Cool Canadian Crime: Jack Batten

Today I welcome Canadian Crime Writer Jack Batten. Thanks to mystery author David Cole for arranging this. In 2009 David Cole interviewed 13  Canadian Crime Writers for Mystery Fanfare. Scroll down to see links to those author interviews.

Jack Batten is an author, journalist, reviewer, and radio personality. He has written over thirty books on subjects that include biography, crime fiction, law and court cases, and sports. Jack Batten’s first career was as a lawyer. After four years, he turned to writing. He has been a staff writer at Maclean’s Magazine and the Star Weekly. Batten has written for many magazines, including Chatelaine, Rolling Stone, and Toronto Life. He has written radio plays for the CBC and a jazz column for The Globe and Mail. Nowadays, Jack Batten writes books and reviews crime novels for The Sunday Star. The Man Who Ran Faster Than Everyone is Jack’s most recent book, for which he was nominated for the Norma Fleck Award for nonfiction, the biggest prize in Canadian Children’s literature.

Jack Batten:

For years, I've read crime novels. For almost as many years, I’ve made my living writing magazine articles and nonfiction books. Now and then, back in the late 1980s, I thought idly about putting the two together, the reading and the writing. I would write mystery novels. But I didn’t seriously crank up with this ambition until Eric Wright and Howard Engel began publishing crime novels. I’ve known those two guys for years, and I thought to myself, somewhat arrogantly, if they could write successful crime novels, why couldn’t I?

Of course it turned out to be much harder than I dreamed. But to make it easier, I borrowed freely from my own background when I wrote about my made-up characters. Isn’t that what every novelist does? For my central character, whom I named Crang, I chose as his day job the profession of criminal lawyer. Why criminal lawyer? Because I knew at both first hand and second hand how criminal lawyers go about their business.

I practiced a little criminal law during my four not entirely happy years as a lawyer in Toronto. That was one source for my knowledge about criminal law. Even better, after I left law to become a writer, I wrote a series of nonfiction books about lawyers of all sorts, including the criminal variety. I interviewed dozens of criminal lawyers. These people love to talk about the wild things they get into with their clients. I saved up the stories, and gave many of them to Crang, my own fictional criminal lawyer.

Something else I gave to Crang, to shape him as a character, were my own likes and dislikes. Crang drinks the same beverage as I do (Polish potato vodka) and listens to the same music (jazz covering the period from Lester Young’s emergence in 1935 to Bill Evans’s death in 1980). For almost twenty-five years, I reviewed movies on the CBC’s Toronto morning program, Metro Morning. I didn’t give my movie knowledge to Crang. I gave it to his girlfriend, Annie. She holds down a freelance job in the books as—can you guess?--the movie reviewer for Metro Morning.

That’s another indentifying characteristic in the Crang books: the place is specifically Toronto. I name the names; the names of radio programs, restaurants, neighbourhoods, sports arenas, buildings and just about everything else are the real thing. I didn’t make up any of this stuff (except the plots) because I wanted Toronto to appear in the books as it really is. Novelists often say of the areas where their books are set that the place is intended to be something like a distinct character in the books. That’s how I thought of Toronto in the Crang books.

For plots, I arrived at a kind of pattern that runs through all the books. First comes a more or less minor crime, which I define as not up to the level of murder. In Crang Plays the Ace, the first of the four books in the series, the crime involves a private disposal company that is playing fast and loose with pricing. In the second book, Straight No Chaser, someone swipes a jazz musician’s beloved tenor saxophone. In both instances, Crang is hired to get to the bottom of the trouble. Up to that point in each book, Crang is acting more or less in his capacity as a criminal lawyer. Then someone gets murdered. That’s when Crang begins to perform more like a private eye.

In real life, he would back away from events and allow the cops to solve the murder. But in the books, Crang insists on sticking around until he gets to the bottom of all the crimes he’s encountered, including the killing. His motivation is largely a matter of conscience; he feels it’s part of his job to see the case to its completion. But the other factor that comes into play is Crang’s own bumbling; he’s not always on top of events, and often finds himself roped into dicey circumstances without intending to end up as deep in trouble as he gets. He needs to solve the murder in order to avoid potential grief from either the bad guys or the cops or, worst of all, from both.

Crang’s name comes from my childhood. When I was a kid growing up in the Forest Hill neighbourhood in Toronto, the most mysterious person on the block lived in a big house hidden behind a circular driveway and a large stand of very tall trees. All I knew about this elusive figure was his last name—Crang. I gave the name to my guy, leaving it at just plain Crang because I thought it was distinctive all by itself (in the same mode as the late Robert. B. Parker’s Spenser).

Years after I wrote the Crang books, I met a man who was a friend of the original Mr. Crang in the Forest Hill mansion. He told me that the real Crang’s first name was James, that he made a lot of money as a stockbroker, and that among the books in his library were the four novels in the Crang series. The man who told me all this added that Mr. Crang was a fan of the series. He loved seeing his name attached to a criminal lawyer who acted more like a private eye. He hoped I would write more Crang books.

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Cool Canadian Crime Interviews by David Cole on Mystery Fanfare: 
The group of 13 authors were chosen by David to represent a variety of mystery genres, styles, and historical periods. Some of the authors have won or been shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis award for best mystery novel.
 
Louise Penny
Barbara Fradkin
Mary Jane Maffini
Thomas Rendell Curran
Gail Bowen
Garry Ryan
Anthony Bidulka
R.J. Harlick
Linwood Barclay
Anne Emery
Rick Mofina
Lou Allin
Vicky Delany

Interview with the Interviewer David Cole

Cool Canadian Crime: Lou Allin

Today David Cole continues his Cool Canadian Crime interviews. Today: Lou Allin

Previously, David interviewed Louise Penny, Barbara Fradkin, Mary Jane Maffini, Thomas Rendell Curran, Gail Bowen, Garry Ryan, RJHarlick, Anthony Bidulka, and Rick Mofina. This group of authors were chosen by David to represent a variety of mystery genres, styles, and historical periods. More to come.

Lou Allin sings two anthems: born in Toronto, Canada, but raised in Ohio. Her father followed the film business to Cleveland in 1948. His profession explains her passion for classic films and debt to Ted Turner.

A Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature proved to be more of a hobby than a career with 1975 signaling the end of two decades of university hirings as demographics shifted. Discovering that she retained Canadian citizenship, Lou headed north, farther north than she had believed people live, deep into the Boreal forest of Ontario, where men are men and moose take precautions.

For the past twenty-five years, Lou has taught a variety of communications courses at Cambrian College, basic grammar to report writing to Canlit to public squeaking. She lives on her own meteor crater lake, canoes and snowmobiles, hikes and snowshoes in the Crown land preserves around her home. When the blackflies tap her out, she travels to the Four Corners area in the US and visits another Anasazi ruin.

DC: Go back to the days you spent writing what would become your first published novel. Did you think it was good? Did you think it would be published? In daydreaming moments, did you cast the movie?

LA: Even though I had published poetry and short stories (The National Enquirer paid twenty-five US bucks for four lines about toothpaste), writing a longer work didn't occur to me until I spent a few six-month winters in a cottage on a gigantic lake in Northern Ontario. With no television, reading seemed a good option. At the local library, crime fiction was plentiful, and after finishing a hundred, I said, "I can write as badly as this!"

When Northern Winters are Murder was finished in 1995, it took me five years to find a publisher. For awhile I had a well-meaning English agent (Anne Perry's), who couldn't find a British press who would accept Canadian authors. As for the cast, I was thinking Margot Kidder in her Superman days. By the I had found Toronto's RendezVous Press, I had two more books finished.

DC: How does your training as an English teacher help or hinder your fiction writing?

LA: Contrary to what people believe, English teachers make dubious crime-fiction writers. Everytime they want to break a rule, they have to bend their own fingers. Fragments, for example. Nothing wrong with them. And conversation becomes stilted with pronouns: "It's I" or "It's me" or "This is she" to answer a phone. Also we tend to fall in love with our prose, and that's a fatal flaw. Was it Orwell who said that good writing should never call attention to itself?

DC: Which do you prefer to write: stand-alones or series books?

LA: They both have attractions. With a series, characters become more familiar as the list continues. Avoiding formulas and finding fresh plots becomes the challenge. Beginning a second series is like coming home and finding a new house with a strange family at the dinner table. Everyone seems to know you, but you have no idea who they are.

I've published two standalones, each written before the series saw publication. A Little Learning is a Murderous Thing is an academic mystery. The copper-mining heritage of the Michigan Upper Peninsula reminded me of the Nickel Capital, Sudbury, where my Belle Palmer series is set. Using a university allowed me to revisit the sarcastic banter and petty broils of an English department. Some of the problems at Cambrian College, where I taught, are thinly disguised. Since the book was a hardcover, though, I knew the very colleagues I lampooned would be too cheap to buy it.

The American Southwest became the scene for Man Corn Murders. Thanks to several Four Corners trips, I used what I had learned about the Anasazi and Fremont tribes and their controversial experience with cannibalism. Playing with new characters can be liberating, but the retired aunt dominated the plot until I sprained her ankle and let her niece out to play.

Another influence is the dogs in my life, who channel me to include them in my plots. Freya, a late German shepherd, appears in the first series. Her replacement, Nikon, is in the Michigan book as a puppy. Then comes Bush Poodles are Murder with Friday, my mini. The lively Shogun, a border collie rescue, appears in And on the Surface Die. Oddly enough, the least realistic dog is Tut in Man Corn Murders. I never had a Nova Scotia duck toller, and it shows.

A series is like a partner. The standalone is a one-night date. What a perfect world to enjoy both.

DC: I've always been impressed by the sense of place in your books. Can you tell us a little about how you go about absorbing and recreating Sudbury and now Vancouver Island?

When I first drove to northern Ontario in 1977, I didn't know that I had arrived at the nadir of Sudbury's history as an ecological disaster theme park deconstructed over a century by the mining industry. Forests had been ravaged to rebuild Chicago after the great fire. The remaining wood had been burned to fuel open-pit ore smelting. With no groundcover, soil ran off the hills and acid rain scoured the rocks. Astronauts had come to its blackened moonscape to train (or so the rumour went). At that critical point, the Superstack had just been constructed, supposedly to clean 95% of the air, and a program of regreening had begun. Thousands of people of all ages from business, education, and the community in general began a program to plant over twenty million trees in the next three decades and re-green the hills with "rye on the rocks." So successful was this initiative, that the city received an award from the Earth Summit in Rio. A wasteland the size of New York City had disappeared. Last time I passed on a bus from Ottawa, I didn't recognize the place.

As for Vancouver Island, the primary product was timber and now tourists. From the air, it's apparent that the island has been logged several times, with only the most remote trees surviving from ancient days. Unsatisfied by this destruction, the timber companies want to turn their clearcuts to real estate and reap the profits. Joni Mitchell was right about the tree museum. Old-growth cutting should be banned. Some of these Douglas firs are three hundred feet tall and over a thousand years old.

DC: If you could go back to the beginning and change anything about Belle Palmer, what would you change?

LA: Long-term plans for my character didn't figure. I was trying to write a book, like having a baby, not worrying about where it was going to college and whom it might marry. Before long I realized that to be realistic, the character had to age. Even dicing with seasons, winter, summer, winter, fall, Belle was heading for her later forties. With the kind of action I enjoy plotting, I was asking a lot. That's why five books seemed enough, ending with Memories are Murder. She's in a parallel dimension along with her father and Freya. And her taxes for lakefront will never increase.

Holly Martin in And on the Surface Die is a mere thirty two, an RCMP corporal ready to roll. I'm just getting to know her, and I must accept her youth and lack of experience. Belle has fifteen years on Holly and sees the world differently.

DC: You wash up on a desert island. Which books would you wish to find awaiting you?

LA: Recently I faced a ten-thousand-dollar move across country and strait from Sudbury to Vancouver Island. A dollar a pound. What novels did I take? My first edition Thirty Nine Steps along with three other Buchan novels and all of Nevada Barr. These books I knew I would keep re-reading. I was ruthless, but I flinched at Dickens and brought Great Expectations, the best crime novel of the last millenium along with Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, the Canadian equivalent.

