Frozen Assets, Bates’s first book featuring Officer Gunnhildur “Gunna” Gisladottir–a single mother of three children–won critical acclaim on this side of the Atlantic. Booklist noted of this work: “Fans of Arnaldur Indridason’s Reykjavík mysteries will want to add Bates to their reading lists.” Similarly, Publishers Weekly wrote: “[A] crackling fiction debut … palpable authenticity.”

Quentin, it’s great to have you with us at Scene of the Crime. Could we begin things with a discussion of your connection to Iceland?

The links to Iceland go back a long way. The short version of the story is that I was offered a chance to work in Iceland for a year or so, the idea being to use this as a gap year before going to university. But things rarely work out the way they are planned and the gap year turned into a gap decade, during which I acquired a family and a new profession. We lived in the north and west of Iceland, for part of that time in my wife’s home village where sometimes weeks would go by without hearing English spoken.

We travel to Iceland a couple of times a year and would go more often if finances, work commitments, etc permitted. As it is, I follow what’s happening in Iceland quite closely, especially since the financial crash in 2008 when everything came so badly unstuck. So most days I’ll speak to someone in Iceland. Skype is a godsend.

What things about this place make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

I could write a book about this alone… It’s a very odd place in many ways and the closer you look, the odder it becomes. The Reykjavík area with its suburbs and neighbouring towns are one thing, while the rest of Iceland is another, and there is a huge divide between the two in terms of attitudes, the pace of life and just the scenery.

Iceland is at the edge of the habitable world, with the Arctic circle kissing the north coast. It’s a tough place to live, and in the past it was a great deal tougher. This, coupled with the sparse population, the isolation for centuries, the rapid entry into the 20th century, the distances between settlements and the fact that once past city limits, you can be on your own all contribute to giving Icelanders a unique mindset and a frontier mentality that is fascinating to explore. These are people who are very much products of their landscape, while city dwellers in Reykjavík are still in a process of adjustment.

Did you consciously set out to use your location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

Absolutely. I could have written a story or two set in the dull market town down the road from where I live, but I doubt it would have interested many readers. So the location is highly important and I set out place it prominently as a character in its own right.

There are plenty of Reykjavík murder mysteries already, so to begin with I purposely set out to use the countryside as a setting rather than Reykjavík. That’s not entirely the way things worked out, as the story in Frozen Out (Frozen Assets in the U.S.) developed in its own organic way, which took the story to Reykjavík.

I don’t know how other writers work, but I do visualise scenes and incidents as taking place in particular places, so hopefully the sense of place filters in. What also presents a few problems is that it’s a very small country – 300,000 people and the world has (reputedly) more speakers of Klingon than Icelandic – so setting something in a small town is fraught with pitfalls. I do use a few real places outside the Reykjavík area, but invented a loosely disguised fictional town for some of the action. Hvalvík could be any fishing village in Iceland, but I placed it on the south coast about 40 minutes drive from Reykjavík – which is realistic enough as the property boom prompted a lot of people to move out of the city, turning some of the rural places  into commuter towns.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

I pay a lot of attention to the location. Much of the books is envisaged in this or that location, although I’m not certain how much of that makes the page. But it’s definitely important to me as background to visualising scenes.

The third Gunna story, which I’m close to finishing the first draft of now, is set entirely outside the Reykjavík area and takes place in the regional town and the surrounding countryside Gunna comes from. In this one the backdrop of high mountains, deep fjords and isolated farms is a vital component of visualising the story.

How does Officer Gunnhildur interact with her surroundings? Is she a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster?

Gunna comes from the western fjords of Iceland – and area of small villages, remote farms, high mountains and travel is difficult in the winter when there is snow on the ground. These days she lives in the (fictional) village of Hvalvík, half an hour or so from Reykjavík, where she now works. She has had a chequered past, used to live in Reykjavík, and cordially dislikes the place.

Her outlook largely mirrors my own feelings about Reykjavík. Until the boom years, it was a pleasant, rather sleepy place that had a character all of its own. These days everything has changed, and the change has been very rapid. Now there’s glass and concrete everywhere. It’s a very different place with a very distinct atmosphere of change about it, but with a consciousness that there are plenty more changes yet to be made before it settles into its new character.

Has there been any local reaction to your works? What do local (ie those who actually live in your novels’ setting) reviewers think, for example. If published in a non English-speaking country, are your books in translation in that country, and if so, what reaction have they gotten from reviewers?

So far, no. I know that Frozen Out has been sold in Iceland, as I’ve seen it in shops and half of the libraries in the country have copies, but so far not a single review or mention in Iceland apart from an interview in a business magazine.

I’m not quite sure why this is, and I may be skating on thin ice here, but there is an element of a cultural Mafia in Iceland and one needs to have the right introductions. Although I’ve had personal messages from people there who have read the book and spoke highly of it, in general Icelanders are suspicious of outsiders who write about their country in a less than entirely complimentary way that doesn’t quite tally with the warts-and-all approach that I prefer. I’m deeply fond of Iceland and my links with it go very deep, but that doesn’t mean I’m in any way blind to the darker side of what goes on there.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

I have, but nothing serious (yet). In Frozen Out I managed to place parking meters in the town of Hafnarfjördur – where parking is free, while Reykjavík does have parking meters.

Of the Gunnhildur novels, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

This is from Frozen Out/ Frozen Assets. Grandakaffi is very real, the small docker’s café by the harbour in Reykjavík. For some reason, I find anything that involves food to be highly evocative of place.

“She drove slowly past the slipways and the remnants of the old town, where rusting houses clad in corrugated iron were gradually being replaced with steel and glass, and past Kaffivagninn. She thought of stopping there, but since office types had discovered the old dockers’ eaterie on the quay, it had gone upmarket and lost some of its attraction.

“Further along and beyond walking distance from the office district, she pulled up on a patch of waste ground opposite Grandakaffi among a cluster of taxis, pickup trucks and a bus at the end of its route. For a moment she admired the trawlers in their blue-and-white Grandi livery at the quayside and listened as a group of men in paint-spattered overalls engaged in a friendly argument in some eastern European language as they made their way from a half-painted ship over the waste ground towards the café. They fell silent as they noticed her uniform, nudging each other into silence as they  passed her. Gunna fell into step behind the men, trying not to look as if she was following them to the café, but she could sense their discomfort.

“In the sunshine half a dozen men sat over large meals and newspapers around rickety tables and Gunna scanned the faces quickly, catching the eye of an elderly man with a pinched face that looked as if a square meal coming his way was a rarity. He nodded imperceptibly as she passed, and carried on with his bowl of soup.

“The group of workmen were at the counter, bargaining with a tiny oriental woman in broken English. As Gunna approached, the woman looked past them in relief and the men fell silent. Gunna wondered what had brought her to Iceland.

“‘What’re y’looking for?’ The woman asked in perfect Icelandic that marked her down as a second generation immigrant.”

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

My favourite writer at the moment tends to be the one at the top of the to-be-read pile. Right now I’m reading Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano stories, set in Sicily. On the non-fiction side I also have Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s excellent trio of travelogues tracing the movements of the 13th century Moroccan traveller Ibn-Batuttah.

