Daniel Polansky writes dark, gritty, cross-genre noir heavy on fantasy.

He builds dark, different worlds, vivid characters, and great fight scenes.

Born in Baltimore he holds a BA in philosophy from Dickinson College.

His novel ‘Low Town’ is out and attracting a lot of great reviews.

It’s also got a lot of foreign rights acquisitions.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about criminal shadows and dystopia.

Do you think the best detectives have strong criminal shadows?

In real life no, probably not — one hopes, at least, that the head of the homicide division has no non-work related experience with his subject. But it’s certainly proved to be an enduring conceit in fiction. Of course, it wasn’t there to begin with — there’s really none of that in early detective fiction. Dupin is an upright police inspector, Holmes is an upper crust Gentleman (albeit one addicted to cocaine, but that wasn’t illegal at that point).

Who are your literary influences?

In terms of just people I’ve loved, there are a lot. V.S. Naipaul, Thomas Wolfe, Shelby Foote, Hannah Arendt, John Keegan. In terms of more genre-oriented stuff, that Stephen King character seems to have had a pretty good run. I spent most of my early adolescence plowing through his stuff, so that really had an influence, at least in so far as I like to dress up in a clown outfit and murder people on the weekend (just kidding (as far as you know)). As far as The Straight Razor Cure goes though, my influences are pretty obvious — Dash Hammett (did people ever call him Dash, do you think? They should have) and Raymond Chandler are the two guys I cribbed most from.

To what extent do you think sexual pathology influences the kind of crimes people like to read about?

That’s a great question, and one I’ve thought about a lot actually. Even a cursory overview of the crime genre reveals an exceptionally high percentage of books dealing with the most horrific and disturbing sexual violence. Indeed, such acts play a curiously heavy role throughout popular entertainment — how many seasons has Law and Order Special Victims Unit been on? 10? 12? To judge by the Girl Who… books roughly 1/3 of Sweden is made up of Nazi Rapists, a fact which did not strike me as being entirely accurate during my last trip through Stockholm.

On some level sexual crimes are an easy short hand for ‘the villain is super super evil’ — taboo subject matter that makes a fairly standard detective story seem more exciting than maybe it really is. And given the increasingly explicit nature of society, a lot of things that 30 or 50 years ago would have been left implicit in the text are now outright narrated, often in quite thorough detail.

But for me it’s sometimes hard to dismiss the feeling that there is something prurient in our general cultural obsession with reading about/watching terrible things happen to women. But on the other hand, women themselves often make up a high percentage of the readership for these things. I dunno. Truthfully, I don’t have a good answer for you, other than that for some reason we seem to be pretty interested in books involving sexual violence.

I guess I’m sort of one to talk, [Spoiler alert, though not really since I think it’s on the back cover] the murder and implied molestation of a child plays a role in The Straight Razor Cure, though there’s not much in the way of description of it.

Tell us about ‘Low Town’.
Low Town is a gritty noir set in a dystopian fantasy setting. The protagonist is an ex-cop turned drug dealer, a real unsavory individual. He finds a murdered child one day and, in a bout of ill-considered self-righteousness, decides to hunt down the killer, embroiling himself in a web of conspiracy and black magic (the worst kind of web!)

It was originally called The Straight Razor Cure, but when I sold it to Doubleday my new Editor plopped a big bag of money on the table and told me they were gonna call it something different. Thus did my long journey to sell out begin. I’m mostly kidding.
I like Low Town. I think it’s a pretty good book, and I’m an absolutely unbiased source. Balanced as a scale.

Do you think we’re living in a dystopia and what does that notion represent to you?

You know, you caught me — I really used dystopia inaccurately there, which is actually a strong pet peeve of mine. I feel like my hypocrisy is really coming out during this interview.

The term dystopian gets thrown around a lot as a sort of ubiquitous term for evil — maybe it’s the modern update of the term ‘fascism’. Strictly speaking, a dystopia is a false utopia, a rigidly ordered police state in which the government uses repressive technology and social custom in order to limit the free will of its inhabitants. Used correctly then, my book is not set in a dystopia, though some of the qualities often associated with dystopia — the sense that life is a useless endeavor controlled by amoral superiors, that the exercise of free will is a self-destructive act — these are qualities that exist in the world of Low Town.

