We are delighted to welcome author William Deverell to Omnimystery News today.
William's 8th entry in his Arthur Ellis and Hammett Prize-winning series featuring attorney Arthur Beauchamp is Sing a Worried Song (ECW Press; April 2015 hardcover and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to catch up with him to talk more about the book.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to Arthur Beauchamp. What is it about him that appeals to you as writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
William Deverell
William Deverell: My series character is Arthur Beauchamp, a retired criminal lawyer who was at the top of his field, but he can't stay retired and keeps getting pulled back from his island idyll (where he gardens and raises goats) to take on headline murder trials for the defence or prosecution. He is classically educated, spouts Latin aphorisms at the drop of a hat, is a recovering alcoholic and is recovering as well from bad marriage to a faithless wife. Introspective, full of self-doubt, he almost magically changes when he walks into a courtroom, where he is eloquent, forceful and demonstrates rapier-like skills in cross-examination. What is most appealing to me about him is his humaneness and his constant striving to overcome his felt weaknesses.
OMN: How has he changed over the course of the series?
WD: My first dozen novels were stand-alones, but Arthur appeared in an early one, Dance of Shiva, as a secondary character, and in a later book, Trial of Passion as the protagonist, a novel that won that Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence, and my readership's response to him was so overwhelming that, a few books later, I brought him back in April Fool, which won my second Ellis Award for Best Canadian Crime Novel, and he has been the headliner of all my novels since. Though of a certain age, he grows, changes, falls in love, gets married, continues to play and struggle with the colorful rogues he lives with on his island retreat, and to worry, worry, worry. (Thus the aptness of the title: Sing a Worried Song.)
OMN: Into what fiction genre would you place the series?
WD: I would say the majority could be described as courtroom dramas. (I was a Vancouver criminal lawyer for 20 years.) But I have written thrillers (Needles, Mindfield, Street Legal) and even sendups (Kill All the Lawyers, a playful whodunit; The Laughing Falcon, to be read both seriously and as a satire of the thriller AND romance genres) and have been twice shortisted for Canada's Leacock Award for Humor. So it is hard to label me. Maybe crime/courtroom drama/satire. My new one, Sing a Worried Song, is closer to a thriller.
OMN: Give us a summary of Sing a Worried Song in a tweet.
WD: Decades ago, Arthur Beauchamp successfully prosecuted a psychopathic thrill killer who, having served his time, and lusting for bloody revenge, stalks the hero.
OMN: Tell us a little more about your writing process.
WD: I develop a concept, turn it into an outline, and ultimately into a document very like a film treatment, with the story, plot, characters all sketched with some exactness and the twists and the ending built in. By far that is the hardest part of the process of creating a novel. The rest is a walk in the park. The treatment is organic and will grow and change as new ideas occur.
OMN: Where do you most often find yourself writing?
Photos provided courtesy of
William Deverell
WD: I write in a log cabin/studio on 11 wooded acres on British Columbia's Gulf Islands, almost within spitting distance (figuratively) of the US border (top photo, right). I have no phone there, no TV, no Internet to tempt me, though I have radio and a slew of classical and jazz CDs or digital music to listen to as I work. I do have a thorough collection of reference texts. The cabin is a ten-minute uphill stroll from my house. I get my exercise through hiking, bucking and splitting wood, maintaining a half-acre garden. Almost invariably I rewrite for 3 hours, and write new material for 4 hours.
That's me at the end of the day (bottom photo, right).
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Bill Deverell was a journalist for seven years, graduating in law in 1963. He was a member of the bars of British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon, his criminal practice involved work for both prosecution and defence, and he worked in civil rights, labour, and environmental law. He is a founding director of the B. C. Civil Liberties Association. His first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal Prize in l979 and the Book of the Year Award in l98l, the first of his several book awards. He wrote the screenplay "Shellgame" for CBC-TV, which served as the pilot for and was the creator of the network's long-running drama series Street Legal. In 1991-92, he served as Visiting Professor in the Creative Writing Department, University of Victoria. He was awarded an honorary doctor of letters from Simon Fraser University, and lives on Pender Island, British Columbia.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at Deverell.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Sing a Worried Song by William Deverell
An Arthur Beauchamp Novel
Publisher: ECW Press
Everything is going well for Arthur Beauchamp in his early middle age. Life is so good for the top-notch defence lawyer that, in a moment of career restlessness, he decides to switch sides, just the once, and prosecute a young man charged with murdering a clown. Beauchamp is confident he can prove Randolph Skyler is guilty. Confident, but still worried and surprisingly blind to how precarious the evidence is — and, worse, to the fissures opening in his personal life.
It's a case Beauchamp will never forget, not even years later, when he's happily remarried and retired to a bucolic life on Garibaldi Island in the glorious Salish Sea. As Beauchamp is about to learn, the older you get, the greater the chance is that the past will come back to bite you. In Deverell's latest marvel in his Beauchamp series, Arthur has causes aplenty to sing a worried song.
— Sing a Worried Song by William Deverell