Old favourites that I grew up with are Maugham, Hardy and Kipling. Then there was George Orwell, Saki, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, all of which I notice is old-fashioned stuff.

As for crime, I’ll happily devour most things. I can always go back to Simenon and to Sjöwall & Wahlöö, and do so. I enjoy Nordic crime, especially Arnaldur Indridason, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Karin Alvtegen, Henning Mankell and Matti Joensuu, but tend to steer clear of them while I’m writing the first draft of a book, hence reading more Camilleri, Jean-Claude Izzo, Leonardo Sciascia, Yasmina Khadra. The trouble is, the more you read, the more good stuff pops up that demands to be explored.

I’m not really qualified to say much about influences. I’m certain that most of those listed up there are influences, although I try to keep other people’s voices from seeping in. On the other hand, I did set out to produce work that would appeal to a certain readership while also consciously avoiding being a mimic. I noticed when reading crime fiction translated into English that often the evocation of place is thin or even missing, presumably because those writers write primarily for a domestic readership that doesn’t require that level of description.

Going back to the Master, Simenon manages to convey atmosphere and place effortlessly. There are only a few strokes of the brush and you’re transported to Paris, or Liége, le Le Havre, or Groningen. It’s a lesson that less can often be more. There’s often no need to labour the point, but on the other hand Iceland isn’t Paris and maybe more scene-setting is needed for a less familiar location. There’s something of a fine line to tread here. It’s important to set the scene, but without sounding like a travel guide.

One thing in particular that I wanted to do differently was to get away from the idea of gloomy Nordic crime fiction. Much Nordic crime fiction is extremely dark, but I like an injection of humour here and there. Dark and funny can go together, as long as the humour is suitably dark as well.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

That’s an awkward one. I’m quite happy at the moment shuttling between England and Iceland, although I’d like to be spending more time in Iceland. Having two languages, cultures and homes can be confusing and hard work at times, but it also broadens the mind wonderfully.

What’s next for Gunna?

In Cold Comfort, just published in the U.S. and due for publication in the UK, Germany and Holland this year, Gunna has to deal with an escaped convict on a spree of settling old scores, plus the murder of a TV fitness guru, all of which happens in and around the Reykjavík area. The next book that I’m at work on now is set entirely in the Westfjords, which were my own stamping ground for a few years. It opens with Gunna on leave to attend a family funeral, but she’s called on to investigate the discovery of some old bones on a remote farm nearby. Things escalate when the manager of a local factory is found frozen solid in his own cold store. The scary part is that Gunna’s mother plays a part in this one.

I have plans and outlines for further books, some that will have to be set in or around Reykjavík, and others that will have the focus elsewhere.

Quentin, thanks much again for talking with us at Scene of the Crime. Good luck with your series.

For more information on Quentin Bates, visit his homepage.

I turned twenty-one on Easter Sunday in Rome, squeezed amongst  the throngs of people gathered in  St. Peter’s Square as the pope gave us all a plenary indulgence. I am not Catholic or Christian or even particularly religious, but the fact that the slim speck of white far away on a balcony over the enormous piazza erased all previous sin in my life was emblematic of that annus mirabilis in my life.

It was 1969 and I was on one of those junior-year-abroad junkets so popular with American college students–not in Rome (an Easter vacation trip), but in stodgy old Vienna. Other kids my

Palais Kinsky

age were off killing and being killed in Southeast Asia; I had a bad back and a high lottery number; 4F and a lucky winner. My introduction to the world of belt and suspenders. I went to Vienna planning to become a lawyer; I left knowing I would be a writer. My introduction to the world of mutability.

Our school in Vienna was located in a gloomy looking city palace belonging to the Kinsky clan. The aged princess occupied the top floors; we boisterous Americans could occasionally see her wizened, disapproving face peering out behind lace curtains. Affiliated with the University of Vienna, we had a wonderful and often bizarre assortment of professors to school us in European history (he played an applause track on a tape recorder at the beginning of every lecture), art appreciation (she wore clothes reminiscent of each art period she lectured on), drama (his thin albino shins dotted with the occasional black hair always showed at the bottoms of his too-short trousers), Russian literature (he spoke haltingly, spraying spittle on the front row as he shuffled about the creaking parquet, his conjoined hands doing finger push-ups), and philosophy. You may notice I make no mincing thumbnail sketch of the last-named. He was my favorite. British, but not overbearingly so. Challenging, but never dismissive of the “callow” American students as others were. He taught Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Another part of my annus mirabilis.

That was the first class I ever had that made me think, made me analyze and read closely. That professor threw down the gauntlet of  ”the world is all that is the case,” and expected us not only to pick it up but also decipher it. I have been entranced with words–word sober rather than word drunk–ever since my gestalt at Wittgenstein’s plainspoken dictum: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

Over the years I have read as much as I could about Wittgenstein, the ur intellectual outsider, the child genius who built a model of a functioning sewing machine out of wood as a ten year-old; the lonely brainiac forged in the fires of World War I, the eccentric who gave his wealth away, who whiled away afternoons at Cambridge watching cowboy films; the autodidact who wowed Keynes and Moore. I read Wittgenstein’s notebooks, Janik and Toulmin’s Wittgenstein’s Vienna, Ray Monk’s bio, and Waugh’s House of Wittgenstein, among many others. I have loved tracing how Wittgenstein’s life intertwines with others in the fin de siècle world: attending the Linz Realschule with the young Adolf Hitler, coming of age in the city of Freud, Mahler, Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Schiele, Klimt, Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Viktor Adler, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and so many other seminal artists and thinkers of the twentieth century–many of whom were guests in his parents’ drawing room.  Six degrees of separation finds its crossroads in Vienna 1900.

I can’t say that it was a class on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that made me become a writer, no more than it was simply the Pope giving me a free pass on the rest of the my life. It was that and  much more: being introduced to a world so greatly at variance with the one I had grown up in, one that could make heroes of artists and intellectuals rather than sports stars. And it was Vienna itself. My first big city. Much of my published writing has dealt with Vienna 1900 directly or indirectly, from my guides Vienna Inside-Out and ViennaWalks, my narrative history, Hitler in Vienna, 1907-1913; my early thriller, Time of the Wolf, and now with my historical series, Viennese Mysteries, all set in Vienna in the years just prior to World War I.

With the third in that series, The Silence, just out in the U.S., I have finally come back to my early passion for Wittgenstein. The title, of course, is a tip of the hat to his famous maxim. My novels are set when Wittgenstein was  still a

Part of Wittgenstein clan; Ludwig front right

boy–thus in The Silence we are introduced to an adolescent Wittgenstein, the boy in long pants with a thirst for engineering. Though not central to the story, the young Wittgenstein informs the proceedings and ultimately influences my protagonist, the lawyer/investigator Karl Werthen, to take extraordinary action.