Back here in the real world I’m not living in a dystopia. I’m about to go take a nap on a beach. Dystopian fiction tends to assume a level of competence on the part of the government unmatched in reality. I find that the state, being run by human beings, is generally too incompetent to enforce the classical dystopian security apparatus.

What do you make of the rise of the E book and do you think traditional publishing is coping with it?

Personally, I am a strong believer in the absolute superiority of paper as a medium to convey text. More than a believer, a fanatic — I read a lot and I travel a lot, so it would make sense for me to avail myself of an e-reader but I just can’t pull the trigger. It’s a much less enjoyable experience for me, personally. I just never, ever, in my entire life, found myself reading a paperback and thinking — ‘there has to be a way to do this better.’
I love reading books and I love being surrounded by them. The recent demise of Borders has been for me, like a lot of people I think quite sad. I hope very much that there’s still a place for brick and mortar stores holding volumes of ink and paper, and not just because their survival is intimately tied with my own.

As far as the impact of e-books on the publishing business more broadly, it’s not an issue on which I have any particular insight.

Do you think Noir without sex is lacking something?

I would say that there is no noir without sex. Good noir is about sin, and thus about sex on some level. Sex is dangerous, sex leads to trouble. This is, after all, the genre that popularized the femme fatale. No one needs to ever have sex of course, but the whiff of it needs to be in the air.

In a certain way you can divide noir into two categories — narratives in which the protagonist succumbs to sexual temptation (which inevitably leads to tragedy) and ones in which the protagonist holds out. I am thinking particularly of the classic detective novels in the latter — Marlowe, the Continental Op and Lew Archer are monk-like in their dedication to abstinence. Though compare that to something like say, The Lady of Shanghai or Out of the Past, which basically teach you that women are frightening creatures, at once smarter and less moral than men, and you start to think maybe their asceticism might be warranted. Interestingly for a genre which is so obsessed with it in the abstract, the act itself rarely gets much play. Noir tends to focus more on its later ramifications, the shadows it leaves on people’s lives. It’s a conservative genre, fundamentally.

Do you think revenge is a popular theme because it shows ordinary men and women stepping outside the law?

For we modern folk, utterly constrained by the firm hand of law and the only slightly less firm hand of convention, the idea of just getting to fuck shit up according to one’s own internal morality is a powerful fantasy. Wrapped up in that of course is the idea that we might be strong enough to overthrow said shackles and not end up in the ER or in prison — you ask about ‘ordinary men and women’ in your question but of course the protagonists of revenge parables are never average in any sense, they’re superhuman. Like most fantasies it’s ultimately about power, the idea that you could impose your views with impunity upon folk richly deserving in comeuppance.

Of course revenge is a strong thread within the noir weave, in so far as noir tends to posit that society itself is corrupt or ill-functioning to the point that justice as provided by the appropriate authorities is nothing of the sort. The classic noir protagonist exists outside of the conventional mechanisms of his civilization, and that’s part of what we admire about him.

You’re given a large budget to direct a crime film. How would you make it different?

If it was a really huge budget (and I’m going to assume it is), I would use it to build a time machine, go back to 1971 and hire Michael Caine to be in my movie. Or Lee Marvin. Or Charles Bronson. People in movies have been getting progressively less interesting looking, which really is a critical component of crime films. Everyone’s so damn good looking, it’s absurd. If you were good looking you wouldn’t have entered the world of crime, you’d have become a model. But I digress.

I would give it to the Coen Brothers and say ‘boys, go at it.’

Truthfully, I really don’t have much of an answer for this one. I don’t know very much about movies in any meaningful sense, not to the point where I could intelligently discuss the subject. I barely know anything about books.

What are you working on at the moment?

