Prodigal Son Nick Travers (by Ace Atkins)

As always here in the feature Prodigal Sons we try to find out what's been going on with characters we haven't seen in a while. Today we asked Ace Atkins what's been going on with blues historian and PI Nick Travers...

We wanted to know:
1) Will Nick Travers return?
2) Why haven't you written about Nick for some time now?
3) What's up next for you?


Ace answered us:

Thanks much for the interest in Nick. Yes, he hasn’t been around since 2004 and Dirty South.

I’m not sure if Nick will return. I’d like to see a new book with Nick – I think there are some great untold stories – but right now I don’t have any plans. I’m with a new publisher and moving in a new direction as a writer. I’ve finished two literary novels for G.P. Putnam’s Sons about infamous true crimes both in Tampa, Florida and Cuba with WHITE SHADOW and a forthcoming novel about the wickedest city in America of the 1940s and ‘50s in WICKED CITY out in April.

Both are crime books but free of the traditional mold I felt myself caught in with the Travers’ books.

Also I believe in 2004 that I’d reached a plateau with writing about Nick Travers and took him as far I could go – with the same excitement for myself and readers – in Crossroad Blues, Leavin’ Trunk Blues, Dark End of the Street and ultimately Dirty South.

I believe the four novels are absolutely related and represent a total journey for the character. But in the years since, I’ve thought about bringing him back at some time. The books can be tremendous fun to write.


For more info visit: www.aceatkins.com

Q & A with Richard B. Schwartz

This time we interview Richard B. Schwartz of the Jack Grant novels.

Q: What makes your P.I. Jack Grant different from other fictional private eyes?

Jack’s military experience is based on that of a real officer with whom I had the privilege to serve. Both were hit by Chinese grenades in Vietnam. The difference is that Jack retired after twenty years of service and became a PI. My friend stayed on, commanded a Corps in Operation Desert Storm, and recently retired as a four-star general. Jack has a master’s degree in History and sees things both from a realistic/military perspective and a thoughtful/historical perspective. He lost his wife during the war and his memories of her (which he never discusses) positively affect his relationships with women.


Q: What are your thoughts on the psycho sidekick in PI novels?

In Nice and Noir I call this figure the ‘avenging angel’; he (or potentially, she) is now a genre mainstay and represents many things. One is the invincible side of the PI. It is very interesting to see how this figure is used. For example, Robert Crais has been showing us a softer/more sensitive side of Elvis Cole’s sidekick, Joe Pike. Spenser’s friend Hawk remains largely inscrutable as well as (largely) invincible. Jack Grant’s friend Charles White serves this function in the Jack Grant novels—a short, wiry and very lethal retired noncom.

Q: Do you do a lot of research?

Sometimes. It depends on the book. I believe (following Samuel Johnson) that you absolutely must have seen that which you are attempting to represent. Sometimes I’ll return to the places that I’m describing just to get a feel for their sights and sounds and smells. I believe that setting is very important in genre fiction and much of my research involves familiarizing myself with the places in which my narratives are set.

Q: Has your writing changed much since the first novel?
No, I don’t think so. Each book is different, so the writing changes to that degree. The first is a classic case of detection, the second a revenge story, the third a love story and the fourth a broad-canvas international thriller. Each type of book presents its own challenges.

Q: Could you tell something about your book Nice and Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction?
Nice and Noir is a study of around 700 recent novels, with special attention to common themes and motifs (like the ‘psycho sidekick’ referenced above). A number of individual novels are used as exemplars. The book focuses on crime and detective fiction rather than English mysteries or cozies. Though it is built upon some scholarly materials it is not a book written specifically for scholars. Readers of crime and detective fiction will find it accessible and, I hope, interesting.

Q: What's next for you and Jack?
I haven’t said good bye to Jack, but I’ve been working on a new series. Chronologically, Jack would be in his sixties now. While these heroes can be presented in a timeless fashion, many of the key events in his life are increasingly distant in time. The new series features a figure in his early 30’s. I’ve also just completed a nonfiction book—a sequel to my earlier memoir The Biggest City in America. This one deals with my military experiences, particularly the time I spent teaching at West Point. It’s tentatively entitled Accidental Soldier.