DC: As a writer, what have you not done yet that you'd like a chance to do?

LA: I'd love to write a historical. Victoria appeals to me, late nineteenth century through to World War One. Emily Carr would make a natural sleuth. For a change, I might use the first person. On the other hand, thrillers make big bucks. Woman in jeopardy fleeing with a child with health problems could be a sale. All I need is the location. Pacific Northwest or Ohio, where I grew up?

DC: Do you think Canadian crime writers face different odds from their US or British counterparts?

LA: I'll try not to whine. The biggest problem Canadian crime writers face (except for those with big publishers) is that north of the border we have only ten percent the number of readers down south. Also there is a very unreasonable prejudice by agents and publishers against novels set here, Louise Penny and Giles Blunt aside. They insist that readers would prefer not to read about a Canadian setting. If the voices on dorothyl, an on-line mystery group of over 3000, are to be believed along with the audience of every Canadians panel I've served on, this is an unfortunate myth. Gallic shrug. What's the solution?

DC: Biggest compliment?

LA: Vancouver Island replaces long snowy winters with long rainy winters, so often the outlook is bleak. Then a piece of mail from a reader comes along and revives me. The most touching compliment I received was from a blind lady, who "reads" the books on CD. She said that the settings were so real that she could see the scene. That made me grin from ear to ear.

DC: What advice would you give unpublished authors?

LA: Write like hell. Start early. Start late. But start.

Get an opinion from another author, not a relative or friend. The mystery community is very generous with its mentoring.

If you want to make more than chicken feed, get an agent, a reliable one listed in directories or better yet, recommended by a successful author friend.

If you just want to be published, study the markets and send to the few places which take books over the transom. Poisoned Pen Press. Five Star Gale. Smaller presses in the US and Canada.

Don 't stop writing. If the first one is published, the second better be lined up like the next train in the station.

Cool Canadian Crime: Rick Mofina

Today David Cole continues his Cool Canadian Crime interviews. A special thanks to David Cole for these wonderful interviews with Canadian Crime Writers. Today: Rick Mofina

Previously, David interviewed Louise Penny, Barbara Fradkin, Mary Jane Maffini, Thomas Rendell Curran, Gail Bowen, Garry Ryan, RJ Harlick, and Anthony Bidulka. This group of authors were chosen by David to represent a variety of mystery genres, styles, and historical periods. More to come.

Rick Mofina is a former journalist and an award-winning author of several acclaimed thrillers. His reporting has put him face-to-face with murderers on death row in Montana and Texas. He has covered a horrific serial killing case in California, an armored car heist in Las Vegas, flown over Los Angeles with the LAPD Air Support Division and gone on patrol with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police near the Arctic. He has reported across Canada, the USA and from the Caribbean, Africa and Kuwait’s border with Iraq. His true crime articles have appeared in the New York Times, Marie Claire, Reader’s Digest and Penthouse.

His book, Blood of Others, won the Arthur Ellis Award, and the International Thriller Writers named his book, The Dying Hour, (due for UK, Australia and New Zealand release Sept-Oct 2009) as a finalist for an inaugural Thriller Award. His short story, “Lightning Rider,” won the Arthur Ellis Award and is included in the anthology, Murder in Vegas, Edited by Michael Connelly. Six Seconds, his standalone global thriller, was released in January 2009, and by 2010 will be published in 12 countries and 7 languages. His next book, Vengeance Road, (Released Sept. 2009) has been praised as, "a thriller with no speed limit," by Michael Connelly.

DC: Canadian authors such as you, Louise Penny and Linwood Barclay are becoming a more well known internationally. Why do you think that this is the case?

RM: I think it has everything to do with being good story tellers. On a philosophical level it might be that Canadians tend to be somewhat insular in the winter and spend much of our time in deep thought during the deep freeze. I can hear Canadians laughing at that observation, but maybe there’s some truth to it. Also, a Canadian has yet to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. I’m hoping Alice Munro will be our first, although I’d say Margaret Atwood is the odds on favourite.

DC: I understand that you are due to start a third series, tell us a bit about it and why have you decided to start a new series.

RM:VENGEANCE ROAD concerns the murder of a broken-hearted woman and the chilling disappearance of her friend. Hero cop, Karl Styebeck, is beloved by his community but privately police are uneasy with the answers he gives to protect the life – and the lie – he’s lived.

The case haunts Jack Gannon a gritty, blue-collar reporter whose sister ran away from their family years ago. Gannon risks more than his job to pursue the story behind Styebeck’s dark secret, his link to the women.

DC: Tell us a bit more about yourself?

RM: I grew up in a working-class family east of Toronto, in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. I started writing fiction in grade school and never stopped. I was 15 when I sold my first short story. I was 18 when I hitchhiked to California and wrote a (dreadful still unpublished) novel about the experience. In university I studied Journalism and English Literature, including a course in American Detective Fiction.

I was a cub reporter at The Toronto Star, the same paper where Hemingway worked, before I embarked on a career in journalism that spanned three decades and several newsrooms. My reporting has put me face-to-face with murderers on death row in Montana and Texas. I covered a horrific serial killing case in California, an armoured car heist in Las Vegas, and the murders of police officers in Alberta.

DC: Your novel Six Seconds is your first standalone novel. What made you decide to write a standalone novel?

RM: I was ready for it. After producing at total of 8 books for 2 series, I was ready to take a shot at a standalone with a story that had a global canvass. It seemed the perfect way to get things rolling with MIRA Books my new publisher.

The book took shape; by refining a number of unrelated scenes, dramas and events I had observed during my time as a reporter; such as the heart-wrenching anguish of interviewing a mother whose child had vanished. Then there was the time I was on assignment in Nigeria, not long after the September 11 attacks. I was in the Abuja where I saw a boy in a slum wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Osama bin Laden’s picture and message calling him #1 Hero. On that African trip I also visited Ethiopia where I watched old women, who lived in some of the harshest conditions on earth, weaving fabric on a loom in the slums of Addis Ababa. Prior to that, I was in the Gulf where I talked to British aid workers, and at Kuwait’s boarder with Iraq. I also talked to peacekeepers from Canada concerned about the toll land mines were taking on children who plucked them from the dunes.