The House of Wittgenstein, on the other hand, very much informs the tale, for it is the fact that the family’s oldest son, Hans, has gone missing, that initiates action in the novel. The Wittgenstein’s were fabulously wealthy and influential. The patriarch, Karl Wittgenstein, was often referred to as the Andrew Carnegie of Europe. Werthen muses about the family as he goes to a meeting to discuss the disappearance of Hans Wittgenstein with the father:

“Werthen was well aware of the importance of Karl Wittgenstein. Born in 1847, the industrialist was, like Werthen, just two generations removed from the land and from his Jewish roots. His father had run a successful dry goods business and converted to Protestantism. Instead of following the family route into business, Karl Wittgenstein became a draughtsman and an engineer and went to work for the Teplitz steel-rolling mill in Bohemia. By a mixture of hard work, overweening ambition, and a willingness to take huge risks, Wittgenstein built an empire from this humble beginning. Five years after starting work as a lowly draughtsman for the Teplitz Rolling Mill, Wittgenstein was running that business. He sold train rails to the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, making a huge war profit for his company, and staged another coup by gaining sole European rights to a revolutionary steel manufacturing process. With these rights in hand, he leveraged other businesses, acquiring the Bohemian Mining Company and then the Prague Iron Company, creating a vertical monopoly in steel production in the Czech regions of the Austrian Empire. He repeated this success in the German regions with purchase of the Alpine Mining Company, and at the same time established the first rail cartel in Austria. It seemed to many that Wittgenstein had a finger in every economic pie in the empire, with seats on the boards of powerful corporations, including the Creditanstalt, the most powerful bank in the monarchy.

Karl Wittgenstein, pater familias

“Then, in 1898, amid a firestorm of criticism over his shoddy treatment of workers, his monopolistic practices, and his attempts to artificially drive up the price of his steel stocks, Wittgenstein stepped down from the directorship. He became a patron of the arts, but knowledgeable observers knew that he still had a strong hand in the day-to-day operations of his far-flung industrial empire. His home at Alleegasse 16 had become one of the foremost salons in Vienna. Johannes Brahms premiered his late clarinet quintets here; Klimt and other members of the Secession first presented their work to the public in the immense rooms of that city palace. Through marriage, the Wittgensteins were connected with lawyers, doctors, industrialists, and ministers. Herr Wittgenstein could obtain a visa, an introduction to a general, medical advice, or an inside tip on investments with a simple telephone call.”

The eight Wittgenstein children who survived childhood were all accomplished musicians; Ludwig and his brother Paul, the famous pianist who lost his right hand in World War I, were the youngest of the lot. A group of six older siblings led less than charmed lives, with three of the brothers committing suicide.

We meet the family as things are beginning to unravel; one brother has hopped it to New York while another contemplates a similar move in order to avoid being swallowed whole by the family business. A peculiarly Viennese story, then, as even young Ludwig, or Luki as he is called, is introduced to harsh realities of life. Not to give too much away, but it is Luki who, word-conscious even as a child (he did not start talking until the age four), provides Werthen with a valuable clue and who, as the investigation begins to wane, pleads for justice and persuades the investigator to carry on despite all odds.

In a sense, Luki performs for Werthen what Pope Paul VI did for me–absolved me of past sins (mostly of omission) and set me on a new path.

A pope’s inadvertent blessing and a philosophy class taken more by accident than design: these are part of the story behind the story of The Silence.

The first Charles du Lac installment, The Rhetoric of Death, appeared in 2010. With rehearsals for a ballet in full swing, a killer is on the loose at the Jesuit college on the rue St. Jacques, and it is up to Charles to stop the killings. “Rock’s superb historical debut opens with 28-year-old Charles du Luc arriving in 1686 Paris to serve as a teacher in a Jesuit school…With an experienced writer’s ease, Rock incorporates details of the political issues of the day into a suspenseful story line,” declared Publishers Weekly in a starred review. Booklist offered a further starred review of this debut, noting that “Rock’s novel boasts a style all its own and is sure to satisfy those eager for a great new historical mystery.”

The second in the series, The Eloquence of Blood, came out this fall, and once again the critics offered high praise. In another starred review, Publishers Weekly observed: ” Set in Paris in 1686 during the Christmas season, Rock’s second novel featuring Charles du Luc is every bit the equal of her impressive historical thriller debut, The Rhetoric of Death….Readers will hope this energetic and engrossing sequel will be the first of many.” Similarly, Library Journal, in a starred review, found the novel “hard to put down,” and went on to comment: ” [Rock's] historical accuracy resonates here, transporting you to 1686 Paris. Her intriguing plot and protagonists with whom readers are becoming good friends make this a necessary read for all who enjoy historical mysteries.”

Judith, it’s a pleasure to have you with us on Scene of the Crime. Let’s start out the interrogation with a bit of information about your connection to Paris.

I fell in love with Paris while doing my doctoral research there. I didn’t live there all the time, but made repeated trips.  Now I go back to France as often as I can afford to–and love it more every time!  The last time, I walked around with a 17^th century map, while my husband pulled me out of the path of 21^st century traffic.

What things about Paris make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

It would take volumes to say why Paris is unique…  I set my novels there because they’re centered around the 17^th century Jesuit college called Louis le Grand. It’s still there, on the Left Bank’s rue St. Jacques, and is now a very prestigious state lycée (high school).  My doctoral research was on the Jesuits’ use of dance in their 17^th and 18^th century college theatres, with a lot of attention to Louis le Grand, the flagship of the French Jesuit colleges.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction?

I pay very close attention to the setting–both the place and the time. I want to take readers as far as I can into life as it was lived in Paris–and other parts of France–in the 1680′s.  My fictional central character, Charles du Luc, is a half-fledged Jesuit from the southern Langue d’oc region.  He grew up outside Nîmes, did his Jesuit novitiate in Avignon, taught at the Jesuit school in Carpentras, and then was sent north to Paris–for reasons which unfold in the series’ first book, The Rhetoric of Death.  In Paris, at Louis le Grand, he teaches Latin and Greek rhetoric, the art of communication.  Because the Jesuits–Christian humanists–considered physicality part of communication, their students learned to dance. Rhetoric teachers like Charles produced the student ballets, and his life in the college and work with the ballets are the “home base” of the stories.  I try to make the mysteries he gets involved in, both in the college and in the city beyond, as true to their time and place as possible. In addition to the original doctoral research, I do continual further research. For example, I have a big late 17^th century map of Paris in my office, and every time Charles leaves the college, I follow him on the map.  Even if little or none of the route is described, I need to know where he goes and need to see the street life in my head as I write. Maybe because I was for many years a dancer, the physicality of a story matters enormously to me, both as writer and reader. Everything, after all, takes place in time and space…

How does your protagonist, Charles du Luc, respond to this setting?

How does Charles feel about Paris? He loves it–except during the gray cold winter, when he hates it! Charles being a newcomer to Paris is a great literary device. In his time, someone from the south of France was practically a foreigner in the north–even speaking a different language, the Langue d’oc. So Charles discovers Paris as a “foreigner,” and his English speaking readers–also foreigners–look over his shoulder and discover Paris with him, Paris as it was in the late 17^th century. In each book, with each mystery, he gets to know a different part of the city, and a different social group and situation. Including what’s underneath the city, in The Eloquence of Blood! I think–I hope–that this helps keep his mystery solving interesting and varied, since the people and the setting shape and change what he has to do to find out the truth of each situation.  Part of the third book, A Plague of Lies, which I just finished, takes place at Versailles. That setting gave me at least two interesting problems to solve:  how to set a novel there without putting Louis XIV center stage;  and figuring out how Charles could lay bare what’s really going on there, while moving within the tightly controlled “dance” of the court.   