At the moment I am working on revisions for the sequel to Low Town, as yet unnamed. I’m also trying to do some plotting of the third book in the series. Can’t really divulge anything on either of them, except that they’re much better than the first book. I mean, the first book’s great, don’t get me wrong. But onwards and upwards, as they say.

Thank you Daniel for an insightful and entertaining interview.

Visit Daniel Polansky’s website here and find him also on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and Google+

Get hardcover, paperback, or Kindle editions of ‘Low Town’ (US & Canada – Doubleday) at Amazon.com and ‘The Straight Razor Cure’ (UK & Commonwealth – Hodder & Stoughton) at Amazon.co.uk. Find more online retailers for the US here and the UK here.

‘Low Town’ is available in German as ‘Der Herr der Unterstadt: Roman’ and translations are also forthcoming in French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Czech, Polish, Turkish, Portuguese (Brazil), and Croatian.

Col Bury is a Mancunian writer whose stories are full of a native menace. He is also funny, often starting with a form of black humour that spirals quickly into darkness. He is the editor of the brilliant magazine Thrillers Killers N Chillers. Col has an E Book, Manchester 6, out this week, which I urge you to buy. Here is what you can expect:

Manchester 6 focuses on the best and worst of human nature, featuring a plethora of no-nonsense characters you’d ordinarily want to avoid. The six stories highlight generally decent folk who become embroiled with the lower echelons of society, aka scumbags.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about criminal pathology and his forthcoming novel.

How much do the skills necessary to being a good editor help you as an author?

Before the ezine editing started, I already had a critical eye. It kept having a go at the other eye ‘n’ when they kept staring each other out, it became a problem, so me nose had to get between them. It’s snorted now though (sorry).

I’m my own biggest critic, so this has made me sharp-eyed for stuff that doesn’t ring quite true in all the fiction I read. The belief, that even little old me could one day become an author, was reinforced when I gave up reading in disappointment an established author’s mainstream crime novel about five years ago, because of glaringly obvious oversights that shouldn’t have slipped through the editorial process.

Throughout the two ‘n’ half years I’ve been editing Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers, and reading hundreds of submissions, I can honestly say it has helped me massively. Sometimes, it’s the ones that don’t work which make me think and grow. Since we (Matt Hilton, Lee Hughes, Lily Childs & I) pride ourselves in offering constructive feedback with any stories we feel don’t fit the site, if we’re gonna turn a story down then we need a bloody good reason to do so. The four of us are writers, after all, so we know exactly how it feels to hear bad news about our beloved creations.

It’s sometimes harder to fathom why certain stories are perfect fits. I wish I had the time to analyse these in more detail, but it’s a busy old world being a daddy, editor, wannabe author, avid reader, blogger, full-time worker, football fan, pool shark, movie buff, alcohol consumer, etc (the order depends on mood). So please don’t ask me how I balance my time, as I’m fighting for balance every day. The editing definitely helps with the writing though.

What were the glaring oversights in the novel?

Ah, right. I see how this thing works now, you little tinker! You keep it flowing by linking to the last answer, very clever. So, my last word on this one has to address my animal magnetism, right?

The last thing I wanna do is upset a fellow writer (God no), so I’ll try ‘n’ be discreet…I was sucked in by the author of this particular novel due to the suspenseful opening. However, everyone was ‘affording each other smiles’ – an odd expression, if you ask me. By the third chapter, and fourteenth ‘afforded smile’, it was starting to get on me tits a bit (for non-Mancunians, this means: detracts from the enjoyment of the story somewhat). Then, the final proverbial straw… when the detective inspector was having dinner at his/her mum’s home, the phone rang, and he/she answered it, “Hello, DI ‘Bloggs’…”

Now then, it was the mum’s landline number and there was no precursor whereby he/she informed his/her colleague (who’d phoned) that he/she would be at her mum’s. There was no suggestion that the other person would know his/her whereabouts, and no mention of a caller display, so the DI would recognise the incoming number. Consequently, as harsh as it may or may not sound, that’s where I stopped reading. I lost confidence in the author’s authority to further hold my waning attention, and was totally turned off. If, by the off chance, the author reads this, I still greatly admire their success (that’s me backtracking!), but this taught me a lesson. Attention to detail.