What if I took these elements and twisted them into fictional threads that were all connected? What if ordinary people from different parts of the world became ensnared by extraordinary events that could alter history as a clock ticked down on them? Suppose it all came down to six seconds?

DC: You have written five books in your first series featuring Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski based in San Francisco, California. Where did you get the characteristics for the two main characters?

RM: Tom Reed is a compilation. I think he embodies the sins and virtues of every hard-driving new reporter I’ve ever known. He works well with Walt Sydowski. He represents every grizzled detective I’ve ever met, including one or two with the SFPD Homicide Detail and some Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators. And he stands as a foil and father-figure to Reed. I’ve used some of my father’s actual biography in shaping Sydowski, in that my dad is Polish. He was a child when the Nazis invaded Poland.

DC: You only wrote 3 books in your second series featuring Jason Wade, a rookie crime reporter, which is set in Seattle, Washington. Was he by any chance based on you?

RM: I did draw upon my time as a rookie reporter at The Toronto Star. At the Star, I learned the news business by reporting craft working in the suburban bureaus and the metro news desk at One Yonge Street. I covered a range of stories, including a murder trial, and a takedown by the SWAT team looking for an escaped killer. I also did time in the "torture chamber," the cell-like room housing banks of chattering police scanners where you kept your ears pricked for the first hint of a story that could stop the heart of the city. Or break it. But it was in writing The Dying Hour, with rookie Jason Wade, pursuing the first big story of his news career, that I looked back on mine. Through Jason, it was easy to re-live the thrill of landing a scoop and the adrenaline-fuelled days of my summer at The Toronto Star.

DC: Will you go back to either series?

RM: In September 2009, the Jason Wade Series will be launched with release of THE DYING HOUR (Selected finalist by The International Thriller Writers, for a Thriller Award) in the UK by MIRA who will give it a big push. Approximately six months later, the second book EVERY FEAR will be released in the UK and six months after that, the third, A PERFECT GRAVE.

DC: In 2003 Blood of Others, which was is the third book in the Reed and Sydowski series won the Arthur Ellis Award as Best Novel. You have also won another award for your short story Lighting Rider in 2006. Has wining these awards had an effect on your writing?

RM: No. They are terrific validations, but they don’t erase self doubt.


DC: Are you going to continue to write standalone novels are you going to go back to writing a series?

RM: Yes to both.

DC: Was it a long journey in between your work as a journalist and you starting to write crime fiction? If so why the long journey?
RM: I was always writing since I was maybe seven years old. It is an affliction. My first novel was written when I was 18. Others followed. It wasn’t until some 20 years later that I became a published novelist. For me, as a reporter by day, novelist by night, a light had been switched on. Covering human tragedies and dramas up close was overwhelming. But on another level, having a university degree in English Literature, Journalism, and having studied religious responses to death and American Detective Fiction, I felt I was equipped to try to make sense of what I was experiencing.

DC: What has been your most rewarding experience as a journalist and what was your most scary?

RM: There was a little girl who had a terminal brain condition and her dream was to meet a certain music star. When her family’s situation was made known to my news organization, we wrote about it and her dream came true. The family invited me back stage for the meeting, there was not a dry eye there.

The most scary, there were many, let’s see . . One quiet night I was working alone in the newsroom on the cop beat when a call came in for me. It was a convicted murderer who was calling from prison. From the psych ward. I didn’t know him, but I had written about him. That night he confessed to me how he tricked his way to get access to a telephone because he needed to talk to somebody outside of the institution. So, I said, talk. He then went into to every detail, every vile, disgusting detail, of how he abducted two young women then held them hostage in a suburban home. Then he told me exactly how he murdered one but decided to let the other live. He was not remorseful, or even emotional. He just wanted me to have a clear accounting. Then he hung up. My spine rattled for hours after. I had trouble sleeping that night. That’s only one strange experience from the beat.

DC: What was the biggest challenge you faced when you first moved from the world of Journalism to writing Fiction? And did you always intend to write Crime as opposed to literary fiction?

RM: I was writing fiction long before I became a journalist, so the shift was not really a challenge. I saw journalism as a passport to experiences that would strengthen my lifelong pursuit of writing the best fiction I could. When I found myself on the crime desk of the Calgary Herald, I thought, this is it, this is the palate from which I can draw.

DC: Are you passionate about the genre and what do you think of the current trends today?

RM: I think crime fiction is in its golden period. I don’t reflect much on trends. A good story is a good story.

DC: Some do not consider the genre to be "literary" enough and at times it does not get the accolade it deserves. Do you believe that this is the case, and if so have you any views on how people’s views might be changed?

RM: Of course it is true, and I don’t give it much thought. It’s wasted energy to debate it. As mentioned, a good story is a good story. The job of any author is to keep the reader engaged. If the reader is struggling to find the point of the book, or the story between the covers, then the author has failed. And authors have succeeded and failed in all genres. Just take a look at best seller lists around the world, crime fiction stands well.

DC: Which part of the fiction-writing process do you find most gratifying?

RM: Well there’ve been a lot of nice comments, like ‘you kept me up all night,’ and ‘you need to write more books faster’. But one that stands out came from a lovely handwritten letter from a woman in Indiana. Seems she was on vacation in the west and bought my first book, If Angels Fall, in a used book bin for 25 cents. After reading it, she liked it so much, she cut me a personal check for the full cover price, $7.00, which she’d attached to her letter. She told me I’d earned it. I was blown away. I thanked her. And yes, I cashed the check, but I’ve kept a photocopy that I intend to frame some day.

RJ Harlick: Cool Canadian Crime

Today David Cole continues his Cool Canadian Crime interviews. I hope you're finding them as enlightening, as I am. Great questions, wonderful answers and exposure to some top Canadian authors. Today: RJ Harlick.

Previously, David interviewed Louise Penny, Barbara Fradkin, Mary Jane Maffini, Thomas Rendell Curran, Gail Bowen. and Garry Ryan. This group of authors were chosen by David to represent a variety of mystery genres, styles, and historical periods. Some of the authors have won or been shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis award for best mystery novel. More to come. Thanks, David!

