with Charles Salzberg
We are delighted to welcome crime novelist Charles Salzberg to Omnimystery News, courtesy of Partners in Crime Tours, which is coordinating his current book tour. We encourage you to visit all of the participating host sites; you can find his schedule here.
Charles's new book is Devil in the Hole (Five Star; August 2013 hardcover), a literary thriller based on the infamous John List murders.
Today Charles tells us how he went from literary novelist to crime novelist.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Charles Salzberg
I never wanted to write crime fiction or detective novels. I read them, of course, but my interests lay elsewhere. I was always a reader admirer of what was referred to as "literary" fiction. My heroes were writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, J.D. Salinger, Bernard Malamud, which is why I majored in literature in college. I figured it was the easy, lazy-man's way to go. I read anyway, so why not read and get credit for it.
So naturally, the first fiction I wrote was along the lines: literary, psychological, character-driven. I didn't give much attention to plot. I was far more interested in human behavior and interactions.
Unfortunately, no one else seemed to be as interested as I was. I was praised for my work but it was, for the most part, deemed uncommercial. I was tired of writing for one person: me, and so I decided to try something new. A detective novel, I thought, would force me to concentrate heavily on plot. Sure, I could include character, but without a strong narrative no one would keep reading. Readers of crime fiction read mostly to find out what happens, who did what, rather than to gain deep psychological insights.
The first thing I did was read as much crime fiction as I could. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Big Jim Thompson. James M. Cain. And it wasn't long before my admiration for them grew. They weren't hacks. They were literary writers who carefully crafted their work as carefully as any of the writers I admired. Sure, plot was important, but so was character.
So, I embarked on my first detective novel. But it was going to be a little different. I was going to create a version of the classic detective, and a bit of a bait and switch on the classic detective tale. I was going to create a down and out, living on the edge detective, Henry Swann, who would go through the entire book following every clue but, in the end, not solving the crime, which I cleverly planned would be totally random in nature. In effect, Swann would not be looking for a murderer, he would be looking for himself.
Only trouble was, I ran up against one slight problem: editors and agents all agreed I couldn't have an ending like that. The detective needed to actually solve the crime, lest the reader be disappointed.
It took me twenty years, but I finally acquiesced. And when Swann's Last Song was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel (and lost) I was hooked. I wote another Swann novel, Swann Dives In, and a third, Swann's Lake of Despair, will be out next year. Now, I'm working on a fourth, Swann's Way Out.
Along the way, I wrote another crime novel, Devil in the Hole. Originally, fascinated by a true crime of a man who killed his entire family and then disappears, it was meant to be a true crime book. But because he wasn't apprehended, at least at the time, I chose to write it as a novel instead. This time, my literary background kicked in a little more. I would not be writing a whodunit but rather a whydunit. And I would lean heavily on character development rather than plot. Yes, there's a plot, a pretty serious one, but I was more interested in what drives people to murder and how it affects those around them.
And so, I've come full circle as a writer. I've now been able to combine plot and character and, as a result, I think I've improved measurably as a writer … and probably as a reader, as well. But most importantly, I've learned never dismiss any genre writing or writers. The best of them work as hard at their craft and are as good writers as many of those I admired in my youth and beyond.
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Charles Salzberg is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Esquire, New York magazine, Elle, Good Housekeeping, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, GQ and other periodicals. He is the author of over 20 non-fiction books and several novels, including Swann's Last Song, which was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel, and the sequel, Swann Dives In. He also has taught been a Visiting Professor of Magazine at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, the Writer's Voice, and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member.
For more information about the author and his work, please visit his website at CharlesSalzberg.com or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Devil in the Hole
Charles Salzberg
In the ballroom of a sparsely furnished Connecticut mansion, police find a shocking sight: four bodies lined up next to each other, three teenagers and a middle-aged woman, each lying on a blanket, each shot once in the head. In an upstairs bedroom: an elderly woman and the family dog, both of them shot as well. The only person missing is the husband, father, son, and prime suspect, John Hartman, who's got a three-week jump on the police.
Through the eyes of almost two dozen characters, including the neighbor who reports the crime, Hartman's mistress, a dogged state investigator, the family minister, and some of the characters Hartman meets on his escape route, we piece together not only what happened and how these shocking murders affect the community, but how John Hartman evades capture, where he's headed, and maybe even why he committed this gruesome crime in the first place.
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