How do you think female criminal pathology differs from male criminal pathology?

My gut reaction is that men tend to be motivated by power and control, invariably in an aggressive manner, whether the latter be physical or mental. For men, this approach also spills over via the libido into sexual crimes. Testosterone has a lot to answer for, and there are examples of this everywhere, so I won’t bore you.

Whereas, the cause for women is much trickier to fathom for me. Maybe it’s related to revenge or money, or love perhaps?

Hmm… a woman fighting back after years of domestic abuse from her male partner, or sexual abuser. (We’re back to testosterone again, but many men can’t control it.) A ‘bunny boiler’ unable to let go of her millionaire playboy, until he gets a restraining order?

If we take the extreme of serial killers as examples, Ted Bundy perfectly illustrates all my male points, being a sadistic psychopath. While Aileen Wuornos, who killed seven men while working as a prostitute, was motivated by revenge, having claimed they raped her.

Obviously, both sexes are capable of revenge and are often motivated by the dirty cash made by criminality, so the above overlaps in some cases. On a lower scale, many young men are influenced by drink, drugs and peer pressure, and can become very destructive toward both people and property. Bravado often kicks in too, and things can get out of control, especially when the male ego is thrown into the equation. I don’t think anywhere near as many females get a kick out of destroying things, or fighting. However, I know some women still do behave like this, so again it gets kinda blurry.

Just realised I missed out envy and jealousy, but I don’t wanna ramble.

Do you think that crime results from an individual’s distorted perceptions about what life owes him or her?

Boy, have you hit a nerve here, mate! Very topical, especially with riots in England ongoing as I write. Regarding many of crimes committed, I’d have to say, “Yes”. Allow me to use the current state in the UK to illustrate. I’ll try ‘n’ hold back, but I’m still somewhat raw from it all…

The taxpayers pay benefits for supposed ‘Jobseekers’ to live. Agreed, some genuine people are in between jobs and this keeps them going as they endeavour to put their lives back on track after redundancy, etc. However, I’ve witnessed it first hand, when fuckwits, spongers, freeloaders, low-lifes, scum – call them what you want – kick off in the Job Centre because their dole hasn’t been paid. There is a sub-human section of society who have no intention of working, and some have never, will never, get off their lazy arses and contri-fookin-bute to society, like the law-abiding majority.

Did you know that some heroin addicts and alcoholics claim disability? The decent folk pay for their methadone, and supposed rehabilitation, only for the vast majority to relapse, and cost us even more. When you’re driving home from another tough day at the office, passing these characters outside pubs, drinking cans of lager ‘n’ cider on walls, or whatever… take solace (yeah, right) in the fact that your hard-earned cash is paying for them to live their shitty little lives, and know with certainty that they don’t give a toss about you. They live in a self-centred bubble and have convinced themselves (because the powers that be pander to their every need) that society does owe them. Well, no we bloody well don’t! Something has to change very soon. Stick ’em on an island ‘n’ called it “Shitsville” or summat, or else we’ll be overrun by the vermin. Grrr… I could go on, and on, but I’d best not.

Human rights… yer havin’ a laugh!

Do you think the late 1960s and early 1970s were Manchester City’s glory days and what would a player like Colin Bell make of the club’s present wealth?

Ah, at last… a question that hasn’t made me head pop! Don’t get me started on footy, mate, as you’ll lose readers who think it’s called soccer! (They’ve probably already left, anyhow, after that last rant.) I’ll link this question from football to writing. Promise.

Unfortunately, I only saw ‘Colin the King’, aka ‘Nijinsky’, after that red… Man. United (metaphorically spits)… player, ‘Fartin Fuchan’ (aka Martin Buchan), broke our best player’s leg. I was told by the older blues that he wasn’t the same after, but he was still good. If I dared to guess what a footballing legend may think, I’d say he’d be pretty chuffed at seeing City buying players who will have us competing with the elite. However, it’s probable that all the old pro’s secretly regard the crazy wages being paid now with envious eyes. I mean, a quarter of a million quid per week, during a global economic meltdown! WTF?

