyond, is already dedicated to him with a wish that he grow up with a better grip on reality than his namesake, the legendary hero who was lured away to the Land of Forever Young, where no-one ever grows old, and met disaster when he came back and encountered the real world, and better than his father and grandfather who have often pursued unachievable fantasies (though sometimes with a degree of satisfaction and achievement). No firm publication date yet, though.

But what a lovely name, and how nice to be named for anyone in literature. What are you reading now?

Apart from books on Athenian law cases for the series on true crimes I’ve started in my blog, I’ve perhaps boringly been re-reading Herodotus’ Histories . Fascinating stuff and such a lovely personality. It’s as though he’s there, talking in your ear, gossiping about other lands. It tells so much about the Greek mind of the time, his openness to all ideas from wildest superstition to the most gruesome events.

Amusingly (to us), he could take on board the possibility of one-eyed men in the distant North but know that the sailor who claimed to have circumnavigated Africa must be lying because he said that, when he turned west at the bottom of the continent, the sun was on his right, exactly what proves it to us. P.S. He is clamouring to appear in the sequel to Death Comes by Amphora, by the way.

That would be wonderful! How can readers find out more about you and your mystery series?

A good start is my website at www.rogerhudson.me.uk Pages of info there and links to the company’s website, reviews, etc. Then following my recently started blog Ancient Villainies at http://rogerhudson-ancientvillainies.com/ should keep them up to date with what I’m doing, if I can maintain the pace the internet seems to demand. I’m hoping to get to grips with Facebook soon, as well.

Thanks for offering to interview me. I’ve enjoyed it and hope I haven’t revealed too many secrets.

No, if anything, not enough! :)

Thanks, Roger.

Coming Soon . . .

An interview with the delightful Roger Hudson, who writes a series of mysteries set in Ancient Athens. His first, DEATH COMES BY AMPHORA, was released in the U.K. in 2007.

Spring Snow

It's still officially winter, but the spring-like weather of the past week made today's snow a surprise. It's sleeting down in sheets which laugh at umbrellas and parka hoods. How like March, really, to do something this rude. :)

Hawthorne and The Power of Truth

On this date in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was published. Of this book, Arnold Bennett wrote that it was "The one American literary work which comes as near to perfection as is granted a man to bring his achievements." Hawthorne's memorable tale of sin and redemption, judgment and forgiveness is an American literature staple.

Students often chafe at the difficulty of the language (Hawthorne's style is wordy and complex) and the dialogue (which reflects the speech patterns of 17th Century Boston). It is debated that this great work, always a part of the American literature canon, be replaced by a new, more modern work.

While I understand both sides of this debate, I wonder what book could supply all that THE SCARLET LETTER does in terms of American History, Puritan dogma, Emersonian self-reliance, Christian redemption and the reality of hypocrisy. The book, with its triangle of compelling characters including the oppressed Hester Prynne, her estranged husband Roger Chillingworth, and her lover Arthur Dimmesdale, examines a fascinating story that emerges from its Puritan setting, yet is timeless in its thematic intent.

I am always moved by this novel when I read it, and its simple moral, basically "tell the truth," is made powerful because of Hawthorne's exploration of the alternative to truth: the pain that comes with living a lie.

Hurrah for Hawthorne, I say. Long may his words live on.

Then Fall, Caesar!

Ever read Julius Caesar? If so, you might find it interesting that today is the ominous Ides of March, on which Caesar famously met his death. I've been reflecting on the significance of the date and the passage of time in general, and you can read my literary ramblings at Poe's Deadly Daughters today.

Happy Ides!

Book Joy

"There is little in life to equal finding a book long sought and long out of print."

--Dr. Maya V. Patel

"There's something special about people who are interested in the printed word. They are a species all their own--learned, kind, knowledgeable, and human."

--Nathan Pine (bookseller)

(from Book Lovers Quotations, ed. Helen Exley)

The Photographic Language

I am in love with the images at Carophoto. Caro is in Belgium and I can't always understand the words under the photos, but the images speak for themselves. Check out the haunting black and white image on Monday, March 8th.

Carol Shields on the Notion of Protecting the Living

In a famous essay on writing entitled "Opting for Invention Over the Injury of Invasion," the late Carol Shields wrote about the dilemma every writer faces: whether or not to use true material in a fictional work. Shields came to the decision early on that she would not write about her family and friends "since I want them to remain my family and friends" (1).

She did admit, however, that it is tempting to use the material innocently provided by the eccentrics around us--those people who live in blissful ignorance of our spy-like tendencies, who don't realize that every word, every verbal nugget which leaves their mouths is being mined for significance, for irony, for humor.

