John McFetridge, Author of Every City is Every Other City

 It’s always a treat when John McFetridge stops by for a visit; if just doesn’t happen often enough. John’s a good friend and one of a small group of writers whose books I read as soon as they come out. The sole reason it’s been tso long since he was here is because he hasn’t written a book in a while, and I refuse to reward that kind of behavior in someone I enjoy reading so much, good friend or not.

 

His new book, Every City is Every Other City, is John’s first entry into the PI genre, and it’s as good, and unique, first PI book as I’ve read. We’ll talk about the book, his evidence hiatus, and what’s in store in the next few minutes. I’m sure you’ll enjoy his return as much as I have.

 

One Bite at a Time: Welcome back. It’s been too long since you were here. Of course, it’s been too long since you wrote a book. Why the hiatus?

John McFetridge: Thanks for the welcome. When I finished the 1970s Montreal trilogy I wasn’t sure what to do next. I co-edited Montreal Noir for Akashic and co-edited 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush and then I got involved with the organizing team for Bouchercon Toronto and edited the anthology, Passport to Murder.

 

OBAAT: This is your first stab at a PI novel. What made this the right time to go there?

JM: Let’s hope it’s the right time. It has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. You know that line about all novelists having one in the drawer? Well, I have a few in that drawer and the first one was a PI novel I wrote in the late 80s. But what really made this the right time for me was that I didn’t want to write about cops or professional criminals. Not as the main characters. I wanted to see the world through the eyes of someone who isn’t normally involved in the world of crime.

 

OBAAT: Gordon Stewart is the most low-key PI I’ve seen since Jim Rockford. Plus, he’s not a full-time PI. What led you to these decisions?

JM: Gord isn’t quite an amateur sleuth, he’s got a PI license and does work for a large agency when there isn’t any movie production going on in Toronto, but he is a reluctant sleuth. That’s what I was thinking about that may have led him to become what seems like low-key. I’ll be honest, I didn’t realize until I finished writing this book and was looking back at my other books that I discovered a theme I keep coming back to is the reluctance of some characters to really get into the game, to really commit to it, so to speak. I don’t think of writing as therapy but I think maybe that says something about my own approach. Maybe something I should take a closer look at.

 

OBAAT: Gord’s other gig is location scout for movies and TV. Where did that combo come from?

JM: I was a location scout and I thought it could be a good fit – finding places, finding people, they both involve a lot of working independently, asking around, driving, spending time alone. Plus there are usually some interesting characters on movie sets. 

 

OBAAT: I don’t see an obvious corollary in the PI canon that seems to lead to Gord, with the possible exception of Rockford. Which authors, books, or movies influenced you? 

JM: The big influences were Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski. And also a Canadian PI, Benny Cooperman created by Howard Engel. And Gregory McDonald’s Fletch. And Jim Rockford. One of the highlights of my writing life was writing an episode of a TV show that was directed by Stuart Margolin. At the table read I couldn’t help just smiling like and thinking, “I’m sitting next to Angel!” It took every ounce of strength I had not to call him Angel. Which was made easier by the fact he’s a very professional director and a warm and friendly guy, not really like Angel at all.

 

OBAAT: Who, or what, is the inspiration for Ethel, who is as a unique, and believable, a sidekick, as I’ve seen?

JM: Ethel Mack. Ethel MacGillicuddy. She says in passing that it’s not her real name and now one of my goals is to write a series and never give out her real name. There is some Lucy in her, and some Imogene Coca, and some more recent comedians. And for a few years my son took classes at Second City in Toronto so there is some of the attitudes of the instructors there. In the book I’m working on now someone commenting on her helping Gord says that she’s his Susan Silverman and Ethel says, “Please, I’m Hawk.” Gord, of course, doesn’t know who they’re talking about.

 

OBAAT: Gord’s other job and his relationship with Ethel allow you to explore a lot of popular culture, especially movies. Was that a serendipitous side effect, or was that the plan from the start?