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

I’m hoping for a French publisher–there has been serious interest, but nothing definite yet.  (I think the current euro situation isn’t helping.) But I’ve been invited to speak about the novels at The American Library in Paris on May 9, 2012. The American Library, on the Left Bank, isn’t far from Louis le Grand, and this invitation gives me a wonderful sense of “coming full circle,” since the seed of the novels was planted in Paris.  (I’ve also learned that the legendary bookstore Shakespeare and Company,  just down the hill toward the river from Louis le Grand, is carrying the Charles books!)   

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

Mistakes…well, so far, I’ve been saved from the worst ones by my patient and exacting specialist consultants who are early readers for the manuscripts.  For example, the second book includes a smuggling scam involving chocolate, and originally I coated the stuff being smuggled with chocolate, not knowing that you couldn’t coat anything with chocolate in the 17^th century…

Do you have a favorite scene that focuses on the place in your Charles du Luc books? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

From The Rhetoric of Death, ch. 1: 

“Charles leaned at the open window, gazing hungrily at Paris spread before him. Not that he could see much more than the faint outline of roofs, it being the dark of the moon and the sky thick with clouds still spitting rain after a wet day.

“A discordant concert of bells began, from the Carmelites, the Visitandines, the Jacobins, the abbeys of St.-Germain-des-Pres and St.-Geneviève, from Cluny, Port Royal, and all the other religious houses on and around St.-Genieviève’s hill…and as the bells ceased, Charles shut his eyes and mumured Matins’ opening psalm. But the approaching rumble of iron-shod wheels over cobbles scattered his silent words like blown leaves and he leaned farther out the window to see what was happening. The smell preceding the dung cart up the hill enlightened him…

“Below him, the small light of hand lanterns swung and flickered as a night watch squad passed, and a few candles burned in windows where Latin quarter scholars–the lucky ones who could afford candles–sat late over their books…

“…[Charles] felt as though the goddess Fortuna had picked  him up by the scruff of the neck and set him down in ancient Athens or Rome. As though, at any moment, the revered ancients whose works he taught would gather under his window…Romans had lived where the College of Louis le Grand stood, just as they had in the countryside where he’d grown up. From the time he could walk, he’d climbed on their ruined statues and played around the broken fluted column leaning at one corner of his father’s olive grove… The Romans’ ghostly presence had fired his imagination and helped to make him a teacher of Latin rhetoric. So strong was his sudden sense of their presence here on the hill they’d called Lutetia, that he stood up straight and smoothed his cassock. But it was the reeking cart and its pair of muttering attendants that stood below him in the street, not Cicero and the rest. Laughing at his foolishness, he reached to pull the window shut, but before he closed it, he kissed his hand to sleeping Paris.”

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

Always a hard question!  Barbara Pym, Reginald Hill, Ellis Peters, Margaret Frazer, Jane Austen, William Trevor, Margaret Atwood , Lawrence Shames.

I enjoy the sense of place–and time– in the work of many of these writers.  I read some of their books repeatedly, partly  because I like to spend time with the characters they create, but also because I want to be in the place and time created/evoked/offered.  I should also add Tolkien to this list.  I discovered The Hobbit and then the Ring trilogy when I was in college, and read them over and over–mostly, I think, because the world Tolkien conjured is so complete and congruent.  I could walk into the place itself as well as into the narrative. And I always love it when a book (especially a mystery) has a map at the beginning! As my second book, The Eloquence of Blood, does.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

I’d live in France and divide my time between Paris and the south.  Though on some days I yearn to live in the English countryside, perhaps around Oxford.  And on others in some quiet corner of the Caribbean…

What’s next for Charles?

The third Charles book, A Plague of Lies, will be out in the fall of 2012. I’m putting together the plot for the fourth book–the Dominican monastery nearly across the street from Louis le Grand, and the Jesuit novice house a little way to the west, outside the old city walls, may be part of  Charles’s next mystery and new terrain.

Thanks much Judith for stopping by Scene of the Crime. Good luck with your excellent series.

For more information on Judith Rock, visit her homepage.

In a starred review of Mr. Kill, Publishers Weekly raved: “Excellent…A vivid view of Asia, from the Demilitarized Zone to the Yellow Sea, and an insightful look at the era lift this fine entry.” Booklist, in its starred review, noted: “This series is a must not only for procedural fans but also for anyone who enjoys crime fiction set in distinctive international locales.” Library Journal joined in the chorus of praise for this seventh installment, observing: “Twenty years on, this series remains remarkably sharp and fresh. Featuring a fast pace, nuanced characters, respect for the locals and their culture (Sueño speaks Korean), and plenty of twists to keep readers guessing, this is military crime fiction at its best.”

Martin, welcome to Scene of the Crime. Reviewers have highly commended your rendering of South Korea in the Bascom and Sueño novels. Perhaps we could begin by talking about your connection to Korea.

The United State Army sent me to Korea in 1968 when I was still a teenager.  The country stunned me:  acres of green rice paddies between cloud-capped hills, skinny boys riding the backs of oxen, straw-hatted women squatting in wet fields, straw-thatched farm houses looking like something out of the Brothers Grimm.  Even the produce was different:  the pears round and fat, the watermelons small, the cabbage huge and rectangular.  It soon became apparent to me that Korea was more than just a foreign country.  It was a culture that had spent the better part of four thousand years developing independently from the culture in which I had been born.

Most of my fellow soldiers reacted with scorn.  They hated the fact that they had to walk everywhere, that they couldn’t go cruising on a Saturday night; that they couldn’t buy fast food, or even a decent chili dog.  They hated kimchee breath.

I loved it.  I took U.S.O. tours to hidden grottos and lakes and ancient temples.  I reveled in the fact that Korean TV only allowed commercials between programs, not during them.  And I enjoyed the safety of the streets, where gun control was total and what a policeman said was law.

But mostly I fell in love with the people, at how grateful they were that we had saved them from the Communists during the Korean War, at how polite they were and how tolerant of our foreign ways.

Did you consciously set out to use Korea as a “character” in your books?

When I left after that first year, I couldn’t get Korea out of my mind.  Later, I studied Chinese, then some Japanese, and finally re-enlisted in the Army and returned to the place that kept calling me.  This time, I threw myself into the study of the history and the culture and the language.  Over a twenty year military career, I spent ten of those years in Korea–and I would have spent more if the Army hadn’t forced me, during my last four years on active duty–to return to the States as a recruiter.  It was there, while living in San Francisco, that I began to write.

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

I read Raymond Chandler. I read Ross MacDonald. I read Lawrence Block. And in the dark of the morning, while fog horns moaned, only blocks from the streets where Dashiell Hammett once roamed, I began to write.