RJ Harlick is an escapee from the high tech jungle. After working for over twenty-five years in the computer industry, first for major computer corporations such as IBM and DMR Group, then with her own management consultancy practice.

Originally from Toronto, she now divides time between her home in Ottawa and a log cabin in West Quebec. Her love of the outdoors shows in her Meg Harris mystery series, where the wilderness setting plays almost as large a role as the main character.

She has also published short stories with the latest When the Red, Red Robin… appearing in the Ladies Killing Circle Anthology, Bone Dance. One of her stories, Lady Luck, was a winner of the 2002 Bony Pete award and appears in the Bloody Words Anthology.

DC: You have a wonderful sense of place in your series. I feel as if I am right in that canoe with you rushing down the river. How did you come to select this Quebec location? And what does it mean to you?

RJH: I love the Great Canadian Outdoors. I spend much of my time skiing or hiking the many trails that meander through the forests that surround our West Quebec log cabin or canoeing its many waterways. So when I set out to write the Meg Harris mystery series, it was only natural that the setting be this Quebec wilderness. And what better place for murder, for as we all know, a forest no matter how beautiful can be a dark and dangerous place.

DC: Your series character, Meg Harris, is neither a private detective nor a cop, but a private person with a strong sense of fighting against injustice. Why did you decide to use an amateur sleuth?

RJH: I felt that I would have more leeway in my story telling by using an amateur sleuth. I would not be bound by the protocols of police procedure. Rather Meg Harris has the freedom to solve the crime in a manner that suits her and the particular crime best. Meg doesn’t need a murder to set her into action. Often it involves an issue that is close to Meg’s heart, such as the potential destruction of her northern paradise by a gold mining operation in Death’s Golden Whisper.

DC: Is there any of you in Meg Harris? In fact do any of your novels reflect or are influenced by real people, places or events in your life?

RJH: I suppose there is some of me in Meg. We both share a love for the outdoors. We both come from Toronto. And we both have black standard poodles, in fact Meg’s dog Sergei is the only character based on a real one, my poodle DeMontigny. But Meg is younger and suffered from an abusive marriage. I, on the other hand, have been very happily married for 35 years.

I do however sometimes draw on my own experiences for the story telling. The whitewater canoe trip Meg makes with Eric in The River Runs Orange is based on a canoe trip I did with my husband and I’m afraid Meg’s apprehension of whitewater pretty much reflects my own.

DC: The native theme plays prominently in your series. I believe you are not of aboriginal descent, so am curious to know what prompted you to tell their stories.
RJH: At university one of my favorite professors brought the culture of the Iroquois and other Indian tribes alive for me. So when I realized that West Quebec is the traditional territory of the Algonquin First Nation, I knew that I had to include an Algonquin Reserve. Initially I planned on only one or two Algonquin characters, but I’m afraid I fell in love with them and so did Meg, in fact one in particular. So their stories, the issues facing Algonquins today and their traditional ways have become the focus of the Meg Harris series. In the latest book, Arctic Blue Death, I have broadened this focus to include other indigenous people, in this case the Inuit.

DC: Given that you write about other cultures, research must play a key role in the writing of your books. How do you go about conducting this research?

RJH:Much of my research is gained through the internet and books. But the research I find most valuable and also the most fun is to visit the communities, such as the Kitigan Zibi Algonquin Reserve near Ottawa. For Arctic Blue Death, I spent a week in Canada’s Arctic, on Baffin Island visiting the towns of Iqaluit and Pangnirtung and met a fabulous bunch of people who were more than generous with their time in helping me discover the far north and its people.

DC: How do you construct your novels? Do you follow an outline or go where the characters take you?

I have tried to outline, but I’m afraid before I know it Meg takes me in directions I never planned on and often the story ends up being quite different from the one I initially intended. In fact, in most cases I have no idea whodunit until the very end. So I find myself frantically writing the last chapters, just so I myself can find out whodunit.

DC: I noticed that you spent many years in the high tech industry before becoming a mystery writer. What prompted you to take up writing? And why crime writing?

RJH: One summer, after a significant birthday, I asked myself what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and knew the answer wasn’t continuing to work in high tech. Since I’d always had the idea of writing at the back of my mind, picturing myself in some idyllic location plunking away on my novel, I decided that the time had finally arrived to live out that dream. And because I love reading mysteries it was a no-brainer that I would try my hand at writing a mystery novel. As for the idyllic location, that too has come to pass, for much of my writing occurs at my log cabin deep within the Quebec woods.
DC: Who do you write for? Yourself, your publisher or the reader?

RJH: I suppose I really end up writing for myself and, of course, Meg, for she has many stories she wants told.

DC: Could you tell us about your next book?

Arctic Blue Death is scheduled for release in September. As I mentioned earlier, it takes place in the Canadian Arctic. This book is about Meg and her family. When Meg was a child her father’s plane went missing on a flight over Baffin Island. He was never seen or heard from again. Suddenly thirty-six years later, her mother receives some anonymous letters and curious pictures that suggest he might be alive. Meg flies to Iqaluit to search out the truth no matter how painful and in so doing finds herself embroiled in the world of Inuit art forgery and murder.

In this book I not only delve into Meg’s past and the events that helped shape the person she is today, but I also explore the land of the Inuit and the culture that has helped to sustain them for thousands of years.

DC: I believe your publisher RendezVous Crime publishes one of the largest selections of Canadian mysteries. The books, however, aren’t widely distributed in the U.S. Where can people go to buy your books?

RJH: As much as I wished my books were readily available in the big box bookstores, they aren’t. But they can be obtained through special order. They are also readily available online via Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online US booksellers. And I know several independent mystery books sellers keep them in stock, such as the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, Pa.

More Cool Canadian Crime: Thomas Rendell Curran

Today mystery author David Cole returns with another interview in his Cool Canadian Crime series. Previously, David has interviewed Louise Penny, Barbara Fradkin, and Mary Jane Maffini. These interviews were organized with the assistance of Cheryl Freedman, executive director of Crime Writers of Canada (CWC), and David Cole, a US author and CWC member. The group of 13 authors were chosen by David to represent a variety of mystery genres, styles, and historical periods. Some of the authors have won or been shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis award for best mystery novel.