Those old successes, when I was a toddler, were certainly glory years, but hopefully the best is yet to come. Having said that, something feels rather phony about receiving a deluge of Arab oil money. City fans have kinda become accustomed to watching a struggling team. Is our soul being ripped out, with the academy players being replaced by mercenaries? We used to be a lot of fans’ ‘second club’, but now I sense envy. Although it’s exciting, I feel a tad uneasy after years of doubt and struggle. Is this how a wannabe author feels when he finally wins that elusive book deal, I wonder? Squirming uneasily amid the fear of success…? And, could this fuel the writer’s procrastination…?

Football is in the lifeblood of England. Do you think it stems from our feudal history?

It’s possible the territorial allegiances developed in the psyches of the English during this period, did contribute to our current passion for the game. However, I’d hazard a guess that it was more down to the invention of the football (sorry, I’m no historian, mate). Much to the annoyance of Edward II (oh, he was really pissed off, I’ll tell yer) the streets were abuzz with people playing ‘Mob Football’ with a pig’s bladder, and this could have sparked the competitive edge we now see. Alas, especially among the English football fans, some of whom still use ‘Medieval techniques’ whenever they meet!

Tell us about your novel.

I really can’t say too much, as I’m still at work on it, but I can give you the gist…

For rookie cop, Jack Striker, life is a constant battle to keep his dubious past a secret from snooping colleagues. He had moved away from the notorious Bullsmead estate in Manchester, after a family feud erupted due to his teenage escapades. Striker’s motivation to join the force stemmed from, his desire to make amends, show his true worth to his dad, and also to help secure his future with pregnant fiancee, Suzi. However, his older siblings blame him for their dad’s untimely death. Not only that, he is posted as a cop back on his old stomping ground, Bullsmead. It’s only a matter of time before the anti-police locals, and his colleagues, find out the truth, putting not only Striker at risk, but also his mother who lives alone on the estate. If things weren’t bad enough, Suzi dumps him, and he’s teamed up with the partner no cop wants. They attend an armed robbery, and that’s when the proverbial shit really hits the fan, and this crime novel takes a massive twist…

I’m bursting to tell you more, as I’m really excited about this one, especially after last year’s experience.

Who are your literary influences?

Although I was gud at England at school, innit, I don’t ever recall actually finishing a novel back then. I used to get easily distracted (still do), so books couldn’t hold me. However, I’ve always had a deep love of words and huge respect for books.

In my teen and early twenties, I’d have to say British horror writer James Herbert was a big influence. The Rats trilogy were the first novels I devoured, and I went on to buy all his work. Herbert’s characterisation and humour-horror mix were perfect for my tastes. Twenty-odd years ago, David Barber and I used to often chat about books and writing. I recall reading Stephen King’s IT and Dean Koontz’s HIDEAWAY, and although I really liked them, I always reverted back to Herbert.

The first crime novel I ever read, that kindled my interest in the genre I now love, was William Bayer’s “psycho-logical”, hardboiled American thriller, SWITCH. This one book influenced me more than any other. It truly is a crackin’ piece of work. I did an article about it a couple of years ago over at The Rap Sheet, for their “Forgotten Books” series. A very close second would be THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS by Thomas Harris, which resulted in my fascination of serial killers.

More recently, Brit crime novelists, Simon Kernick, Mark Billingham and Chris Simms stand out for me. Adrian Magson, Sheila Quigley and Nick Quantrill are also authors I admire. It would be remiss of me not to mention someone who has been an inspiration, and now a damn good friend. Author of the Joe Hunter thriller series, Matt Hilton, has been a tremendous help, and if I’d not met him, I would probably still be trying to convince me mum I could write.

You’re given a large sum of money to direct a new Brit crime film. What plot line would you choose and who would you cast?

“The Hoodie Hunter” is a character close to my heart. The name is self-explanatory, though it’s not to be confused with an aggressive shoplifter. It’s simply a highly skilled vigilante who’s pissed off with society, the lame government and the lenience of the British justice system (aren’t we all?).