JM: It was the plan. It was something I knew about so I wouldn’t have to research too much. Plus it’s a way to use material from screenplays I’ve written that didn’t sell. And I figure most people who pick up a PI novel these days are pretty familiar with the genre and with the kind of pop culture that gets referenced.

 

OBAAT: What’s next on your agenda? Another Gordon Stewart?

JM: Yes. It’s called It’s Always About the Money. I hope it will be out this time next year. Having a PI novel published is a dream come true for me and I don’t want to stop now. Plus, now I hope I can come to the Shamus Awards dinner at Bouchercon.

 

 

July's Favorite Reads

Swann’s Last Song, Charles Salzberg. Not the typical way to start a series—declaring it to be the “last” of anything—but there are a lot of unusual things here. Henry Swann is a skip tracer. Nothing as glorious or sexy as a bounty hunter. Swann just finds people who have split on wives or husbands, debts, unfortunate circumstances. It’s a pleasure, Swann thinks, to take the hot upper-crust woman’s money to find her husband; not so much when the man turns up dead and she still wants him to keep looking. The case takes Swann from New York to LA to Mexico to Berlin and back to New York to a resolution that isn’t what Swann expected at all. Swann’s pretty much an undesirable until he gets his teeth into the case and comes to the realization he wants to do this one right for a change and shows more mettle than he thought he had. This is one of those books that grew on me. I thought it was good while reading it, and found my thoughts on looking back growing fonder all the time.

Dirty Sweet, John McFetridge. A re-read for me, as McFetridge hasn’t been writing books as fast as I want to read them, so I started the Toronto Series over from the beginning. An outstanding first novel—the author had previously collaborated with Scott Albert to write the underappreciated Below the Line—all the things McFetridge would build on in Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Swap are here. Just the right mix of danger and fun. A lot of writers have been influenced by Elmore Leonard, but few have shown that influence more uniquely than is done here.

Bouchercon 2017: Friday

With my panel behind me and a fairly relaxing evening at the bar under my belt, Friday showed great potential. It did not disappoint.

Friday October 13

10:00 Urban Noir: City Settings where, despite the light pollution, there is darkness

Susan Calder did a nice job navigating through a challenge for any moderator: a panelist who rambles and forgets there are four other people up there. The rest of the panel picked their spots well and made it an educational and entertaining hour. To wit:

Tim O’Mara: If you own you call his neighborhood Clinton; it you rent it’s Hell’s Kitchen.

Michael Harvey wondered why most psychological thrillers are set in the suburbs. Gary Dvorkin: The suburbs may have taken over noir as the cities Disney-fied themselves.

Tim O’Mara: The street people who left Times Square had to go somewhere. Many of them wound up in his neighborhood.

Tim O’Mara grew up in Long Island and knew his first black person in college. His daughter grows up amidst far more diversity and has far fewer fears.

Tim O’Mara: In New York, “Writer’s block” means 2 or 3 writers live there.

Michael Harvey: “Urban noir” is the accumulation of individuals’ small evils.

Michael Harvey: When asked what something in his book means, he says that’s up to the readers, who must filter everything through their own experience.

Michael Harvey: There’s great ambiguity in life and people are too interested in putting labels on things, especially in America. You don’t know anything until you understand you know nothing.

This provoked a general back and forth on how impulses we’ve all had are based on potentially misinterpreting situations can inform what our characters do. In a book things can happen you’d wait the extra beat for in real life.

Michael Harvey: Genre labels have gone too far. There’s only good writing and bad. That’s how books should be shelved: “Good Writing” and Shitty Writing.”

11:30 Sweet Revenge: Writers who have used revenge as a motivation for their work.

Well, damn, people. We write crime. Who hasn’t used revenge, both as a character’s motivation and as a way to get back at the jackass who took the last Cinnabon at the airport? Mike McCrary hit a good balance of darkness and wit in leading an excellent panel through more than its share of thought-provoking comments.