Shields shares an anecdote about the writer Robertson Davies, who was asked why he waited until he was sixty years old before he wrote his much-acclaimed Deptford Trilogy. Davies responded, "Well, some people died, you see."

Like Shields, Davies had decided not to take advantage of familial or friendly ties despite the boon it would provide to his writing career.

Yet many writers don't wait--they use the things they see with regularity, without apology, because they feel they are disguising this use. Many writers are of the opinion, in fact, that their friends and relatives would not recognize themselves in a fictionalized form--especially, perhaps, if they were depicted negatively. The average person, the theory goes, isn't good acknowledging his own flaws.

Whenever I write a book and ask my husband to preview it, he tells me confidently that he is sure the male lead is him. This always surprises me, since my characters are never based on him, and in some cases have been quite idealized. My husband apparently has quite a high opinion of himself. :)

But I'm curious to know if other writers use the people in the present as inspirations for their works.

(Carol Shield's essay excerpt taken from WRITERS ON WRITING, Collected Essays. New York: Times Books, 2001).

Crime Writer John Harvey on Lost Children, Western Movies, and Rhythmic Prose

John Harvey's new mystery novel FAR CRY comes out in June; it is his 100th book. Harvey's much-lauded Charlie Resnick novels are among Britain's best police procedurals; his novel LONELY HEARTS was named by The Times as one of the 100 Greatest Crime Novels of the Century. FAR CRY features the duo of Will Grayson and Helen Walker. Harvey lives in London.

John, thank you for talking with me. Your new book, FAR CRY, has a horrific premise: a woman suffers the abduction of not one, but two daughters, years apart. Did you envision that the book would become a deep examination of the psychology of that loss?

I don't see what else it could be. Unless you leave the woman permanently in the background as a character and concentrate solely on the investigations.

The ideas behind FAR CRY came out of a conversation with the writer Jill Dawson, who lives in the Fenland where much of my book is set, and whose home is close to a village where an abduction and murder of two schoolgirls had happened several years before. Affected by this, as a mother of two young children as well as a writer, Jill had written a novel, WATCH ME DISAPPEAR, based around her responses to these murders. When Jill and I met and had our conversation, the disappearance of a British child on holiday was very much in the news; her parents believed their daughter had been abducted but was still alive and made the decision to use the media as a way of securing her release - something which backfired on them and made them suspects in the eyes of many people.

Jill and I talked about the ways in which parents might react in such situations, the emotional havoc it wreaks on their own relationships and the degrees to which they might become obsessed not solely with their own loss, but with the wider area of child abuse and abusers. We talked about the possibility of writing a book which explored those issues and I came away convinced that was what I wanted to try and do.

Before starting to write, I talked through my initial ideas with a friend who is a very experienced psychotherapist, just to check that the lines on which I was planning base my story were credible.

It was always my intention to place the mother at the heart of the book and, in retrospect, I regret that she isn't as central - doesn't have as much space - as I'd intended. The scenes with her and her missing daughter were always going to be the big challenge for me as a writer - carrying them off convincingly. The are the most important scenes in the book for me, the ones that I can get excited about having written,though, of course, they're very short - a tiny part of the book as a whole if you're counting pages.

An epigraph from Macbeth appears before chapter one—the words of MacDuff when he hears that his family has been slaughtered. Did MacDuff’s character inspire you to write this story, or did you make the connection between your character and Shakespeare’s after the writing?

In no sense a direct inspiration, there's no connection between the stories, but MACBETH is a play I know well and those lines came to me when I was thinking about the book, so that epigraph was in place before I started on chapter 1.

FAR CRY is also a crime novel. Aside from the main storyline, the detectives, Will Grayson and Helen Walker, face endless examples of man’s cruelty. What motivates your detectives (or any detectives, perhaps) to stay in their jobs in the face of such sadness?

It's an odd question for me as a writer to answer. As the writer of the book, the mover of the plot, I need them to progress the investigation; they do their job because if they don't there's no story, no book. It's like moving chess pieces (or so I assume, since I've never played chess.)

But they're police officers, it's what they do. Come face to face with all manner of awful things and do their jobs. As the writer, I think I have to provide reasons for why, in certain situations, they might do the job badly, be over-zealous et cetera. There are times in this story when Grayson is in error as a police officer and that's because, as a father of two young children himself, he allows himself to become too emotionally involved.

One of the main requirements I have as a writer is to flesh out the lives of these officers, make them believable and, in some ways, attractive, so that the reader will want to accompany them through the investigation.

The women in your book are admirably strong. I don’t really have a question here; I just wanted to thank you for that. :)

Thanks! I try.