When his family are directly affected by these hooded fuckwits, this is the trigger (literally) that sparks a systematic slaying which cleanses the streets of Manchester. Obviously, there are a few twists ‘n’ turns, with no nonsense, Detective Inspector Jack Striker on his tail throughout.

Before anyone thinks of nicking this ground-breaking idea (coughs), this character featured in my first ever published story via Tonto Books, MOPPING UP (as in the streets). I’m chuffed to say this short was also selected for the next Mammoth Book of Best British Crime. The Hoodie Hunter also features in two of my very early stories over at TKnC. Namely, BLIND ALLEY and RESPECT, where he gives DI Jack Striker the runaround, and the hoodies plaguing our streets receive some particularly tough justice!
This was the theme of crime novel I wrote last year, under the guidance of New York agent, Nat Sobel, and not something I’ve really spoken about as yet. We got real close, but, alas…

If we’d have sold STRIKER (original title “The Hoodie Hunter”), then the sequel would have seen vigilante groups breaking out all over Britain. As for the cast: Clive Owen and his team could sort Manchester and the north, Idris Elba could do the biz in London and the south, while Robert Carlyle seems ideal for Scotland.

Dream on, Col…

You mentioned your agent, Nat Sobel. Could you share with us the process in which you acquired Nat’s representation, and then worked on the novel together, despite Nat being in the US?

I’m not really one to brag. Quite the opposite really – self deprecating, my own biggest critic. Humility wins every time for me, so if any of you ever feel I’m ‘blowing my own trumpet’ (am not double-jointed anyhow), feel free to suitably chastise me! This humble approach is the main reason for my reticence on this matter. Well that, and the fact that my first novel didn’t sell, despite the weight of a powerhouse agent! Does that make me a failure? Well, us writers are made a sterner stuff, aren’t we? Anyway, since Nat’s okayed it, I’ll open up…

It’s probably common knowledge that Nat Sobel finds new talent by scouring the ezines (he now subscribes to both my blogs and TKnC). In September 2009, A Twist Of Noir editor, Chris Grant kindly pointed Nat in the direction of TKnC, and, via Matt Hilton, this led to emails to several writers. Being a complete tit, I deleted mine! Anyway, I managed to redeem myself, and Nat read my opening fifty pages via email, suggesting changes. He’d already warned me he’d be “tougher [on me] than any editor“, so the next six months were extremely gruelling. Especially as I have a demanding job and two children, so time and energy are somewhat scarce. After numerous rewrites of the first 100 pages or so, in early 2010 he suggested I start from scratch! I could’ve easily quit then, such was my frustration. However, the learning curve was massive, and working with Nat absolutely priceless.

I finally completed the first full draft in May 2010. FOUR rewrites later, in August 2010, Nat finally told me he was “planning to go forward with the novel”. (Had I just passed the so-called “agent’s test”?). Nat’s UK co-agent, Caspian Dennis, read STRIKER, saying it was “Gripping“, so the signs were looking good. At last, all the ‘big boys’ would be reading my very own novel! However, for the next few months I waited… and waited, for news. It was possibly the most stressful period of my life.

Then the rejection emails began… but it was a peculiar experience, as many of the compliments amazed us…

“Col Bury is clearly a talented writer, with a flair for sharp prose and action-packed scenes… BUT…”

“Col puts thought and careful attention to detail into his fiction. STRIKER has an evocative way with accents and a nuanced sense of place… BUT…”

“Bury writes crime like a natural, and his dialogue captures in pitch-perfect tone the local color of Manchester, as does his vibrant prose. Striker himself makes for a compelling, flawed protagonist who harbors a deeply-buried, dark secret of past violence, and the tension of the prologue is exceptionally well-managed. Hats off to Bury—he is clearly an author who is going places… BUT…”

“The author has a remarkable sense of place, and he brings these streets to vibrant life, mining his setting for menace and grit… BUT…”

“Nat-I read every word and loved it. He is a great writer, and reminded me of Mark Billingham… BUT…”

“Perhaps another house can make a success of this wonderful writer…”

There were more, “BUT”… I’ll leave it to Nat to summarise…

“Col, We’ve collected a bunch of brilliant reviews on both sides of the Atlantic . You could paper the walls with all the praise – but no one has offered to buy the book. I’m not discouraged. I hope you are not. Put aside the sequel, and let’s try something new. We will break through, if you don’t give up. I won’t.”

