A Conversation with Novelist Martin Hill

We are delighted to welcome novelist Martin Hill to Omnimystery News today.

Martin's third mystery is Never Kill a Friend (Ransom Note Press; June 2015 hardcover and ebook formats), a gripping tale of one woman's fight against a system that is destroying an innocent man.

We recently had the opportunity to catch up with Martin to talk more about the book.

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Omnimystery News: Tell us a little more about the lead character and setting of Never Kill a Friend.

Photo provided courtesy of
Martin Hill

Martin Hill: Washington Metro Police Detective Shelley Krieg is a powerful African-American woman, a force of nature. When creating my lead character, two influences came into play. First, there was location, Washington, DC. From my years living in Washington, I found the city to be potently exotic and prosaic. In its contradictions, DC is a reflection of the conflicted soul of America. Alongside the halls of money and power there exists a counterpoint of vibrant urban life. Washington is a Northern-Southern city, inner city and international, rich and poor, politically invested and politically dispossessed. It represents both the idealized and sordid truths of our nation's history.

I wanted to tell a tale set in DC, the city, not the landmark. To me, the national politics of Washington is noise, Sousa on a kazoo. The richness of urban DC is jazz, Ellington shining in a tuxedo like he was born to wear one. A large part of the non-political DC is African-American and I knew that, for the story I wanted to tell, my protagonist also needed to be.

I chose to create Shelley as a strong character because I had grown emotionally exhausted by the recent parade of broken protagonists. Alright: they do represent many of the best characters being written, but I was intrigued by exploring the duality of strength with vulnerability. At six-foot four, Shelley towers over her friends but, as she puts it, "It's a big world out there and I'm sure as hell not bulletproof." The violence of the story, the moral ambiguity of her choices affect her. I placed her in a plot where she is divided between doing her job and doing what is right. Ultimately, because of her upbringing, doing what right wins out.

Because of her height, Shelley has always felt she was an outsider. This resonated with me. I am half-Hispanic. Raised to think of myself as Latino, I don't look the part and my last name is Hill. In Puerto Rico, the mother's maiden name is appended to the surname, so here I am Martin Hill Ortiz. I suppose with me not being female or African-American, it may seem like hubris to create a character who is both. Paradoxically, it feels right to me: it would be dishonest to tell this story any other way.

I am looking forward to see Shelley grow. I am at work on the sequel. I imagine her story as a trilogy. The destination where she is heading has a finality to it.

OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.

MH: My five favorite classic mysteries:

1. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1901);
2. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (1963);
3. The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins (1970);
4. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1930); and
5. The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton (1908).

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Martin Hill's family comes from Santa Fe, New Mexico, their presence going back to the days when it was called New Spain. He has often said his family never moved to America, America moved to his family. He was raised there and on the road, a dozen cities before adulthood. He received his undergraduate degree at New Mexico State and his doctorate at George Washington University. He currently lives in Ponce, Puerto Rico with his wife and child where he teaches medicine at the Ponce Health Sciences University.

For more information about the author, please visit his website at MartinHillOrtiz.com and his author page on Goodreads.

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Never Kill a Friend by Martin Hill

A Mystery

Publisher: Ransom Note Press

Detective Shelley Krieg has lived her entire life in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Washington, DC. At six-foot-four, she's the giantess of DC Metro a tough cop who's paid her dues on her long path to becoming a detective in the city she loves. She can get a confession out of anyone. And she always plays by the rules.

But when Rafael Hooks is arrested for killing his brother, all the rules change. Shelley finds herself not only fighting the system but also questioning her relationships with her co-workers, her closest friends, and even her partner, Kent Bellotti.

It seems like an open-and-shut case: Raffi confesses to murdering his drug-dealing brother. But nothing is as it seems. Each time Shelley finds evidence to exonerate Raffi, new evidence arises to confirm his guilt. Fingerprints tying Raffi to multiple murders in both DC and neighboring Maryland suddenly appear out of thin air. And on his first night in lock-up, Raffi is nearly killed.

With no allies left at DC Metro, Shelley turns to her estranged friend Yasmira Tamer for help. Together Shelley and Mira uncover a web of deceit and corruption that links a Russian assassin, a high-paid DC call girl, and an urban Robin Hood who renovates his crack houses before donating them to the poor.

— Never Kill a Friend by Martin Hill