There is something existential in the idea of waiting to hear news of a lost person. Did you find it difficult to write scenes from Ruth’s perspective—that is, from her growing hopelessness?

As I've suggested above, the scenes with Ruth were key to me - my particular challenge in this book, to get her right. So they were difficult in a way, but once I'd got them started, once I 'saw' her, they came surprisingly easily. They were what I was primarily interested in, after all. It's the procedural stuff that I find difficult because I find it so boring and the task, which I think I sometimes fall down on, is not to make it boring for the reader too.


Not to sound cliché, but the abduction of a child really is every parent’s nightmare. So why do I, as a parent, find this book so compelling? Do you think your readers might take a certain satisfaction, even as they sympathize, with the fact that it is happening to someone else, someone fictional, and not to them?

You've answered your own question in a way. It's exactly because harm coming to one's own children is such a great fear that the book is compelling. I think it's why readers might sympathise with the parents in the book, but as to whether they will take some satisfaction from the fact it's happening to someone else I can't say.


You are a jazz fan, as is one of your most famous fictional creations, Charlie Resnick. Sue Grafton calls him “complex and capable, a man who not only loves justice, jazz and cats, but who can turn the construction of a sandwich into a work of art.” While I wouldn’t assume that Resnick is a fictional you, I wonder if many of Resnick’s jazz preferences are in fact your own?

More or less. We share a great love of Thelonious Monk, certainly.

You are also a fan of classical music, and on your blog you wrote of its dwindling numbers of fans. Why do you think this musical form, so rich and full of history, is losing popularity?

It could be something to do with the fact that we live in a culture that is increasingly devoted to the easy fix, to instant gratification, that finds things which require a degree of effort and concentration - well, too much effort. It could be something to do with the way music is taught - or not taught - in education. But when I go to concerts in London I'm frequently cheered not just by the fact they are well attended but also that there is a good proportion of young people present. Far less the case in smaller cities like Nottingham, I fear, where it's generally a middle-class, late middle age pursuit.

You are a poet, which is evident in your prose. F. Scott Fitzgerald wove jazz into the very pacing of his diction; do you think that your own love of music and rhythm informs the way that you structure your words on the page?

Maybe, other people - critics - have suggested this is the case, so who am I to disagree! I do think the fact of my having both written and, as a small press publisher, edited poetry for some 30 years, has - hopefully - given me a sense of the rhythm of a sentence, a phrase, or helped my choice of the right word. I spend more time rewriting my work according to the sound they make in my head that anything else.

Charlie Resnick loves cats. Do you have pets?

Have had cats, off and on, in the past. We have a cat now, really my youngest daughter's. I'm not really an animal person.

You are taking a course on the history of art. Are you enjoying it? Is there an artist or an artistic movement that you particularly admire?

Loving it; enjoying some - most - of the teaching; the relationship/exchanges of views with other students; the forced opportunity to visit more galleries and buy more art books than before. I've found writing academic essays after a 30 year gap quite a chore, but they do concentrate the mind.

I'm particularly drawn to American art of the 50s and 60s, partly because of the way it interlocked with the New York poetry scene at that time - Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, John Ashbery. So, I respond very positively to Abstract Expressionism - we took my youngest daughter over to New York for the big Jackson Pollock retrospective when she was less than a year old - and have a strong interest in women painters of the so-called second generation of AEs - Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan. I wrote about the period and included a fictitious woman artist from the period in the novel In a True Light, quite deeply flawed as a book and one of my personal favourites. Right now, I'm preparing an essay on two realist painters from that period, Alice Neel and Fairfield Porter.

You once taught a film course. What were some of the films that you showed to your class?

Oh God, so long ago! I can remember a few - Out of the Past; Bonnie & Clyde; Le Boucher ; La Femme Infidele; Night Moves.

You’ve written a great many Westerns. What drew you to this genre? Did you admire the work of Zane Gray or Louis L’amour? (My father, a Western fan, always said ‘Gray, yes. L’amour, no.’ :)

My father had a copy of Gray's Riders of the Purple Sage permanently at his beside; I might have tried reading it,but gave up - too verbose. Recently I saw a copy for sale and bought it, but still didn't manage to get beyond a few pages. I've never tried L'amour. I did read some westerns as a kid - Mulford's Hopalong Cassidy books were big favourites when I was in my early teens, and later I remember reading books by Charles Marquis Warren and Elliott Arnold - Blood Brother? One of my all-time favourite books as a boy was the Buffalo Bill Wild West Annual. But what really drew me to the genre was my dad's love of western movies - we went to see almost everything in the genre that ever played north London while I was growing up, and I used to skip school to see B westerns featuring Wild Bill Elliott, George Montgomery and - once, gloriously - Lash LaRue.