Q: Do you have any favorite Sons of Spade yourself?
Many. Most of them are probably also the favorites of your readers. Check out the list on the FAQ section of my website: www.richardbschwartz.com.

Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI-writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation and in what way?
Chandler and Hammett, along with some other key Black Mask writers, established the form, so their influence endures. Macdonald continues to inspire the so-called ‘softboiled’ school. I love Lehane and Parker, who are both very influential, particularly Parker. I think for raw, jackhammer suspense there’s no one quite as effective as Lee Child and for setting and atmospherics no one better than James Lee Burke. The crime writers all love James Crumley and everyone loves James Ellroy, though his staccato style is very hard to imitate without being obvious about it. I’m a huge fan of Don Winslow and Robert Ferrigno, both of whom have developed into world-class writers. For economy of style there’s no one like Lawrence Block, for broad humor no one like Carl Hiaasen, and for a darker narrative no one like Andrew Vacchs and his pal Joe R. Lansdale. I still love Joseph Wambaugh, Charles Willeford, and the master of genre fiction, Elmore Leonard. For procedure there are few as effective as Ed McBain, Thomas Harris and Jeffery Deaver. Tom Holland is an impressive new voice in this field (and, with Jim Burke and Jeffery Deaver, a University of Missouri graduate). I miss Neal Barrett’s crime writing, though I respect his science fiction and I always look forward to new books from April Smith and Sandra Scoppettone. Donald Hamilton just passed away recently. I loved the Matt Helm books as well as his standalones. All of these writers will continue to be influential because they’re all so expert at what they do.

Q: Declan Burke, author of the Big O and Eightball Boogie came up with the following question: Is it absolutely essential your writing is published, and why?
It certainly doesn’t hurt. I love to write and can’t really live without doing it. The crime and detective fiction market is very tough, but where there’s a will there’s ultimately a way. I also enjoy writing nonfiction; that is much easier to place. It’s very important to me to reach a receptive audience. The audience doesn’t have to be huge, though we would all like it to be so. I have received the most personal responses (letters, emails, even phone calls) on my memoir about my adolescence in Ohio, because it deals with a particular place which is very important to the twenty thousand people who live there. My book Daily Life in Johnson’s London has sold over 10,000 copies and still sells briskly more than two decades after its publication. We all write alone and it’s very gratifying to hear return voices in the darkness.

Q: What questions should we ask every PI writer we interview and what is your answer?
Crime and detective fiction is an identifiable, carefully-delineated genre. What is it about that genre that enables you to discuss the kind of things that are important to you?

Readers of this kind of fiction expect your novels to be faithful to the genre but also to stretch the genre in fresh ways. Each book has to be new and different, but also take its fundamental inspiration from the genre as established by Hammett and Chandler. This presents special challenges and attracts writers who have a special affection for craft. Chandler also specified a set of attitudes with regard to politics and society (in “The Simple Art of Murder”) and these issues and attitudes have not lost their interest or relevance. These issues interest me deeply. Also, as a historian of eighteenth-century England my stock-in-trade is an understanding of the way that high ‘civilization’ coexists with gritty reality. Eighteenth-century women used ivory-handled scratchers to relieve themselves of the work of insects within their carefully-powdered wigs. They used mouse skins for artificial eyebrows. The men loved blood sports and bet on whether or not the victims of street accidents would live or die, sometimes keeping the physicians at a distance until the bets were settled. We still carry our hunter/gatherer brains along with our iPods and cell phones. This kind of fiction is the perfect vehicle for discussing the fine line between ‘civilization’ and barbarism.