Thomas Rendell Curran was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1939, and it is no coincidence that his mystery novels are set in the post-war, pre-Confederation Newfoundland of the late 1940’s. His protagonist is Inspector Eric Stride of the Newfoundland Constabulary. After receiving a Ph.D, he worked in various capacities for the Canadian Department of Agriculture, and for one memorable year as a lecturer at Carleton University. Thomas Rendell Curran lives in Ottawa, but his roots remain in Newfoundland. His first novel, Undertow, was shortlisted by the Crime Writers of Canada for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.

DC: You write historical mysteries, and they're set in Newfoundland. But, first, there’s your name. Any relation to Ruth Rendell?

TRC: Probably not. Ruth Rendell's birth name is 'Grasemann', and I think her family is originally from Scandinavia. My middle name, Rendell, comes from my mother’s family, who originally came to Newfoundland from the Devon-Somerset area of England, back in the 1700s.

My surname, at birth, was Curren, but I changed it ten years ago to Curran, to recapture the original spelling. The name is Irish, and the spelling was changed by my paternal grandmother, back in the 1930s, because she was Methodist, and a religious bigot, and didn't want to be thought of as Roman Catholic. ( I am not making this up!) I will add that the religious strife in Newfoundland is not all that dissimilar from that in Northern Ireland.


I settled on 1947 as the date for my book because Newfoundland was not yet a province of Canada. That happened in 1949, a day that for many Newfoundlanders of my generation will always live in infamy. The three books that I have written (two published, and the third looking for a home) are set in the period two years after the end of WWII, and two years prior to Confederation with Canada. At the time, there was a strong American presence in Newfoundland, as a consequence of WWII, as well as a strong British tradition.


DC: As far as I know, Newfoundland has little or no history of crime fiction. You lived there in your early years, and I assume that’s why you decided to set your books there. Does the fact that Newfoundland is a “place apart” inform your writing to any extent?

TRC: Newfoundland doesn’t have any history of crime fiction that I know of. When my first book, came out, a local reviewer thought a murder mystery set in 1947 St. John's wouldn’t work, because it was a small town and in real life everyone would know at once 'whodunit'. He admitted he was wrong about that, and once he got started on the book, he read it through in one sitting.


I lived in St. John's until I was twenty-two, when I left for Toronto and 
graduate studies. Newfoundland’s being "a place apart" does inform my writing. What I tried to capture in my books is the uniqueness of Newfoundland, the place, and the people. Mind you, I am what anyone from outside St. John's – the capital - would call a "townie". The inference being that the "St. John's crowd" has traditionally made its living from the blood, sweat and tears of the people who live and work outside the city, and that all that is good about the island takes place in the hundreds of small towns and villages strung along the coastline - the "outports". There is truth in that. History records that a small number of extremely wealthy St. John's merchants controlled the island's economy and its politics.

Before WWII, most Newfoundlanders did not live in a cash 
economy, and I use this in my first two books. My protagonist, Eric Stride, is very well-to-do, even though he was born in an outport on the south coast, a place called Bay d’Espoir. In French that means "Bay of Hope", but it’s pronounced "Bay Despair". I love the contradiction. Stride was a rum-runner in his youth and made a lot of money during Prohibition, running booze from the French Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, off Newfoundland's south coast, into the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. He lives in a large Victorian-era house in an area in St. John's known as "Millionaires' Row". So he straddles two worlds.


DC: When I read your first book, Undertow, and having no idea of the size 
of the city St. John's, I somehow got stuck with the idea that it was a 
"village" mystery. But you captured the city so well that I felt at home 
in whatever size "village" it was.


TRC: St. John's would have had a population of around 40,000 in 1947. You're right, it was a lot more than a village, although like a lot of cities, it was a collection of villages. I centred my first book on my old neighbourhood, and made much use of the location, the houses and characters that I was familiar with. In a real sense, the book is a memoir of growing up in St. John’s in the 1940s.


DC: Why the late 1940s? And why a historical period, rather than something contemporary?


TRC: I chose 1947 because the strongest memories I have of 
Newfoundland are from that period, the sights and sounds, even the smells of the place. It was such an interesting period. The echoes of the war were still there, the city was still full of American and other troops. In fact, there was a stronger bond between Newfoundland and the United States than there was between Newfoundland and Canada, however strong the mutual British connection. New England, for Newfoundlanders, was "the Boston States", and I still have relatives, Rendells, living in the Boston area.

I was able to draw on the wartime connection, WWII that is. I am a WWII buff, and setting my books in that period, 1947, allowed me to use that part of history to good effect.


The third book is also set in 1947, but much of the narrative goes back to WWI, which was a cataclysmic event for Newfoundland and for Newfoundlanders. That war cost Newfoundland so much in terms of manpower, and treasure, that it crippled the island's economy, and led to the loss of independent government in the early 1930s, when the Great Depression hit, and the island was bankrupt. I’ll add that in Canada, July 1 is Canada Day; but in Newfoundland, the date signifies a national tragedy, the First Day of the 1916 Somme offensive in France. Twenty thousand soldiers of the British Army were killed in a few hours. The Newfoundland Regiment was there, and it took a 90% casualty rate. Including my mother’s brother, who was twenty at the time he died.


Another reason for the time frame is that Stride has to rely on the personal approach, people rather than technology, to solve the crimes. As much as I enjoy modern forensic technology - who isn't captivated by all the CSI stuff, after all? - it's the characters that drive my books, not the widgets.


DC: Where did your protagonist, Eric Stride, come from? Is he based on a 
real character, or entirely a product of your imagination? Do you identify with Stride?


TRC: I do identify with Stride. He isn't based on anyone I have ever known, other than myself. A figment, if you will, of my imagination.