What a first class agent Nat Sobel truly is. As for me, well, I’ve learned a lot from the process to date, and staggered back up from the punches of rejection. And, since I know Jack Striker so well now, we’ve returned from the ‘drawing board’ and made him more unique, so he stands out from the crowd. So… ding, ding… get ready for round two!

Thanks for having me, Richard, and a hat tip to all my writing buddies for their ongoing support.

Thank you Col for giving a frank and brilliant interview.

Bio: 
Col was voted the Best Fiction Magazine Editor online, in the Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll. His short stories can be found in anthologies, including, Even More Tonto Short Stories and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9, and are forthcoming in many more. His fiction is scattered around the blogosphere, at the likes of A Twist Of Noir and The Flash Fiction Offensive.

Links:
Pick up a copy of ‘Manchester 6’ at Amazon UK and US.

Visit Col’s blog, Col Bury’s New Crime Fiction, for word on the release of Manchester 6 and for his reviews and interviews of crime authors.

Find Col’s gritty Manchester crime fiction, crime shorts from other writers, and genre news on his website here.

And for the acclaimed Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers webzine, click here.

Reed Farrel Coleman is a hard boiled poet and Noir writer who was the executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America. He has published twelve novels, two under the pen name Tony Spinosa, in three series, and one stand alone with Ken Bruen.

He is also the three time winner of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about crime fiction and totalitarianism.

Do you think Noir without sex is lacking something?

I’m generally not a rules dedicated kind of guy. I guess my one writing rule is anything goes if you can make it work. So I never approach any reading of genre or sub-genre with preconceived notions of what that book or story must contain. Well, a PI novel must have a PI, but beyond that it’s the quality and entertainment value of the writing that matters. I like sex in Noir as much as the next reader, but don’t feel it necessary. In any case, I find the implications of sex or sex as a rewards for misdeeds more provocative than the act or acts themselves. My flip answer would be that I find sex lacking without Noir.

You are given a large sum of money to carry out a hit. How would you go about it to avoid detection?

There are a few ways one might go about it:

1. Take the money and run, forgetting about the hit.
2. Pay someone else to do it for you and then kill the person you hired.
3. Find someone dying who needs the money for his or her family and let them do it.
4. Make it look like an accident.
5. Of course the most detestable is to kill many people with something like a bomb so that it is unclear who the actual victim is.

Do you think killing and fucking are related?

My wife and the women I was with before her sure hope not! Do I think they’re related in the mind of the Noir fan? Some yes. Some no. I would be lying, however, if I denied that culturally there is a blending or rather an association between sex and violence. And it’s so odd that in our culture full nudity in movies is frowned on in a purely sexual context, but if a totally nude woman is brutally murdered, that’s somehow okay. That’s the perversity.

Tell about Gun Church.

Well, depending upon my frame of mind, I either see GUN CHURCH as a labor of love or an albatross. Here’s the story: At the very first Thriller Fest, I was listening to a weapons demonstration given by my friend, Jim Born. Someone in the audience asked a question about the spread of shotgun pellets and Jim said something like, “You’d have to really be a gun nut to answer that question.” When Jim said that, a complete plot popped into my head. It was about a once-famous writer who had fallen on very hard times and was now teaching creative writing at a rural community college. This guy saves his class from disaster and then falls in with a cult-like group of people who basically worship handguns. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say it’s sort of WONDER BOYS meets FIGHT CLUB with guns. It took about 5 years to write and it went through wholesale changes. 5 years! I usually write a 300 page book in about 5 months. Finally, Audible.com expressed real interest in the book and they worked with me to get it just right. It will be out this November as an exclusive audio book. I can’t wait to hear it.

