with Lenny Kleinfeld
We are delighted to welcome novelist Lenny Kleinfeld to Omnimystery News today.
Lenny's second comic crime novel featuring Chicago homicide detectives Mark Bergman and John Dunegan is Some Dead Genius (Niaux-Noir Books; May 2014 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to talk to him about the series.
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Omnimystery News: Some Dead Genius is a sequel to Shooters and Chasers and features the same lead characters. When you wrote the first book did you intend for it to be the first in a series?
Photo provided courtesy of
Lenny Kleinfeld
Lenny Kleinfeld: No, but I was too lazy to think up a new protagonist.
OMN: How would you categorize your books?
LK: Crime fiction that almost nobody's heard of. Yet.
OMN: Give us a summary of Some Dead Genius in a tweet.
LK: It's a hardboiled police procedural murder mystery black comedy about serial killing, art marketing and how Chicago works.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
LK: Some Dead Genius is of course based on my experience as a homicide detective, a serial killer and a humorist. Okay, so only the last one. That's why it's called fiction.
As far as the characters: I sometimes riff on people I know whose personality, looks, profession or lowlife tendencies would fit the character. Or sometimes I use people who I'm pretty sure will take me to dinner if I name a character after them.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
LK: It all starts with dreaming up a sufficiently despicable crime. Once you've got that, you just have to figure out the most entertaining (by which I mean gripping and unexpected and amusing) way to describe that crime, and the responses to it.
I begin by making a broad outline of what kind of things have to happen, and where the book should end up; then I get bored with outlining and start writing.
The cast expands and contracts as the story evolves. Being a novelist is thrilling for someone who's been a playwright and screenwriter because you can add 9.738 billion characters without having to worry about convincing a producer to pay for 9.738 billion actors.
OMN: Where do you usually write?
LK: My writing environment is an office in our house. I'm alone in there for as many years as the book takes. I have no life.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories? Have you come across any particularly exciting topics?
LK: Mostly I just make stuff up. That keeps the research and fact-checking to a manageable minimum. As far as the most exciting thing to research, that'd have to be a tie between three topics: vintage wines, gleeful promiscuity, and what it's like to shoot anyone who annoys you.
OMN: How true are you to the settings of your books?
LK: I give it as realistic a sense of place as possible. Then I savage reality so the location fits whatever the story demands. For instance, in Some Dead Genius the physical description of the Art Institute is a veritable Platonic ideal of accuracy — except for the fact I put one collection in the wrong gallery because that's where the story told me to put it.
What I hope is dead-on naturalistic in both my books is the depiction of Chicago's no-b.s. sensibilities.
OMN: If you could travel anywhere in the world to research a setting, all expenses paid, where would it be?
LK: The parts of Europe with the most spectacular food and scenery. Why? Because of my dedication to my craft.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author? And what might you say to aspiring writers?
LK: Best advice I've received: Make it shorter.
Best advice I can give: Be born with immense talent and a generous trust fund.
OMN: Tell us more about the cover and title of Some Dead Genius.
LK: The cover was designed by the immensely talented Mr. Stewart A. Williams. (You can Google him.)
The title? I was writing a conversation when the words "some dead genius" popped out of a character's mouth. I didn't think anything of it. Just kept writing.
But about fifteen minutes later in the back of my mind I heard those three words shouting, "Hey — wait a minute! Look at us! We are your title!"
It turned out they were right about that.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a crime novelist and thus I am also …".
LK: "… fantasizing about making a movie or cable-TV sale."
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
LK: Anything I could get my hands on.
OMN: What's next for you?
LK: On the advice of my attorney I decline to answer.
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Before he was a novelist, Lenny Kleinfeld was a playwright in Chicago, where he was also a columnist for Chicago magazine. His fiction, articles, humor and reviews have appeared in Playboy, Galaxy, Oui, the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. In 1986 he sold a screenplay and is currently three decades into a business trip to Los Angeles.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at LennyKleinfeld.com or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Some Dead Genius
Lenny Kleinfeld
A Mark Bergman and John Dunegan Mystery
Chicago homicide detectives Mark Bergman and John Dunegan investigate the murder of a well-known painter and uncover a seven-year-long trail of extremely talented corpses.
Their hunt for a slippery serial killer is complicated by interference from their superiors, and the FBI, and a ruthless City Hall fixer, and a brutal Mob boss.
Because this is a story about how Chicago works, and the marketing of fine art.
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