I wrote of what I loved.  I wrote of Korea.  Of how it had been in those days, of the beauty, of the sadness.  I continue to write.

Martin, many thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on Korea and the spirit of place in fiction.

Lescroart, who came to writing after a career in music, regularly finds his fast-paced fiction on the bestseller lists. He has been dubbed “one of the best thriller writers to come down the pike” by USA Today, and “reliably excellent” by Publishers Weekly. His third novel featuring Wyatt Hunt, The Hunter, appears in January, 2012.

John, it’s great to finally have you on Scene of the Crime. Let’s start things off with a discussion of your own crime scene. What’s your connection to San Francisco?

San Francisco has always been a special place for me.  Growing up on the San Francisco peninsula, I always looked to the city as the location where everything important seemed to happen.  I attended college there for a year, and have lived there on four separate occasions, always driven out by the weather.  In spite of that, my wife and I are fortunate to have a pied-a-terre now on Russian Hill, and we try to get down there at least a few times each month.

What things about San Francisco make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

While every place is unique, San Francisco has its own distinctive character that lends itself to fiction.  Its topography is truly romantic, its politics Byzantine (to say nothing of just plain bizarre), its food miraculous.  Additionally, it is large enough to give the novels a kind of universal spin, and small enough to feel personal.

 Did you consciously set out to use your location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

I definitely set out use San Francisco as a kind of “character” in my books.  I use real locations, stores, restaurants, sports teams, landmarks.  And the aforementioned weather, of course – the fog,  the wind, the occasional nice day.  All these help create a real personality that infuses the books with a solid sense of place that impacts my characters and their feelings and world views on almost every page.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

Right from the beginning, I knew that I would be using San Francisco as my default setting.  My scenes almost always appear to me as occurring in specific locations, and I try to take full advantage of the real feelings of these places in terms of visual touchstones, smells, landmarks, etc.

How do Hardy and Hunt interact with their surroundings?

All of my main characters are long-term residents of San Francisco, and most of them display a love-hate relationship with the city that I think is typical of real residents.  The location and the zeitgeist of San Francisco seems to create a certain kind of background noise, if you will – there are hassles with parking, with the homeless, with the political structure, and on the other hand there is the sublime physical beauty, the great food, the stunningly perfect days that seem to descend directly from heaven, all the more remarkable for their unexpectedness. 

What’s the local reaction been like to your novels?

My books generally have been very well received in San Francisco.  I am flattered to note that my picture hangs in a few of the city’s restaurants where I have named those restaurants in my books.  That’s truly a real thrill. 

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

I have, of course, made some goofs.  In The Suspect, for example, I named an intersection of two North Beach streets that in fact run parallel and do not intersect.  Also, I sometimes refer to certain thoroughfares incorrectly:  Lincoln Way is not Lincoln Avenue, Geary Blvd. is definitely not Geary Street, and there is no such thing as the Oakland Bay Bridge (it is simply the Bay Bridge) – believe me, these peccadilloes do not go unnoticed.  Whenever this happens, my readers – especially the locals – bombard me with indignant emails excoriating my ignorance and blindness!!!  On the other hand, sometimes I create a fictional place in the city because I need it for plot purposes . . . and I still hear from readers who “correct” me on these decisions as well.  I love writing them back saying, “Hey, it’s fiction.”  But messing with the reality that is San Francisco is a tricky business, and a writer like me only approaches the undertaking at great peril.

 Do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

I couldn’t do better than to quote from the opening scenes in the very first of the Dismas Hardy novels, Dead Irish: 

“A shroud of gray enveloped the westernmost twenty blocks of San Francisco and extended from the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge down to Daly City.  The fog covered an area of perhaps no more than five square miles, but within it gusting winds of thirty miles per hour were not uncommon and the temperature was twenty degrees lower than in the rest of the city.  Nowhere was visibility greater than half a block, and squalls of bone-chilling drizzle drifted like malevolent ghosts across the drear landscape.”

And by the way, the “drear” above is not a typo – it’s a referent to a word from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” my favorite poem:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

Among my favorite writers and Ernest Hemingway, Lawrence Durrell, and Patrick O’Brian, and all of them used location to great advantage.  After reading these giants, I came to believe that location is integral to storytelling, and I’ve stuck with that belief forever.

 What’s next for Hardy or Hunt?

In The Hunter (to be published on January 3, 2012), a mysterious texter sets Wyatt Hunt on a journey to discover how his mother died.  Set in San Francisco, Indianapolis, and Mexico, the book covers a lot of territory – physical and emotional.

Thanks much, John, for taking the time to visit with us at Scene of the Crime.

For more information on John Lescroart, visit his homepage.

To celebrate the pub date, I am posting the first chapter here. Enjoy!

Chapter One

A lone figure stood high up in the central spire of Vienna’s Rathaus. At the observation window above the enormous illuminated clock, he surveyed the city he ruled, feeling the juddering thud of each minute’s passing in the mechanism beneath his feet.

For a time, he watched the docile Viennese plod about their business this brutally cold afternoon of the last day of January. The skies were clear, brittle blue, and afforded a view to the northwest of the Vienna Woods, flecked in snow.

Slowly, menacingly, he allowed his eyes to move to the far left middle distance. There stood the twin towers of the Votivkirche, which he regarded as an open insult to him. This was the devotional church to the emperor, Franz Josef, built to commemorate the occasion when the young emperor survived an assassin’s knife.

Doktor Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna for three years, and something of a king himself, scowled as he gazed at the emperor’s church. He and Franz Josef were old enemies; thrice had the Habsburg denied

Mayor Karl Lueger

Lueger his place as mayor, even after the Viennese had resoundingly elected him. Three times Franz Josef had felt it his solemn duty to save the Viennese from themselves.

The old fool had the effrontery to call me a demagogue, Lueger thought. Me, a man of the people who simply takes to heart the plight of the little man and the true Christian in this mongrelized empire.

He made an audible snort.

‘Is everything all right, sir?’

Kulowski, Lueger’s beefy bodyguard, looked expectantly up at him from the bottom of the last flight of stairs.

Lueger shook his head dismissively at the man.

Of course everything is not all right, you dolt, he wanted to say. As long as there is a Habsburg left in Vienna, things will never be right.

Soon, however, very soon, things would be set right.

As he was accustomed to doing, he threw open the observation window on the tower, breathing in the crisp air. He could smell the scent of black pine and the sweetness of snow. Beneath, on the Ringstrasse, a solitary D streetcar, pulled by a dappled mare, was making its way to Schottentor. A new motorcar suddenly passed it, causing the horse a sudden fright, but the skilled tram driver soon brought the animal under control.

Another tradition: Lueger gathered a gob of saliva in his mouth and spat in the direction of the Votivkirche.

It would fall to earth as a snowflake, he thought.

Then he closed the observation window.

The world was changing. Here we are in the first year of the twentieth century. Motorcars will be the future of transport. The city is growing at an astounding rate; soon it will finger off into the hills of the sacrosanct Vienna Woods.

