Steve Hamilton, interviewed by William Kent Krueger
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Over the years, the NorCal East Bay chapter of Mystery Readers International has had many "At Homes"—intimate evenings with favorite mystery writers. We've hosted Anne Perry, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Elizabeth George, Janet LaPierre, Sharan Newman, Laurie King, Rochelle Krich, Carolyn Hart, James Ellroy, Steven Saylor, Janet Evanovich, Eddie Muller, Taffy Cannon, and many others.
These events are held in private homes, and they're similar to Literary Salons. Since so many of our cyber members and friends aren't able to attend these intimate evenings, I thought it would be fun to have a "visiting" author each month interviewed by another "visiting" author. This month we feature Steve Hamilton, interviewed by William Kent Krueger.
 Born and raised in Detroit, Steve Hamilton graduated from the University of Michigan, where he won the prestigious Hopwood Award for fiction. In 2006, he won the Michigan Author Award for his outstanding body of work. His novels have won numerous awards and media acclaim, beginning with the very first in the Alex McKnight series, A Cold Day in Paradise, which won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin's Press Award for Best First Mystery by an Unpublished Writer. Once published, it went on to win the MWA Edgar and the PWA Shamus Awards for Best First Novel, and was short-listed for the Anthony and Barry Awards. His second Alex McKnight novel, Winter of the Wolf Moon, was named one of the year's Notable Books by the New York Times Book Review and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, as did his third and fourth novels, The Hunting Wind and North of Nowhere. Hamilton's most recent book, Night Work, is a departure from the Alex McKnight series, featuring instead a probation officer in upstate New York.
Hamilton currently works for IBM in upstate New York where he lives with his wife Julia and their two children.
—Janet Rudolph |
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William Kent Krueger: You're a fine enough writer that you could pen a cookbook and it would be compelling. I know you always wanted to write, so why settle on mysteries?
Steve Hamilton: I can see this is going to be a real hardball interview, eh? But no, seriously... I always loved mysteries, going back to when I was a kid. The best fiction, any kind of fiction, has this certain irresistible drive to it, don't you think? It's usually a little closer to the surface in crime fiction. I think that's one reason I've always been drawn to it.
Paradise is often anything but. Bad things happen there. A lot. Yet the Upper Peninsula is such a profound character in the books and one of the elements that readers dearly love. Would you talk a little about your own relationship with the area and your decision to set the series there?
I thought it would be a little different to set a hard-boiled crime novel in the most lonely, out-of-the-way place I've ever known, which is Paradise, Michigan. That was really the best place I could think of for Alex McKnight to end up, being such a solitary character. As it turns out, trouble can find you anywhere, even if it has to drive all day just to get to that one blinking light in the center of town.
All right, you like baseball, hockey, and beer (not necessarily in that order). McKnight likes baseball, hockey and beer (maybe in that order). He's a little lonely, sure, but he also has adventure, excitement, and mystery. I know enough to believe that much of the decency in Alex comes out of who you are. But is it possible he also allows you to live vicariously a life you wouldn't mind living?
To tell you the truth, I don't even drink that much beer. I just know that when it is time to drink a beer, you are far better off with something bottled in Canada. But as for the rest of your question... I have no idea where Alex comes from. He is most definitely not me. I guess I do get to live vicariously through him a little bit, especially when he does something stupid and impulsive. Which is quite often.
You've created some of the most intriguingly evil characters in the genre. I know that your own heart is pure, so where does it come from, this ability to tap into the darkness of the human spirit?
Well, you've created some pretty evil characters yourself, and you'd be voted Mr. Congeniality at pretty much any mystery conference. As a fellow supposed "nice guy" myself, I'd never accuse you of being naïve or innocent or anything like that. I'd never presume to think you don't even know what evil looks like. Your "goodness" is a choice you make. Sometimes a hard choice. To imagine a truly evil character, all you have to do is imagine someone not making that choice. He gives in, and then eventually that choice leads to another choice and then another. Each of those choices takes something out of him, until in the end he's missing an essential part of his soul. On the page, that's all I do to create an evil character—I start with somebody who's basically good and then instead of trying to "add" the evilness or to turn him upside-down or anything like that, I just take out that part of himself that he's given away over the years. What's left inside him is that unknowing void we call evil.