Do you think the rise of the theocratic right is a bigger threat in America than the criminal underclass?

Frankly, I think there are any number of threats to America and most of them are self-inflicted. I think our founding fathers would be horrified by the right and left. I know I am. No matter where one falls on the political spectrum, it would be hard, if not impossible, not to be disgusted with the level of our political discourse. The criminal underclass has nothing on the government.

Do you think that totalitarianism is the death of existentialism?

How did you know philosophy was one of my majors in college? I have to say many of the questions you’ve asked me are deep and require actual thought. I’ve gotten so used to giving pat answers to pat questions that I’m a bit rusty. Briefly, no, I don’t think totalitarianism is the death of existentialism. I’m not particularly fond of existentialism, but one of its beauties is that it can exist (sorry) in a vacuum, independent of a particular culture or societal norms, whatever they may be. As long as one person holds onto an existential view of his or her life, existentialism can’t be wiped away. Even if someone devised a way to eliminate existential thought from current discourse or found a way to go back and erase it from textbooks, computers and scholarly works, it would inevitably be rediscovered.

Who are your literary influences?

Actually, I love answering this question. My early influences were poets and sci fi writers—interesting combo, huh? I loved Asimov, Rod Serling, Harlan Ellison, Orwell, Poe, Wallace Stevens, TS Eliot, Vonnegut, chandler, Hammett … the list is long and varied. I continue to be influenced by almost everything I read. In some sense, current writers influence me more directly than my early favorites. For instance, Lawrence Block, Philip Kerr, Peter Spiegelman, SJ Rozan. Even writers whose work is very different than mine influence me; people like Daniel Woodrell and Megan Abbott.

Is there any one incident that has changed your life?

There are hundreds, but the one that had the most profound impact on me was watching a man die from a gunshot wound. I was fifteen and walking to work when I heard a gunshot. Like a total idiot I ran toward it. There, lying in the street in front of the post office in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn was a man with a dime-sized red spot on the belly of his shirt. He wasn’t bleeding very much—what did I know about internal bleeding when I was fifteen? His breathing was all ragged. He didn’t moan or anything and I remember people were kind of frozen around him, not moving, just watching. Me too. When the ambulance came, the EMTs—that didn’t have a name for them then, but that’s what they were—worked on him. Then he stopped breathing. I thought, how could someone die from such a little, barely bleeding wound? Then this thing happened that I will never forget. One of the EMTs removed the man’s sock and ran a tongue depressor along the bottom of the dead man’s foot. It just seemed so fucking weird to me. Only years later did I find out they were looking for something called a Babinski reflex. It seems only the newly born and the dead don’t have one. I’ve written an essay about the incident that appears in BROOKLYN NOIR 3 and a poem about it for THE LINEUP.

If you could ask one question to any writer living or dead what would it be?

I would ask Shakespeare who he really was.

Is writing worth the sacrifice?

A: Most casual readers, I think, tend to have romantic visions of the life of writers and artists. My life is anything but romantic. Writing is a job and it’s a struggle like any other job except that it doesn’t always come with a steady paycheck or paid vacation time or benefits. Is it worth the struggle? That’s easy to answer for myself. Yes, I would do this insanity all over again given the same choices. I wonder sometimes, though, if my family feels the same way. My wife and kids—they’re not really kids anymore—have had to make sacrifices too because of my choice of career. We haven’t traveled as much as we would have liked to. My kids didn’t go to the colleges they might have gone to had I been a clerk or worked in middle management. My wife has had to work summers to keep us afloat. So when I write on my acknowledgment pages that none of this would have any meaning without the love and support of my family or when I get up and accept awards and thank my family, I couldn’t express just how much I owe to them.

Thank you Reed for a thoughtful and insightful interview.

Reed Farrel Coleman links:

Author website
Facebook
Twitter

In addition to the audio book ‘Gun Church’ coming out this November, look also for ‘Hurt Machine’, reportedly the last Moe Prager book, coming from Tyrus Books, December 2011