I sometimes think Stride might be part-aboriginal. There was, in fact, a "John Stride" who lived in the Bay d'Espoir area a century or more ago, who was part Micmac Indian. (The term used now is Mi'kmaq.) I even thought at one point that Stride's father would be part Beothuk, the native tribe that inhabited Newfoundland when the Europeans first arrived. The Beothuk became extinct, through a combination of warfare, murder, and - most importantly - through loss of territory, which resulted in starvation and disease. The last known Beothuk died in 1829.


DC: Have you thought of moving away from the Stride series, to a stand- 
alone novel? I know you've visited Cuba with a story 
in mind.


TRC: I did start a novel dealing with Stride's early rum-running days. That narrative is set partly in Cuba. A few years ago, I read I.F. Stone's 1946 book, "Underground To Palestine". One of the 
characters he wrote about was a German Jew named Rudy who had survived the death camps and who was running the British blockade against Jewish immigration into Palestine. Rudy’s early history, though, saw him in Cuba after WWI, where among other activities, he was a rum-runner. So you see the possible connection with Stride.

In my draft, Rudy becomes a character named Kurt Mosel, a veteran of the German Navy from WWI. I was in Havana in 2006, and toured the city, taking hundreds of photos. The thing about Havana is that the city is that with the American embargo, the old city hasn't changed a lot. Those photos are all there on my laptop, carefully labelled, ready for reference.


As to a stand-alone book, one that doesn't involve Stride, I haven't gone in 
that direction, not yet.

DC: A typical reader's question: Who do you write for? Yourself, or do 
you imagine a readership for your books, and then attempt to satisfy 
that readership?


TRC: When I started, I was writing entirely for myself. I never really thought about publication, but eventually I did get published, and Undertow was short-listed for an Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. After that, I started, more consciously, to write for readers, or what I imagined readers would want to read. And frankly that has become a bit of a problem. I think a writer - this writer, anyway - loses something when he/she does that. It can be a hindrance.


DC: Some writers plot out their novels before starting to write, while 
other writers just, well, "write" and "see what happens", allowing the 
characters and the locations to define the narrative. Which group do you 
belong to, and why?


TRC: With my two published books, I simply wrote, and waited to see what would happen. In "Undertow" I started with a woman beaten and drowned in her bath on a rainy Saturday night, and took it from there. With "Rossiter" it was much the same. I started with three teenagers, late one night, rolling a discarded tire down a steep hill in St. John's, where it narrowly misses a policeman walking his beat, and collides with a parked car. Two of the three escape down a laneway, and when the cop follows in pursuit, he finds an old man dead on the steps of the laneway, battered and bloody. I didn't know who the old man was at the beginning, or why he was there, but 350 pages later I did.

With my third book, I more actively plotted the narrative, and ran into problems. But, with the help of a very good editor named Verna Relkoff, who works with my agent, Morty Mint, I got the story on track, largely because I went back to character and location.


DC: Do you have any plans to age your protagonist; in 1947, Stride is 38 
years old. Can you see him aging, say to his fifties or even his sixties? Even to your present age, which is 69?


TRC: I think aging someone to my present age – 69 would be a cruel thing to do. I don't much like being 69. I’d rather be forty. But, with a nod to Bernard Shaw, I will say that being 69 beats hell out of the alternative.

 Seriously, I have thought of moving the Stride narrative along to later 
years, to post-Confederation Newfoundland. The Government that took power in 1949, and stayed in power until 1971, was almost comically corrupt and inept. Joe Smallwood, the Premier, was the perfect man to lead Newfoundland into Confederation, but probably the worst of a mostly bad lot to lead a government. By turns, he became a despot, a bumbling dictator, eventually an embarrassment. Along the way he squandered countless millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars on hare-brained industrial schemes, at the same time neglecting the principal resource that Newfoundland had, the cod fishery, because he thought that Newfoundlanders really didn't want to fish for a living. Never mind that fishing was their life and their heritage. The "best small boatmen in the world", as Churchill called them.

So, the potential is there for a mystery novel or 
two based on the Smallwood years. Perhaps someday…..

Barbara Fradkin: Cool Canadian crime

David Cole, author of the Laura Winslow Series, continues his short interviews with Cool Canadian Crime Writers. Today: Barbara Fradkin. Barbara was the Local Guest of Honor at Bloody Words, the Canadian Mystery Conference last weekend.

Barbara Fradkin is a child psychologist with a fascination for why we turn bad. She recently scaled back her full-time practice as a child psychologist in order to devote more time to her first passion, writing. She has always had an affinity for the dark side, and her two dozen short stories haunt various magazines and anthologies such as the Ladies Killing Circle series. She is a two-time prizewinner in Storyteller Magazine's annual Great Canadian Short Story Contest, as well as a four-time nominee for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story, including "Voices from the Deep" in 2007.

David Cole: You're a clinical child psychologist who practiced full time until recently. How does that experience and outlook affect your writing, especially in that mystery novels always implicitly raise the question of where does evil come from?

Barbara Fradkin: Mysteries are about the dark side of human nature. About what people do when they’re desperate. But they are also about how the struggle to go on and the heroism that arises in the midst of tragedy, sometimes from unexpected corners. They are about relationships, about longing, fear, hope and rage - all emotions a psychologist grapples to understand every day. Writing about them helps me stay sane. Evil is a loaded word, implying something apart from us, a monster in our midst. Evil is knowing that murder is wrong but not caring, maybe even deriving pleasure from it the way a serial killer does. This kind of evil is rare, and of less interest to me than the person who knows murder is wrong, cares about people, but kills anyway. I write about ordinary people who are pushed beyond their limits, who make desperate choices and struggle with the consequences. That’s a far more intricate and troubling psyche than the serial killer. At the end of my books, I want the reader to understand the villain I’ve created, to walk in his shoes and maybe even think ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.

DC: Your central character, Inspector Michael Green, has seen a his share of evil and he must have some conclusions by now as to how evil, or the darkness gets in. How do you develop this in each book?