Now, as the day began to dim, electric streetlights along the Ringstrasse flickered on. Away with gas lighting and horse-drawn equipages – all remnants of an old and tired world. Even the holy shrine of the Vienna Woods could not stop the steady thrum of progress.

Lueger, at fifty-five, felt himself very much a part of the new century, not the old one. He did not wax nostalgic over that which might be lost with modernization, unlike the stodgy emperor who refused even to ride in a motorcar and intensely disliked the telephone.

‘Your five o’clock appointment,’ Kulowski called up the stairs to him.

Damn the man, Lueger thought. Still, it would not do to the keep the ward boss of the Third District waiting too long.

‘Coming,’ he said.

Vienna Rathaus, or City Hall

He no longer carried himself with the same bounce as of old. Mentally he felt younger than ever, and his face was still as handsome as when he was a young man. Thanks to his good looks, he had mobilized the Gretl brigade, or the Amazons, as people called his ardent female supporters. Though these women did not have the vote, they idolized him and in turn enlisted their husbands and male relatives. They still remained his most ardent followers, dubbing him ‘Handsome Karl’.

Physically, however, Lueger was beginning to suffer the outward signs of diabetes and nephritis. His illness was still a closely guarded secret, but he doubted it could remain so for long. Climbing the three hundred and thirty-one steps up to the top of the Rathaus was no longer an easy task for him; as a result, he restricted these visits to once weekly. It was worth the effort: to view the world beneath him like this, his personal fiefdom.

And before long he would not have to share it with his old nemesis, Franz Josef.

He was smiling so broadly when he reached Kulowski, that the bodyguard wondered what the mayor was up to. It was the grin of an imp, of a man scheming and damned pleased with himself.

‘Nice view?’ Kulowski said.

But Lueger ignored him, gripping the handrail as he continued descending.

Going down was worse than going up; perhaps he would have an electric lift installed? After all, he could put the expense down to advocating tourism. Not that he would allow the hoi polloi to ride his elevator, but it would make a fine excuse for funding from the City Council.

Lueger took his mind off the descent by going over the points he would need to cover in his upcoming meeting. His backers in the Third District were getting restless. And by ‘backers’ he did not mean the Marias and Josephs with their tiny corner Lebensmittel or Bäckerei who thought they were the mayor’s special cause. No. His real backers were the landlords who had put millions into his campaigns and were still waiting for some results for their money.

They had reached the bottom of the spire stairs, contiguous with the upper floor of offices, when they heard the shot. Not a military man, still Lueger knew for a certainty it was a gunshot.

So did his bodyguard. Kulowski attempted to grab him from behind and throw him to the parquet of the corridor to protect him.

Lueger resisted, however. ‘Leave it, for Jesus’ sake,’ he bellowed. ‘They’re not firing at me.’

Kulowski looked at the mayor quizzically for a moment before he realized the shot was, in fact, nowhere near them. Footsteps were pounding along the corridors, followed by excited voices. They followed the throng of people to the southwest corner office.

They could now see that the crush of city workers and other councilmen had gathered at Councilman Reinhold Steinwitz’s door; a hush such as at a funeral had fallen over them.

Lueger looked to the crowd of people and then beyond; Kulowski followed his gaze. When the bodyguard looked back to the mayor, Lueger wore a shrewd grin on his face.

The architect Otto Wagner, who had reached the office first and halted at the entrance, aghast at what he saw, now pushed his way back through the crowd. There was the harsh smell of cordite in the air, and Oberbaurat Wagner, despite being nattily attired in his frock coat, was not looking very professorial, Lueger thought. His eyes were wide and there was a nervous urgency about the man that the mayor, who had employed him on municipal projects from regulating the Danube Canal to building the metropolitan railway, the Stadtbahn, had never before seen.

Finally Wagner saw Lueger and rushed to his side.

‘Mayor. It’s your friend, Councilman Steinwitz. I think he’s killed himself.’

The Silence is now available in hardcover at the usual suspects: Amazon and Barnes and Noble among others.

Kindle edition is out in April.

Here is the blue-eyed refugee from the Biafran War, Ubhani, the man in the tower of the title, seeking asylum in the Austrian capital; the Hungarian patriot who pays his own special tribute to the 1956 uprising; the nondescript state police agent commissioned to watch foreigners in neutral Austria to ensure they did not ruffle the feathers of the Soviets; the editor of a prestigious Viennese publishing house none too eager to do business with a brash young Ami.

Travel back to Czechoslovakia just months after the Soviet’s brutal suppression of Prague Spring in’68; to guard towers along the waist-deep waters of a lake on the Austro-Hungarian border; to a cozy armchair at the British Council Library; to an all-purpose Tabak Trafik: to life in a Cretan cave; or to the final voyage of the SS France.

An added bonus is the short story, “Body Blows,” which introduces Sam Kramer, the foreign correspondent protagonist from my new series of novels set in Europe following the fall of the Wall.

Cover art is by a talented graphic artist, Peter Ratcliffe.

And hey, at $4.99, what’s not to like?

Enjoy!

Barrington, a former NYPD homicide detective who was forced out of the force because he too often butted heads with his superiors. Barrington turns to the legal profession, and over the course of twenty-two books becomes the suave hero whose clients involve him in all sorts of Manhattan mayhem. Bookreporter  noted of Woods’ suave protagonist: “Stone is classy, humorous, sarcastic, well dressed, well educated, rich, handsome, single and well heeled. It is a given that Stone will get into deep trouble without asking for it.” When in New York, Stone likes hanging out at Elaine’s, but his duties take him farther afield, as well, from the Caribbean to Key West to Southern Californian and points in between.

Stuart, it’s great to have you with us at Scene of the Crime. We like to focus on setting here, and Stone Barrington seems to get around quite a lot. Could you describe your connection to some of these locales?

I live in three places: Key West (my domicile and legal residence) in the Winter and early spring; Mt. Desert Island, Maine, in the summer and New York City in the spring and autumn, when I’m not touring.  Because I’m always looking for 70 degrees farenheit.

What things about these places make them unique and good physical settings in your books?

Key West is artsy and full of people who are there because they have nowhere else to go. (At least, they won’t freeze in winter.)  Maine is there when I have to get my characters out of the stifling city and into a pleasant summer.  And there’s only one New York.

Did you consciously set out to use your location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

The former, I think.  Stories work better in some locales than in others.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction?

That grows naturally out of the story; I don’t have to think about it.

How do your protagonists interact with their surroundings?

Stone Barrington and Dino Bacchetti are native New Yorkers and foreigners anywhere else, though they do their best to blend in.  For instance, when in Key West, they switch from bourbon and scotch to margaritas.

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

Places where I’ve lived, like Georgia and Vero Beach seem to regard me as a native son, not least because I am a native son of Georgia.  I use foreign locales because I know them, and without regard to whether I’m published there, though I do get a dozen or fifteen translations per book.  I haven’t seen many reviews from abroad, but I did receive something called Le Grand Prix de Literature Policiere from, ostensibly, the French Academy, though I have my doubts.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have). 