Your newest offering, Night Work, isn't a McKnight book. In fact, it's different in many ways, not the least of which is that it's set in and around Kingston, New York, very near where you now make your home. Talk a little, if you're willing, about the other differences and why the choice to abandon—at least for a little while—McKnight and Paradise.
I once heard Dennis Lehane say, "Nobody ever said to an author, 'That twelfth book in your series, it was the best!'" He was speaking generally, of course—I don't necessarily believe it's impossible to make the twelfth book in a series the best. But I can certainly see how you can get sandbagged along the way. More than anything else, you never, ever want to let it get too easy. I figured if I took a break from Alex, especially after what he'd been through in the last book (A Stolen Season), I'd be able to recharge my batteries and come back better than before. Plus, I'd always wanted to write about a probation officer. They do the most amazing job, as basically a half-cop, half-social worker—and I wanted to set something in Ulster County, New York, where I live now. It's a short train ride from New York City, and a long way from Paradise.
Alex isn't gone from the literary landscape forever, right? And what's on tap for you after Night Work?
I will go back to Alex. No doubt about that. I can't imagine ever not wanting to know what's going on with him next—and writing the next book about him is the only way to find out. (I sure as hell don't know where it's going when I start.) But as for what's next... After doing this other book, I sort of had to make a choice. Do I try another one with Joe the probation officer now, or do I go back to Alex now? And the answer that came to me was... Neither Not yet, anyway. Before doing anything else, it somehow came to me that now would be a perfect time to do something completely and utterly insane. So that's what I'm doing. I'm taking everything that's ever worked for me in the past and I'm throwing it all out the window. This next book will be so totally different from anything I've ever done before. It'll either be strange and beautiful or it'll be a complete disaster.
In my humble opinion, you're quite Hemingwayesque in your prose—spare, powerful, understated. Do you agree? How did you become the writer you are?
I don't know about Hemingwayesque. I just try to stay out of the way, if you know what I mean. Let the story tell itself as much as possible.
Hollywood has come knocking at your door. Can you give us the skinny on that experience and whether it's been good?
Well, actually, it wasn't Hollywood knocking on my door at all. It was an independent filmmaker from New York named Nick Childs. He took a short story of mine and made it into "The Shovel," starring David Straitharn (just before he got his Oscar nomination for "Good Night and Good Luck"). It won Best Narrative Short at the Tribeca Film Festival and at a few other places, and based on that success, Nick's now in a position to try a feature-length film. We both worked together on a couple of screenplays based on the first two McKnight novels. We'll see what happens next...
In the lives of many authors, book sales and other circumstances finally allow them to leave behind the 9-5 job and to concentrate on writing full-time, a freedom most writers would kill for. Yet when that opportunity came your way, you made an interesting decision. You chose instead to use the income from your books to free your wife from her workaday world. Would you be willing to talk a little about that decision and its consequences?
Everybody at IBM has been great about everything. That's the bottom line. If I had had to make the hard choice, I would have, but for now I'm going to hang in there. (It's nice having health insurance, you know?) I wouldn't be writing any more if I was "full-time," believe me. And Julia wasn't happy in her job anyway, so this was her chance to devote more time to her competitive fencing.
I know this is a hard one, but we all get asked it, so you must have an answer: Of your books, which is your personal favorite and why?
I guess I have a soft spot for the second book, Winter of the Wolf Moon. After the first book won the Edgar and all that, I had to prove to myself that I could keep doing it. Plus, it has the "ice shack" scene.
Finally, given the choice would rather hit the winning home run for the Tigers in the final World Series game or hit the New York Times bestseller list?
That's easy. World Series home run for the Tigers. You can be a worthless hack and make it on the bestseller list. You win the World Series and people name their kids after you.
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