BF: Green is much more of a psychologist than most real-life police officers probably are. I made his wife a psychiatric nurse so I could sneak psychology in the back door. Green is very attuned to the victim’s story that has led to the murder, because that’s my fascination. What has led up to this murder, and why? Green knows forensic anaylsis and street canvases form the backbone of a murder inquiry, but he personally is after the story. His sleuthing leads him back into the victim’s and suspect’s pasts, their relationships, and to surrounding events, to unpeel the story of why the murder occurred. Usually in the end he, like me, sees evil not so much as something dark coiled inside a person, but as a tragic choice. Like a door one opens at the end of a frantic journey.

DC: You have a strong sense of place in your books. Can you tell us a little about why you chose Ottawa, and how important the city's identity is to your work?

BF: Ottawa is much more than the purveyor of doom-and-gloom on the eleven o’clock news; it’s the perfect microcosm of Canadian society. It’s small, tight-knit rural villages with secrets as old as time. It’s brand new refugees from the Third World and proud new Canadians creating communities and hopes. It’s the two founding cultures mingling more here than anywhere else in the country. It has biker gangs and Rockcliffe mansions, orderly suburbs and chaotic markets, festivals and family parks. It also has spectacular beauty – three large rivers, a canal and a lake to drown victims in, clifftops and bridges to push them off, and wonderful vistas for chases. There is a place for every kind of murder. Yet it is still a community, small enough to feel as one, as intimate as a family when murder strikes.

DC: What would you like to see more of, and less of, in crime writing these days?

BF: I love subtlety and intelligence in stories. I don’t want manufactured suspense and action, I want to sink into the complexity of people’s lives and follow an intelligent, sensitive sleuth as he or she unravels the story of the murder. Serial killers are obviously popular, maybe because they put the threat outside ourselves, but they don’t interest me nearly as much as looking in the mirror.

DC: I know you've just finished another book. How about a sneak preview?

BF: Ironically, my new book is called “This Thing of Darkness”, a phrase referring to the darkness inside ourselves. Not evil, but darkness. A retired psychiatrist is mugged in the Byward Market and the suspects include not only some local gang punks but former patients who may have reason to feel betrayed.

Cool Canadian Crime: Mary Jane Maffini

Today marks the first of several interviews that David Cole has organized with Canadian authors. These interviews were organized with the assistance of Cheryl Freedman, executive director of Crime Writers of Canada (CWC), and David Cole, a US author and CWC member. The group of 13 authors were chosen by David to represent a variety of mystery genres, styles, and historical periods. Some of the authors have won or been shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis award for best mystery novel.

Mystery Readers Journal, a thematic review magazine, had an issue on Cool Canadian Crime a few years ago to which many CWC authors contributed.

Mary Jane Maffini, Master of Ceremonies for Bloody Words Mystery Conference, Ottawa, 2009. Mary Jane Maffini is the author of two Fiona Silk mysteries, the Camilla MacPhee books, the Charlotte Adams mysteries and nearly two dozen short stories. A six-time nominee for the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Awards, she scored two awards for best short story as well as nominations for best first novel with Speak Ill of the Dead and best novel Lament for a Lounge Lizard, the first Fiona Silk book.

DC: Canada doesn't have a long history of crime fiction. What do you think 
has changed in the past fifteen years or so?

MJM: Plenty! It's great to be a Canadian crime writer these days. This is an excellent time to be a reader too. Business is booming. More than sixty Canadian crime books landed on the Arthur Ellis submission list for best novel this year, to say nothing of the other categories. But it hasn't always been this way. For many years, it seemed that the doors of every publishing house were closed to all but a handful of beloved crime and mystery writers. Until recently, our cultural agencies put their muscle into literary fiction and quality non-fiction and there was a tendency to look down one's pointed nose at what was known as 'commercial fiction' -- one cut above shower scum.The genre was considered not only at a lower level, but also seen to be in competition for scarce readership. Snap open a crime novel and a reader would be forever ruined for Atwood and Ondaatje, although they've been known to read mysteries.

A large percentage of intelligent readers adore mysteries. Just ask any librarian! But people can only read books they can find on the shelves of libraries and bookstores or what they spot in reviews. As long as publishers were not bringing out new Canadian mysteries, people continued to get their mystery fix by inhaling books from the USA and the UK. All the while, in Canada, we had our own stories to tell. Gradually, over the last few years, something changed: new presses and regional publishers began to serve up wonderful works of crime fiction. Larger publishers took on new names. Readers began to take notice.

Crime Writers of Canada beat the bushes, connecting with librarians, bookstores and readers to spread the word about our 'home grown homicide'. Cheryl Freedman, our executive director for many years, worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the CWC members. The Canada Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage funded awareness programs that allowed CWC to have a presence at key conferences and to produce publications about Canadian mysteries. In Ottawa, Capital Crime Writers helped many writers to learn the craft and launch their series. Along the way, reviewers began to pay attention. The Globe and Mail now provides coverage of mysteries from Canadian presses large and small. Even though review space is shrinking, papers such as the Ottawa Citizen, the London Free Press, the Hamilton Spectator and the Sherbrooke Record pay close attention to new Canadian mysteries in their review sections.

Meanwhile, libraries across the country sponsor readings and special events with Canadian crime writers and readers are flocking to them. And a key factor for Canadian mysteries has been this warm and welcoming Bloody Words conference, which has done so much to build excitement and to draw people from across Canada and from other countries. Individual Canadian crime writers have also worked hard to promote themselves, their books and those of their colleagues. As a result of these interactions, Canadian writers and books are now routinely mentioned in online discussion groups, which, luckily, know no borders.

Canadians have truly been discovered elsewhere. Louise Penny's international success has been something to celebrate. Peter Robinson and Linwood Barclay also routinely make the bestselling lists in other countries. Our biggest names are shooting stars in other countries. Back home, readers are catching on. I have found that since my own American books have been published, readers in the USA are discovering my two Canadian series as well. Contrary to the belief of the New York publishing houses, American readers love Canadian settings and books. Perhaps that's the next obstacle we'll all overcome.

As a lover of Canadian mysteries and crime fiction, I have been glad to visit our country coast to coast through the works of other talented writers like Thomas R. Curran, R. J. Harlick, Barbara Fradkin, Vicki Delany, Stanley Evans, and Lou Allin to name just a few. We have found our Canadian voice in mystery. Finally, it's spring and our crime fiction is in full bloom.