I was once asked to speak at a writers conference, and the topic was to be “Literature in the Landscape,” which I took to mean the importance of knowing the place you’re writing about.  I had to confess that the book I was then promoting, Heat, was set in Idaho, a place I had never been.  I meant to go to Idaho, really I did, but somehow I just never got there.  Still, in all the years since, I’ve never had a comment or an email from anyone who said that I got any detail of the state wrong.  I take this to mean that either Idaho is exactly as I imagined it, or possibly, that no one in Idaho reads my books.

Of all your novels, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place?

In Heat, I had my character flee from the bad guys through a tunnel system and arrive in a house built into the side of the mountain, high above the ground.  He finds himself locked in, so he runs at a picture window, crashes through it, lands in a treetop and tumbles through the branches into the snow blow.  I thought that was a unique escape.

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

Mark Twain, who influenced me in nearly every possible way.

What’s next for Stone Barrington?

In D.C. Dead, out in December, Stone and Dino are called to Washington by the president and his wife, who want an old homicide reinvestigated, since they believe that the presumed killer, a friend of theirs, was innocent.

Stuart, many thanks for joining us at Scene of the Crime, and good luck with number 22 in the series!

For more information on Stuart Woods, visit his author homepage.

The Thurlos have been married for almost forty years and have been writing novels together for nearly that long, in a variety of genres including romance, young adult, and mystery. They have three ongoing mystery series, the Sister Agatha series, starring a cloistered nun, the Lee Nez series, featuring a Navajo vampire who teams up with a female FBI agent to fight crimes that have elements of the supernatural, and the works featuring Ella Clah.

Booklist had special praise for the Ella Clah series, noting: “The Thurlos are such deft hands at setting and mood that it’s hard not to say “ahhhh” when sinking under the spell of one of their mysteries. One of the special pleasures of the Ella Clah novels is the way the authors develop their overall theme of ‘walking in beauty’ (being able to find the balance between positive and negative forces in life).”

Aimee and David, it’s a real pleasure to have you both on Scene of the Crime. Let’s start things off with a discussion of your connection to the southwest.

David’s family moved to the community of Shiprock at the age of three, and he grew up on the Navajo Nation. He was part of a small Anglo minority among the Diné, the Navajo people, and quickly adapted to life on the `Rez.  His father worked for the Bureau of Mines at the Navajo Helium Plant, where helium was extracted from natural gas, and his family lived near the Kerr-McGee uranium mill. Later, David’s home and his entire neighborhood were found to be hotbeds of radioactive contamination and were subsequently demolished and buried. When we decided to begin a mystery series, David’s home and background were key in making the decision to create our Ella Clah character and her family.  We visit the Navajo Nation frequently – our latest visit included a presentation at David’s former high school in Shiprock.

What things about the Four Corners make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

The Four Corners, with the stark desert, high mesas, forested river valleys, and the mountains to the west and north, provide an endless variety of backgrounds and locales for our stories. Combine that with the Traditional and Modern cultures existing side by side inside and outside the Rez, and the possibilities are endless. A thirty minute drive can take our readers from the most isolated log hogan (a structure that can be a home for traditional Navajos, or a place where Navajo ceremonies take place) in the midst of a piñon forest, to a dry arroyo with nary a blade of grass in sight. The blue skies and endless vistas are essential backdrops in nearly every scene. There are also large towns in and around the Navajo Nation for those who find more of a connection to an urban setting.   

Did you consciously set out to use your location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

Our stories are character driven, but the Navajo Nation is very much a part of The People and their culture. Including the background seamlessly into our novels became a natural process.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction?

Many of our scenes are actual places that David is familiar with, and the natural flow of any action scenes are a result of those specific locales and the motivation of our characters. We are careful to get factual details correct, such as old bridges, public buildings, and directions, but we make sure that the story won’t lead readers to an actual private address. Naturally we also take literary license and add, remove, or extend distances for the purposes of the scenes. In Black Thunder, for instance, we shifted the tribal fence just a little to the east near the Hogback for dramatic purposes. This is a locale drawn directly from David’s childhood experiences. He often visited friends who lived within a stone’s throw of that natural formation.

How does Ellah Clah interact with her surroundings?

Ella Clah is Navajo, a former FBI agent who is now head of a tribal police unit. She grew up near Shiprock, and was raised in a conflicted household that made her childhood difficult. Her Navajo father was a Modernist – a fundamentalist preacher – and her mother a Traditionalist Navajo who follows the old tribal ways.  Not knowing which direction to turn, Ella got married right out of high school and moved away. She was soon widowed and ended up joining the FBI. When her father was murdered, Ella returned to the tribe, an outsider among her own people. (See Blackening Song)

Over the years, Ella has been walking the line between Traditionalists and Modernist Navajos in a continual struggle to find her own path.

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

They love our books. A few months ago we were invited to speak at David’s old high school in Shiprock. It was really fun for both of us and the kids were just terrific. Then that evening we spoke to a huge crowd of adults at the Navajo Nation’s performing arts center. We couldn’t have asked for a better reception. In September, on the strength of our books featuring Navajos, we were also asked to judge the Miss Indian New Mexico pageant.

We’ve also had our Ella Clah appear in German translations. One book that contained a short story using our protagonist won an award that made us laugh. It was the most stolen book at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

David knows the locale too well to really mess up, but I have a problem with action scenes. One time I had “exploding IUDs”. I meant IED, but it looked right to me, so I never caught the mistake. Then David saw it, and started laughing. My action scenes do that to him.

Of the Ella Clah novels, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

In Black Thunder, the very well-known Hogback (a tall, steep, geologic feature visible for many miles) is adjacent to the `scene of the crime’. This is important because this formation runs along the boundary between tribal and county land, hence the jurisdictional conflict woven into the story between the various law enforcement agencies.

When several murder victims are unearthed, some on county land, others just yards away on the `Rez, Special Investigator Ella Clah has to cooperate not only with the FBI, but also with the sheriff’s department. Nearby are the ruins of an old trading post, (which, by the way, is actually there). In the story, however, it’s occupied by a homeless Navajo family that may have accidentally witnessed one or more of the murders.  

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

Tony Hillerman is at the top of the list of our favorite authors. This past weekend we found a private note he’d written us congratulating us on the Ella Clah novels. The man was truly a class act. He was there for us at a time when we needed all the encouragement we could get. I still remember one of my first phone conversations with him before we’d started our Ella Clah series. Tony told me to send him the manuscript we’d just finished. I was embarrassed thinking that he thought it was a mystery when in actuality it was romantic suspense. I hemmed and hawed, then finally told him, “Tony, it’s a romance.” There was a pause at the other end before he answered, “So? What do you think? I read only Hemingway?”   

What’s next for Ella Clah?

When Ella is called to the scene of a crime she discovers the victim is someone from her past. We’re also playing with the possibility of giving her a new full time boyfriend, but we’re still trying to decide on who that should be. 

Aimee and David, thanks so much for taking the time to visit with us at Scene of the Crime.

For more information on the works of Aimee and David Thurlo, visit their home page.

