An Interview With James D. F. Hannah, Author of Because the Night

James D.F. Hannah is the Shamus Award-winning author of the Henry Malone series of private investigator novels, among other things. His story "No Man's Land" was selected for Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022, edited by Steph Cha and Jess Walter. Other short fiction has appeared in Playing Games, edited by Lawrence Block; Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, edited by S.A. Cosby; Trouble No More; Rock and a Hard Place; Shotgun Honey; Crossing Genres; and The Anthology of Appalachian Writers.

 

He lives in Louisville, where the bourbon he hasn’t drunk yet is.

 

One Bite at a Time: Your upcoming Henry Malone novel, Because the Night, drops June 19 from Down & Out Books. I’ve seen an ARC and it’s likely to get another Shamus nomination. What’s it about?

James D.F. Hannah: Because the Night follows up the events of the previous Malone novel, Behind the Wall of Sleep, where Henry was offered a chance to run for sheriff by Wallace “Bada” Bingham, owner of the local strip club, The Cherry Bomb. While he’s in the midst of the campaign, he’s asked by a pregnant woman at an AA meeting if he’ll look for her boyfriend, an ex-con who’s gone missing. Henry finds out his missing person case overlaps with a homicide being investigated by Jackie Hall, a state police lieutenant and probably the last trooper in the state who still likes Henry. In the course of the investigation, Jackie’s nearly killed, and Henry goes seeking revenge. He gets caught in a series of betrayals where friends become enemies and he finds himself part of an unlikely alliance in an effort to catch the man who shot Jackie and to bring down a criminal empire.

 

OBAAT: A lot of books put me off because the protagonist consistently makes wrong decisions just to raise the stakes. Henry Malone makes as many unfortunate decisions as anyone, yet you manage to ground them in such a manner that I can always understand why he did it, even while recognizing this is likely to break bad for him. How do you keep from falling into the trap so many others do?

JDFH: I’ve joked that the Malone books are a series of Pinocchio stories, where the goal is for Henry to grow up and become a real man. Part of that growth is making mistakes. I’m obviously a huge fan of Robert B. Parker and the Spenser novels, but during the series, Spenser eventually became infallible. He was always the smartest, strongest, toughest guy. Thus, he had no growth; there was nowhere for him to go. For Henry to stay interesting for me, and I hope for the reader, he’s got to keep growing as a character, and in that comes making mistakes, but also in the pursuit of him doing the best he can. That’s always Henry’s goal, to be a better person, typically in spite of himself.

 

OBAAT: Henry Malone is a former West Virginia state trooper and a recovering alcoholic with a bad knee and nine fingers, yet I, who was none of the above, feel empathy for him, never sympathy. I know it’s no accident, but how do you pull that off?

JDFH: Henry’s not really in that Raymond Chandler model of “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” He’s very often an asshole, and he has a complicated series of relationships, ranging from Billy, his father, to Lily, his girlfriend, to Woody, his AA sponsor. Plus, Henry is a character of scale. He’s not Reacher or Jack Ryan—the guy you call to find a missing nuclear device and returns as a blank slate in the next book. When Henry finds himself in circumstances which require violence, he doesn’t become Rambo. He ends up damaged by these experiences, and they become part of his personal history, and they affect how he reacts to the world.

 

OBAAT: Why are the Malone stories set in West Virginia? Why not Kentucky or western Virginia or North Carolina or eastern Tennessee?

JDFH: Honestly, it was born out of necessity. I spent most of my first 40-plus years living in eastern Kentucky or southern West Virginia, with 16 years straight in the latter. I’d spent years trying to write a crime novel with no luck, because I thought they had to be set in a big city, and my metropolitan experience was, to be blunt, limited. So when it came time to start writing what became Midnight Lullaby, the first Malone novel, I decided I’d take the tropes I loved from PI fiction and just transplant them into West Virginia. And while I don’t live in West Virginia any longer, so much of it is just ingrained in me, and it’s easy to fall back into the rhythm of that storytelling and that environment.

 

OBAAT: Woody is not the typical psycho sidekick. He’s also a recovering alcoholic – Henry’s sponsor, in fact – and the voice of reason, right up until he dips into his substantial store of armaments and opens vats on whoop-ass on bad guys. What’s his backstory?

JDFH: Man, I wish I knew that myself. Woody started out as a one- or two-scene character in Midnight Lullaby, and the further I got into the book, the more I realized Henry needed someone to play off of, and Woody became an increasingly important character in the book. The benevolent sociopath is pretty stock in PI fiction since Parker introduced Hawk in Promised Land—you’ve got Robert Crais and Joe Pike, Walter Mosely and Mouse, S.A. Cosby and Skunk—but I wanted Woody to also function as a Jiminy Cricket (again with the Pinocchio references) who can be funny and earnest and balance against Henry’s abundance of bad ideas while also providing both a strong arm and those aforementioned armaments when needed. But outside of an anecdote he shares at the end of Complicated Shadows, Woody hasn’t offered much backstory, and I’m content with him staying mysterious. I’m sure at some point his past will come calling, and I’ll probably be as surprised as anyone.

 

OBAAT: Henry has two primary female influences in his life. Lily Wilder, the local high school principal; and Charlotte “Crash” Landing, the current sheriff, who he is running against for the office. Both are outstanding characters. (I confess to having a mini-crush on Crash, maybe because she is unattainable.) Both serve important roles in the story, yet neither reads like a character created to fill a role. Tell us a little about them.

JDFH: When I decided to give Henry a steady romantic relationship—the dating pool in Parker County is fairly small—I didn’t want that character to be Susan, Spenser’s partner, who became so perfect after a certain point that I dreaded when Parker would describe how slowly she ate. Lily couldn’t be around just to affirm Henry and his decisions, or to tell him how great he is, but she could tell him she loves him—the way a real partner would. She has her own interior life and her own opinions and no problem whatsoever in saying when Henry’s being an idiot.

Crash showed up in a non-Malone book, The Righteous Path, and I loved writing her. Since she became the acting sheriff at the end of that book, it made sense for her to play a role in these most recent Malone novels. She’s young, she’s smart, she’s grounded, and she’s very good at her job. She’s a wonderful contrast to Henry, and the dialogue exchanges between them are some of the most fun ones in the book.

 

OBAAT: What’s next?

JDFH: Right now I’m working on a standalone novel set during the week of the 1976 bicentennial. There’s a first draft completed, with a lot of revisions planned. I’m also hoping to explore Crash a little more in—fingers crossed—a series of short stories; we’ll see how that goes.