Stuart Neville: Revenge is a flawed concept. It never works and just feeds on itself.

Stuart Neville: Plot is the consequence of characters’ desires. Revenge is always a strong motivator and its results always have consequences.

Stuart Neville: Revenge as character motivation is almost always about self-worth. Could just be a matter of someone feeling shamed.

Michael Wiley: The best revenge may be for the person to always have to look over their shoulder. Used The Last Good Kiss as an example.

Stuart Neville: Revenge takes many forms. In Ratlines, it’s the hero telling Otto Skorczeny he knows Skorczeny is a phony.

Stuart Neville: Trading Places is a great revenge story.

Stuart Neville: The IRA now lets the highest-level informants alone because the press would be too bad.

Victoria Helen Stone: It’s easier for a betrayed spouse to project his or her anger and desire for revenge onto the other man/woman instead of onto the spouse, who is the person who actually betrayed them.

Stuart Neville: The Irish exchanged justice for peace and a lot of people were put off because acknowledged killers got away with it and ended up in good positions.

Elizabeth Heiter: A funny revenge story can work. (Especially is the person seeking revenge isn’t very good at it.)

2:00 Mysteries of Toronto: Get to know the blood-soaked streets on Toronto

Okay, so not as blood-soaked as we might have been led to believe. An all-Toronto panel spoke to a mostly Toronto audience about crime in—you guessed it—Toronto. While the panel was fun and informative, most of the comments were of a “you had to be there” nature. One that stuck out came during a discussion of media coverage, from John McFetridge: People involved in newsworthy events always remark on how incomplete the coverage was, yet people form firm opinions based on those accounts.

3:30 Government Agencies: Authors writing about military or other government agencies

Who says people associated with government agencies have no sense of humor? Lots of good insights delivered with tongues often planted firmly in cheeks. Joseph Finder set the tone by admitting he made a gun mistake in a book once.

Gwen Florio: That’s the worst mistake you can make.

Joseph Finder: Second worst. The worst is killing a dog.

J. J. Hensley: Bolt-Action Remedy is the best-selling biathlon mystery in the world. Unless one of you publishes one tonight.

Mike Maden (seconded by JJH): You don’t study counterfeit money to identify it; you study real money. That way you can testify about what’s wrong with the counterfeit, as there a million ways to do it wrong. (Original comment by Maden was intended to show why to read the best fiction in your genre.)

This was a good panel but I had to leave early to make it to

4:20 20 on the 20s: Scott Adlerberg

Scott spoke about his new book, Jack Waters. Scott is one of those guys you’re never quite sure what the next project will be like, and this one is another departure, a historical novel about a man who, quite frankly, doesn’t seem to give a fuck. If you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Scott speak or read in person, rectify it. You’ll thank me.

4:40 20 on the 20s: Montreal Noir

Akashic continues its series of [Your City Here] Noir anthologies with Montreal, edited by John McFetridge and Jacques Filippi. A mix of stories, half of which written by Anglo authors and half by Francophones intended to capture the multicultural vibe of the city. McFetridge and Filippi know what they’re doing, the authors on hand knew what they were about, so it looks like another success for Akashic.

By then I was exhausted, and the serious drinking was yet to come. More on that later.

October's Best Reads

Back in the saddle in October and I have a few true treats to share.

The Long and Faraway Gone, Lou Berney. Deserves every award it won, and then some. A look at two damaged people who deal with their losses in different ways, told through examinations of two cold cases. Berney uses the wit he showed in Gutshot Straight and Whiplash River to keep what could have been a depressing story hopeful, never unrealistically so. Every time the story comes to a point where a lesser book would take one route, Berney takes the other. The result is unfailingly effective, both emotionally and as entertainment. A truly special book.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. I went to see David Swinson at a banned book event where he read from Lee’s masterpiece and confessed afterward I was the guy who’d never read it. David made me bring his copy home with me. Another book that deserves all its praise. The core story of racial hatred didn’t resonate with me as much as the book’s reputation implied, mainly because I’m 60 years old and there wasn’t much in there I didn’t already know. What surprised me was Lee’s easy writing and sly wit, each of which create wonderful characters and characterizations. To serve TKAM solely as a moral lesson does it a disservice. It’s a masterful piece of writing.