For more info on this writer visit www.richardbschwartz.com

Stealing the Dragon (Cape Weathers) by Tim Maleeny

Made for the movies. That could be said about the adventures of Cape Weathers. In his first novel we follow him in his investigation of the murder of several men on a boat full of illegal immigrants from China. The killings seem to bear the markings of his friend, assassin and sidekick Sally. Her backstory is told in chapters in italics. Although an interesting story it did detract a bit from the main storyline making me a bit unsure if it was fitting for a first novel. I’d rather have gotten a better idea of the relationship between Cape and Sally first, then gotten the background on her in a later novel like Robert Crais did with Joe Pike in LA Requiem. Almost more of an exotic thriller than a traditional PI story Cape does have the sense of humor of the aforementioned Elvis Cole and the white knight traits of his other contemporaries. The plot involving the Dragon of the title brings back memories of the Maltese Falcon, the villains make you enter into Fu Manchu or maybe Eric van Lustbader (from books like “Ninja”) and Warren Murhphy’s Destroyer territory. I could picture Kurt Russell in ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ perfectly as Cape.
All in all, an enjoyable read for people who like PI’s but are looking for something just a little different. I, for one, am looking forward to reading “Beating the Babushka” to see what’s in store for Cape and Sally in the future.

Q & A with Declan Burke

This time our Q & A is with Irish writer Declan Burke, writer of Eightball Boogie and the Big O.
Q: What makes your P.I. Harry Rigby different from other fictional private eyes?
A: I could be literal and say he’s the only one from Sligo, Ireland … This is actually a difficult question for me to answer, because of the way Harry originated, which was as an exercise in style. I never had any intention of writing a full novel – I started out writing a chapter in which a PI meets a potential client for the first time, just to have fun with it. Harry’s a PI who is aware of all the tropes, he’s a fan of the hardboiled movies and books – so while he’s a PI, he’s also aware of fiction’s PI heritage, Marlowe, Archer, et al. It says something that my favourite PI movie isn’t THE BIG SLEEP, it’s Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE. Which is a roundabout way of saying Harry Rigby is different because he’s so knowingly similar to all his fictional predecessors. Except for the fact that he’s from Sligo …

Q: What are your thoughts on the psycho sidekick in PI novels?
A: I guess if it’s done well then it’s valid, and if it’s not, it’s a cliché. I take every character on its own merits. My instinct is that it could work well as a one-off, if the protagonist has a pyscho sidekick foisted on him, but that it wouldn’t make any sense, if you want your stories to have any kind of realism, for a PI – someone who earns their living through stealth and subterfuge – to associate with a psychotic person for too long. They’d attract too much notice. It’d be like hunting tiger with a hippo in tow.

Q: What would a soundtrack to your novels sound like?
A: Pretty bleak, probably, although it’d depend on the circumstances – if your protagonist found him or herself in a karaoke bar, say, then the clientele is highly unlikely to be belting out Leonard Cohen songs (although I like the idea, now that I think of it). In general, there’s quite a bit of fatalism in my stories, so the soundtrack would ideally be composed of artists such as The Tindersticks, Leonard Cohen, Antony and the Johnsons, Radiohead, Townes Van Zandt, Jacques Brel … melancholy stuff, glimmerings of hope in the darkness, that kind of thing. Mind you, I have Abba in my car stereo at the moment …

Q: Has your writing changed much since the first novel?
A: I’m probably more aware at this stage of how bad a line is when I write it, but as for my ability to improve that line … I don’t know. No, probably. In saying that, I’m interested in writing in different kinds of styles, so it’s hard to judge. EIGHTBALL BOOGIE (the first Harry Rigby novel) was a homage to Chandler, and was written in that kind of style. THE BIG O was styled as a homage to two American writers I read for pure, unadulterated pleasure – Elmore Leonard and Barry Gifford. And, once I finish the sequel to THE BIG O, I have a story bubbling away on the back-burner that’s heavily influenced by some of my favourite writers from the ’40s and ’50s – David Goodis, Gil Brewer. That probably sounds as if I’m spending all my time ripping off other writers, but that’s only partially true – it’s early days in my writing yet, and I’m happy enough to learn whatever craft I can from studying the writers I like. I don’t have the time to go copying out their novels, the way Hemingway did, so this is the next best thing. That’s my excuse, anyway.