As an adult, I've much enjoyed the western fiction of Oakley Hall and, if it counts, Jim Harrison.

But the reason I wrote so many westerns was that there was a market for them when I began writing. I fell in with a few other writers - notably Laurence James and Angus Wells, now both sadly dead before their time - and we worked together on a number of series, usually under joint pen names.

So now I must ask--are you a fan of John Wayne, or do you think he's overrated?

Like anyone who make a lot of films, Wayne coasts much of the time, but when a director challenges him and brings out his darker side - as Hawks in the marvellous Red River or Ford in The Searchers, he can be pretty wonderful. The by-play between Wayne and Angie Dickinson in Hawks' Rio Bravo is comparable to Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep; and he's moving and believable in The Shootist.

You have a Master’s Degree in American Studies. Have you been to America often? If so, have you travelled widely? What was your favourite American place?

I used to go over on a small book tour every year when the Resnick books were published there by Henry Holt. So 8 or so trips of that nature. I have good friends in New York City and Washington DC, as well as Downeast Maine and I used to travel regularly to see them, but I've scarcely been to the States at all in the past ten years. This is mainly due to a growing discomfort with and fear of flying and dislike of traveling and the fact that there's no longer a US publisher inviting me over and offering to pay my fare!

I did go to Baltimore last year for the Bouchercon Crime Convention, as I was International Guest of Honour, and was treated royally! It was good to meet a lot of people, book dealers et cetera, who I hadn't seen for a long time and I may go out to San Francisco this October to Bouchercon.

Favourite places ? Downeast Maine. San Francisco. Manhattan. Montana.

Was your time in Montana related to the research you did for your westerns?

Not at all. I visited with my son, Tom, to stay with some friends who live most of the year in DC, but have family and a cabin in Montana.

I’m glad to read that you’ll be bringing back the character of Cordon from FAR CRY. Cordon was a good cop whose instincts told him when something wasn’t right. Will Cordon stay in touch with Helen Walker, the cop who traveled out to Cornwall to investigate with him?

No such plans as yet, but I'm only on chapter 10 and she is there, isn't she?

Finally, what are you reading these days (aside from your art course homework?)

That aside, not so much!

But this year, so far ...

So He Takes the Dog : Jonathan Buckley

Our Game : John Le Carré

Memoir : John McGahern

Absolute Friends : John Le Carré

The Looking Glass War : John Le Carré

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle : David Wroblewski

Two terrific books towards the very end of last year :

Truth : Peter Temple

Even The Dogs : Jon McGregor

John, thank you so much for your time.

To view John Harvey's website, click here.

The Rest is Memory

I just finished reading Meadowlands, a book of poetry by Louise Gluck. It was an examination both of marriage and of the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope. One of the lines that stood out the most for me was this one from a poem called Nostos:

"We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory."

I agree.

Image link here.

Coming Soon

Coming soon on MM--an interview with British crime writer John Harvey. Harvey is the author of eleven police procedural novels starring Charlie Resnick; his new series features detectives Will Grayson and Helen Walker. Harvey was kind enough to answer some questions about his new novel, FAR CRY.

Literature and Internet Travel

Once again I am teaching the great CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, the book that keeps on giving. :)

While perusing online pictures of St. Petersburg for my students, I found this lovely website which provides all sorts of snapshots of this historic and amazing city. For a glimpse of some beautiful Russian architecture, click on some of these photo essays, especially the stylish black and white one depicting St. Petersburg in winter.

If you're a CRIME AND PUNISHMENT fan like me, it's always rewarding to find the sites mentioned in the novel, and many of them can be found here.

The internet creates many problems, I suppose, but what a visual wonderland it is for teachers who want to share images with their students!

The image, by the way, is another C and P location: the stark and beautiful Siberia. (Photo link here).

Qi Gong and Writing

The Chinese practice of Qi Gong is a wonderful combination of meditation, exercise, and yoga-like stretching. It is a workout for the mind and for the body.

I've been practicing Qi Gong since the New Year, and it's guaranteed to lift my spirits; even if I'm not in the best mood when I begin, I always feel great when I finish.

As a writer, I find that the benefits of Qi Gong extend to my mental alertness. The creative well is deeper after a fitness session.

An added perk is that I am stronger, my muscles tighter, after a few weeks of Qi.

So any readers and writers looking at this--give it a try. A basic run through the motions is only eighteen minutes, and it might be the most rewarding eighteen minutes of your day!