with Steven Axelrod
We are delighted to welcome author Steven Axelrod to Omnimystery News today.
Steven's second mystery to feature Henry Kennis, Nantucket island’s poetry-writing police chief, is Nantucket Five-spot (Poisoned Pen Press; January 2015 hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook formats), and we recently had the opportunity to chat with him about the series.
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Omnimystery News: Why did you choose to create a recurring character for your mysteries?
Photo provided courtesy of
Steven Axelrod
Steven Axelrod: A recurring character seemed like the best, easiest and most commercial way to anchor the series. All my favorite series feature compelling leads — from Stephen Hunter's Bob Lee Swagger novels to the Kenzie-Gennaro mysteries by Dennis Lehane. Kenzie and Gennaro change over the books — both their domestic situations (Angie leaves her abusive husband and moves in with Patrick) and their moral stature. Unlike most crime fiction heroes who stride through book after book, unscathed — Reacher comes to mind — Kenzie and Gennaro absorb the full force of their crimes and compromises, feeling ever more tarnished and corrupt. Finally they quit, to save their souls, more or less. It makes a compelling narrative over the span of six novels.
OMN: Into which mystery subgenre would you place your series?
SA: My books would best be called small-town police procedurals. The advantage of these labels is that people looking for a "small town procedural" know just where to find me! In the "small town procedural" section, with the other "small town procedurals". The disadvantage is that other readers, who might enjoy my take on Nantucket (and small town life in general), never even glance at the books, and everybody misses out.
OMN: Tell us something about Nantucket Five-spot that isn't mentioned in the synopsis.
SA: This book was my MFA creative thesis at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and it speaks well for the school, I think. I know the novel would never have been published if not for the work that two different professors put into it. One of them, the great Domenic Stansberry, is an Edgar-award-winning crime fiction writer himself … which belies the MFA image of a bunch of stuffy academics trying to make everyone sound like Raymond Carver.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
SA: Apart from the actual crimes — Nantucket has a tragically low homicide rate, at least for a mystery writer — almost everything in the books comes from my life or from the people I know. It's how you mix and match them that counts. One good example, which I'm planning to use in Nantucket Grand, the third book in the series, which I'm working on now: I work as a painting contractor in my day job, and one day I got white latex paint on some old brown copper downspouts. I couldn't clean it off — as I had cavalierly informed the owner I could. Instead I matched the color of the downspouts and painted the white marks out. By the time I was done, the paint on my hands looked like dried blood. I couldn't help thinking … what if someone drove by and saw me skulking away from the house with all that "blood" on my hands — and there was an actual murder victim inside? It would look pretty bad. Worst of all, to get out of it, I'd have to confess to my sneaky paint fix! Next thought: I have to use that, somewhere.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
SA: I don't have to know everything before I start, but I need to know enough — who did it and why; what really happened and what seemed to happen, so I can start moving forward. After that it's quite improvisational, and things often change on the fly. I didn't know the identity of the villain in Nantucket Five-spot until I'd written more than half the book. It's fun to be surprised that way … at least in retrospect. It can be a little nerve-wracking at the time.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?
SA: I have a couple of go-to experts, who show amazing patience with my reckless disregard of the facts. Otherwise I rely on Google. I always laugh when I hear about writers longing to go to Yaddo or some other remote writing colony with no horrible distractions like the Internet. I couldn't write without the Internet, I Google three or four things every session. All I really need is a detail or two — the trick is choosing the right ones: minimal research, maximal leverage. I must try and find an exciting topic to research! Mostly is just "clip" or "magazine"? "Quarter horse or thoroughbred?" Stuff like that. Things my characters would know and I don't.
OMN: How true are you to the setting of Nantucket Island?
SA: For me the location should be another character, and having lived on Nantucket since 1983, it's important for me to show the island as it really is. Friends have told me they can visualize the drives my police chief takes, street by street and road by road.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world to research the setting for a book, where would it be?
SA: I've already done it! I'm setting the first scene of book #4 on Bondi beach, near Sydney, Australia. My brother lives down under and he invited us for a vacation there last year. Amazing country. And standing on the rocks at Bondi looking out into the gem stone blue of the ocean I understood why they called the musical "South Pacific" and not "North Atlantic". I can't wait to go back.
OMN: What are some of your outside interests?
SA: I like hiking in the moors with my pug. I used to surf, but not so much any more. It was turning into a new, much less fun sport I called "Bob and Paddle". I watch some TV, I like to cook, and this winter I'm live-blogging my attempt to read War & Peace, at the Atticus Books blog. Writing used to be my hobby. In a way it still is, and will be until I can totally support myself with it.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author? And what might you say to aspiring writers?
SA: My ninth grade English teacher, a formidable old dowager, wrote on the top page of my very best short story ever (I thought) in her impeccable copper-plate cursive, "This story is flat as a pancake, dear." The "dear" was especially wounding.
I've pebble-collected a lot of good advice from various sources over the years. Despite his wry disclaimer that "there are three rules for the writing of the novel, but no one knows that any of them are", Somerset Maugham did have some shrewd ideas about craft. "If it should occur to you to cut something, do so," has always stood me in good stead. Hemingway's thought that you should always "stop writing when it's going well" makes a lot of sense to me: you pick up the next day with some momentum. More recently my editor at the on-line arts journal Numero Cinq, the magisterial Canadian author Douglas Glover, has taught me to hate the verb "to be" and love the "but" construction. "To be" is a connecting verb — it doesn't tell a story, and it's the chief culprit in the passive voice, which presents actions without agency. This is useful for slimy politicians who say things like "Mistakes were made" rather than the more honest and specific "I screwed up". "But" constructions create drama within sentences. They force you to think, and in a sense they generate content . "Bob was a very nice guy, but" But? But what? What's wrong with Bob? Now you have to think of something. "Bob was a very nice guy, but his friends all feared his temper." Suddenly Bob has anger management problems! Who knew? I was very happy to learn about the "but" construction.