Booth has turned a novel a year in the series since its inception; the eleventh Cooper & Fry novel, The Devil’s Edge, came out this year in England. All the critically acclaimed Cooper & Fry books are set in England’s Peak District.

Stephen, it’s a great pleasure to have you with us at Scene of the Crime. One of my early books, Bike and Hike, has a number of hikes in the Peak District–it’s got to be one of my favourite parts of England. To start things of, could you describe your connection to Derbyshire and the Peak District?

I write about the Derbyshire Peak District, but I don’t live in Derbyshire and never have. I live in the next county, so I can get wherever I want to in the Peak District within an hour or two. From a writer’s point of view, this helps me – as every time I go there, I see it afresh and notice things that local residents don’t. If you live in a place, you do tend to take it for granted, I think.

I fell in love with the Peak District when I was working on a local newspaper just outside the national park boundary. One of my leisure activities has always been walking in the hills, and this is a paradise for walkers. When I came to start writing the Cooper & Fry series, it was a perfect setting for me – not least because no one else seemed to have used it!

What things about the Peak District make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

The Peak District appealed to me on several different levels. I was born in a similar area a little further north, and I know the people can be a little, shall we say, quirky! They’re stubborn and tend to say no more than is absolutely necessary (it’s called being ‘close mouthed’), which makes them interesting to write about. This a very beautiful location, but I like to turn over the picturesque surface and look for the darkness lurking underneath. The Peak District has a huge range of wonderfully atmospheric locations for me to use within a small area, plus thousands of years of history – much of it visible right there in the landscape, from stone circles to abandoned lead mines and more recent industrial history. It’s the second most visited national park in the world, with millions of visitors resulting from the fact that it isn’t really remote, but has big cities right on the doorstep, so that everyone treats it as their back yard. One of the subjects I explore in the books is the uneasy relationship between city and countryside. Of course, there are inherent conflicts between all those visitors and the people who live and work in the Peak District. Plus, it creates special problems for the local police, since it’s very easy to commit your murder in one of the cities and drive out to the Peak District to dispose of the body!

 Did you consciously set out to use this location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

It came out of the real, human characters. I don’t think you can entirely separate location from character anyway, since we’re all shaped by where we live and where we come from. I wanted one of my central characters, Ben Cooper, to be the ‘local boy’ who’s grown up in the Peak District and belongs to the area totally, while the other, Diane Fry, is an outsider from the city. Because of their conflicting attitudes to the area, I think it was inevitable the setting would take on a greater importance in its own right. It can be quite a frightening place anyway, particularly for people unfamilair with the hills and the unpredictable weather. The Peak District has been responsible for many deaths!

How do you incorporate location in your fiction?

For me, each book has to be set in a very specific location. It helps me to work out who the characters are who would live there. I go to a lot of trouble to find just the right places. For Dying to Sin I wanted a derelict farmhouse as a setting for a story about an old farming family who’d come to a tragic end. I drove around for a long time until I spotted just the right farmhouse in the distance. It was only when I climbed over the gate to take a closer look that I discovered how much mud there was in the abandoned farmyard. That became the first line in the book: “The mud was everywhere at Pity Wood Farm.” I also have to be very specific about the time of year, as an area like the Peak District looks totally different from one season to the next, and there are completely different things going on.

How does your protagonists interact with their surroundings? Are they natives, blow-ins, reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitants, cynical about it, a boosters?

Ben Cooper, the ‘local boy’, loves the Peak District and is very much apart of it. He’s from a farming family, and has deep physical roots in the area, down to being steeped in its myths and folklore. He sees the place very differently from Diane Fry, who is a city girl born and bred. She’s horrified by many rural practices and considers the Peak District a primitive wasteland. Fry is a very reluctant resident, and can’t wait to escape!

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

The Cooper & Fry series is very popular in the Peak District. Even the tourist authority loves them, though I’ve increased the murder rate through the roof’! I was asked to suggest some locations for their ‘Peak Experience’ visitor guides, thereby creating a sort of Cooper & Fry trail. I write about a real police force, Derbyshire Constabulary – and they like the books, too. The police have been very helpful to me from the beginning. Reviewers seem to like trying to work out the identity of my fictional town, Edendale, which doesn’t exist but bears a lot of similarities to real places.

The books have been translated into l5 languages, including Russian and Japanese. So now the majority of my readers are people who’ve never heard of the Peak District until they pick up one of my books. I love the fact that I’m introducing the area to countriesaround the world! Last summer, a party of Norwegian readers came over to visit some of the locations used in the books, and they made a point of staying in the same pub where the convicted murderer stayed while he was on the run One Last Breath. For some of these readers, the landscape is difficult to picture, so I’m consciously doing a bit more description for them than I need to for my UK readers. The reviews I’ve read some to be intrigued by the location too.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

In one book, I had Ben Cooper driving eastwards over the Snake Pass and arriving in a town called Glossop. Anybody familiar with the area knows this is impossible, as he would have to be driving west. The reviewer for the local daily paper spotted it straightaway. But instead of writing “the author made a mistake here”, he wrote: “This is obviously a very clever ploy by the author to disguise the real location of Edendale”. So my mysteriousness worked in my favour! Early on, I began to contradict myself about which streets certain buildings are on, so I had to draw myself a map of my fictional town. Otherwise I would have got myself into all kinds of trouble by the l2th book!

Of the Copper & Fry novels, do you have a favourite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

My novel Blind to the Bones is set around Withens, the last surviving village in an area cleared of human habitation for the building of reservoirs. I think the sense of isolation and impending disaster is quite strong in this book. Here’s the moment when Ben Cooper first sets eyes on Withens:

“Cooper could hardly see the village itself. It seemed to be lying in the bottom of a hollow, slipped casually into a narrow cleft in the moors. The valley was so narrow that it looked as though the two facing slopes were only waiting for the right moment to slide back together and crush the village completely, and all its inhabitants with it.”

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

Some of my favourite crime writers are Ruth Rendell, Peter Robinson, Reginald Hill, John Harvey and Michael Connelly.

Some of these do use location well, but in fact, my original inspiration for my use of place was more a feeling of what wasn’t happening in crime fiction at the time. Back in the 90s, it seemed that any mystery set in the countryside or a small town would automatically be a ‘cosy’, whereas all the darker, grittier stuff was set in the mean streets of the big cities. I set out to write something on the darker side, but set in a rural location. Then I realised this is a tradition going back a long way – to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, with a story like The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is very dark, but with a wild rural setting. In one story, Holmes tells Dr Watson: “The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” There seems to be a mysterious connection between my first novel Black Dog and Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles- which is, of course, about a large black dog.

What’s next for your protagonist?

I’ve just finished the l2th book in the Cooper & Fry series, which features a very distinctive location, a famous landmark pub on the moors called the Light House. The two central characters have both come to critical turning points in their lives. I can’t say a lot without giving too much away, but nothing is going to be the same again. The dynamics between the protagonists have been changing over the last few books, with some new characters arriving, and now others who are about to leave the stage!

Stephen, thanks again for taking the time to talk with us at Scene of the Crime.

For more information on Stephen Booth, visit his author homepage.