Q: Do you do a lot of research?
A: It depends on the story, really. I wrote a book set on the south coast of Crete that involved a hell of a lot of research – I probably spent longer reading up on the various subjects that went into the story than I did writing it. For the most part, though, my stories aren’t all that high concept. They’re fairly stripped-back, character-based tales about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, so they don’t need a lot of research. In saying that, I’m generally very particular about detail – I can be quite disappointed if I come across a glaringly wrong detail when I’m reading, it can ruin a story for me. So I try to get it as realistic as possible within the parameters of the story.

Q: What's next for you and Harry?
A: I’ve written a follow-up to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, in which Harry witnesses a suicide and is then asked by the dead man’s mother to investigate the reasons why a seemingly happy, well-adjusted person would kill himself. At the moment, though, Harry has retreated to the snug of The Cellars bar and is enjoying some quiet drinking time, because the emphasis is on THE BIG O and its sequel, both of which have been signed up by Harcourt in the US – THE BIG O will be published in the US in Fall ’08.

Q: Do you have any favorite Sons of Spade yourself?
A: I certainly don’t mean any disrespect to any of the names on this fine site, and I appreciate that it sounds a bit old-fashioned, but for me there’s only one son of Spade, and that’s Marlowe – everyone else is competing to be nephews, grand-nieces, etc. I say that in full awareness of Chandler’s flaws in terms of plotting, and all the other flaws attributed to him. But I think what Chandler achieved with Marlowe goes beyond his ability in terms of style. Yes, he was reacting to Hammett, but I think Chandler shaped the paradigm of the private eye to the extent that everyone since has been writing according to his rules – obeying them, bending them, breaking them, parodying them. When you look at the non-crime fiction writers who dabbled as a once-off because they believed the form was worth exploring – Norman Mailer, say, or Hank Bukowski, Ray Bradbury, Jonathan Lethem – the model they reshape is Chandler’s.

Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI-writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation and in what way?A: I’m going to sound biased here because he’s Irish, and because I know the guy personally, but I think Ken Bruen will exert a massive influence on the next generation of PI writers. His Jack Taylor series is genuinely breaking new ground, given that it’s a post-modern appraisal of the notion of the PI and the PI novel – Bruen has gone beyond the conventional three-act investigation of a crime, gone beyond the protagonist as a righter of wrongs, a man or woman who uncovers dirty deeds and precipitates a satisfactory resolution. In Taylor’s world, everyone is equally culpable, and Bruen has inverted the focus of his PI’s gaze so that it’s himself he’s investigating, his morality, the part that he plays in creating the kind of world where good, bad and indifferent all jostle for pre-eminence. What Bruen is doing for crime fiction right now is akin to what Camus and Sartre, in their different ways, did for philosophy sixty or seventy years ago – although a more appropriate, Irish, reference would be that of Samuel Beckett.

Q: Ed Lynskey, writer of the Frank Johnson novels, came up with this question: "Would you have the patience and grit to work as a PI?"A: Definitely not. The reality of PI work is bone-numbing drudgery spent checking facts and figures, and endless hours wasted in surveillance, more often than not with no positive result. The wastage of time would drive me insane in a week. I’m also quite a private person. The notion of prying into other people’s lives – knowing that your prying will very probably have a devastating effect on their lives – offends my sense of mutual respect. In other words, if I don’t pry into your life, and you don’t pry into mine, all will be well. Of course, that’s the diametric opposite of the dynamic that propels the PI narrative …

Q: What questions should we ask every PI writer we interview and what is your answer?
Q: Is it absolutely essential your writing is published, and why?
A: No, and for two reasons: One, there’s far too much rubbish on the shelves already. Two, I need to write every bit as much as I like to write, and I’ll keep on writing long after it’s decided that I’m no longer worth publishing.


For more info on Declan Burke visit http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/

Award for Bill Pronzini

I just learned Bill Pronzini, author of the long-running “Nameless” PI series, has been chosen by the Mystery Writers of America to receive their 2008 Grand Master Award. Well deserved!