As to advice for aspiring writers, I would say — just do it. Put away the outlines, set the notes aside, and take a stab at the first sentence. Then the second sentence. And so on. Some reporter once asked Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, how he wrote his books. "I roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter," he replied, "And I strike one key. Then I strike another. I continue in this fashion until the book is finished." Condescending, reductive, rude? Sure. But ultimately, he's right. In the words of my Oklahoma great-grandmother in law, "Doing does it."
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a mystery author and thus I am also …".
SA: … a snoop.
OMN: Tell us how your books came to be titled. And were you involved with the cover designs?
SA: I arranged for the Nantucket house photograph on the first book cover (Nantucket Sawbuck), but I had nothing to do with the Five-spot design. Poisoned Pen tried to reach me, but I guess their emails got bumped into the spam file. When I finally saw it I was very pleased. I like the way they're branding the books with the cover art. The two books were originally titled "Owners" and "Locals", but the publisher strongly suggested using Nantucket in the titles. A painting customer had just offered to pay me in cash at the end of a job, offering "Nantucket sawbucks" (some people call them Nantucket tens) … the implication being that a hundred dollars is worth ten dollars on our over-priced little resort island. It's hard to feel sympathy for the multi-millionaires, but I was happy to be given a book title along with the final payment. Five-spot just keeps the concept going.
OMN: What kind of feedback have you received from readers?
SA: I guess the thing I like most is hearing that readers like the characters. The plots are like the rebar and concrete that hold the building up … the characters are the living space inside, the human element that makes the reading experience memorable. Can I give you a quick description of the plot of any Michael Connelly novel? Probably not. But Harry Bosch feels like an old friend. A recent review of "Five-spot" actually quoted some lines from the book, which I found flattering and refreshing. Nothing pleases a writer like being quoted … at least if it's complimentary!
OMN: Suppose your series were to be adapted for television or film? Who do you see playing the key role?
SA: I see Ethan Hawke as Henry. If anyone out there knows him, feel free to pass it on!
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
SA: I loved the Hardy Boys books when I was a kid, and moved from them to James Bond novels to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and beyond: Hemingway, Camus, Faulkner. I never really decided to write mysteries. I did the first one for fun and just kept going. However, hip-deep in the third book of my series I can see certain movies did set the tone — The Maltese Falcon, the Robert Altman version of The Long Goodbye, the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies and most of all — Chinatown. I would say that's the best murder mystery ever put on film, since it effortlessly manages to be about so many kinds of corruption at once, from the most intimate to the most public. I advise anyone writing this sort of stuff to see Chinatown at least once a year. You'll never tire of it and there's always something more to learn. How's this for a sublime example of the dreaded exposition in dialogue? The coroner says to the hero: "Middle of a drought, water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A."
OMN: And what do you read now for pleasure?
SA: Recent books read for pleasure: The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt), The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton), Past Imperfect (Julian Fellowes). My favorite series at this moment is Thomas Perry's Jane Whitefield collection (eight and counting). I also enjoy Michael Connelly's Mickey Haller books, and LeHane's Kenzie-Gennaro series is always worth another look.
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.
SA: How about Top 5 islands? Nantucket would have to be number one, second would be Manhattan, where I grew up. The Greek island of Hydra comes in a #3. Four would be the Ile St Louis in Paris. #5? L.A.'s own Catalina.
OMN: What's next for you?
SA: Well in the spring my extremely dark noir thriller Heat of the Moment is coming out from Gutter Books. All the big piubloishers thought it was "too transgressive." I guess they never saw an episode of Hannibal on TV! I've just seen the cover art and I'm very excited about it.
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Steven Axelrod holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of the Fine Arts and remains a member of the WGA despite a long absence from Hollywood. His work has been featured on various websites, including the literary e-zine Numéro Cinq, where he is on the masthead. His work has also appeared at Salon.com and The GoodMen Project, as well as the magazines PulpModern and BigPulp. A father of two, he lives on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, where he paints houses and writes, often at the same time, much to the annoyance of his customers.
For more information about the author, please find him on Facebook.
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Nantucket Five-spot
Steven Axelrod
A Henry Kennis Mystery
At the height of the summer tourist season, a threat to bomb the annual Boston Pops Concert could destroy the island's economy, along with its cachet as a safe, if mostly summer-time, haven for America's ruling class. The threat of terrorism brings The Department of Homeland Security to the island, along with prospects for a rekindled love affair — Henry's lost love works for the DHS now.
The "terrorism" aspects of the attack prove to be a red herring. The truth lies much closer to home. At first suspicion falls on local carpenter Billy Delavane, but Henry investigates the case and proves that Billy is being framed. Then it turns out that Henry's new suspect is also being framed — for the bizarre and almost undetectable crime of framing someone else. Every piece of evidence works three ways in the investigation of a crime rooted in betrayed friendship, in˜ delity, and the quiet poisonous feuds of small town life. Henry traces the origin of the attacks back almost twenty years and uncovers an obsessive revenge conspiracy that he must unravel — now alone, discredited and on the run — before further disaster strikes.