One or the Other, John McFetridge. Book Three of the Eddie Dougherty series, this time starting with the Brinks robbery and going through the 1976 Montreal Olympics. The tease of homicide has worn thin with Eddie and his personal life grows more important. McFetridge continues his move into Joe Wambaugh territory, writing less about cases than how the cases affect the cop. A nice look into the shifting responsibilities of a cop as cases come and go, told with all the style and wit one has come to expect from McFetridge.

Twenty Questions With John McFetridge

I have a soft spot for authors I feel write much better than most best-sellers but garner a small fraction of the recognition. Best sellers too often have to seek the lowest common denominator of reader. That’s how to become a best seller, not how to write the best book.

My taste leans toward those who put in the work to make their books as good as they can write them without pretense. They tell good stories with fleshed-out characters who speak realistic yet entertaining dialog and manage to surprise you while never breaking the compact to remain believable.

No one does that better than John McFetridge. I became familiar with John’s initial crime novel (Dirty Sweet) and blew through the remainder of his Toronto series about the Saints of Hell motorcycle gang as fast as he could write them. (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Let it Ride, Tumblin’ Dice.) The Saints were no literary version of Sons of Anarchy. (Which would have been tough, since Dirty Sweet pre-dates Sam Crow by two years.) John’s bikers are all about dressing in suits and moving away from the road and the tensions such a change provokes. They’re as much character studies—with the Saints as the protagonist—as they are crime stories.

John has since moved on. (Though I’d love to find out what happened to Nugs.) His current series shows the evolution of young Montreal policeman Eddie Dougherty as he grows from recruit constable to detective through the 70s. The series works its way through such pivotal Montreal events as the Quebecois separatist bombings (Black Rock) and the Canada-USSR hockey series (A Little More Free). Volume Three, One or the Other, drops tomorrow and looks at the 1976 Olympics. John was kind enough to drop by and talk with OBAAT about it.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about One or the Other.

John McFetridge: One or the Other is Number Three in the “Eddie Dougherty series.” It takes place in 1976 in Montreal with Dougherty teaming up with a cop from a suburban police force, Francine Legault, to investigate the deaths of two teenagers whose bodies were found in the St. Lawrence River. Suicide? Murder-suicide? Murder?

OBAAT: Black Rock was the story of a serial killer during the time of French Canadian nationalist bombings; A Little More Free looks at American draft evaders against a backdrop of the Canada-USSR hockey series. One or the Other tells of a $3 million armored—sorry, “armoured”—car robbery during the lead up to the 1976 Olympics. How do you decide which events to use in conjunction?

JM: For each book I do a lot of research and make up a timeline of events. I usually start with a big event – the October Crisis, the fire at the Blue Bird Café, and in this case the summer Olympics. Then I see what kind of a theme emerges from the events in the timeline. I use the Francis Ford Coppola theory that says the idea, or the theme, is the question and the book is trying to find the answer. These are pretty basic themes. For Black Rock it was what is the value of a life? A Little More Free was what are the consequences of trying to be yourself? And I like to have historical events as the beginning and the end.

OBAAT: One or the Other is the third Eddie Dougherty book, all of which take place during times of broader events in Montreal during the 70s. Is the research getting easier to do, or harder?

JM: Nothing ever seems to get any easier. But I will say it’s not getting any harder. I do enjoy the research.

OBAAT: It’s not like the 70s are ancient history. You were around during the events described. What have you learned you didn’t already know and what has surprised you the most?

JM: Sometimes it seems like ancient history, sometimes pictures from the 70s look very old. But you’re right, of course, it’s really not that long ago. I think the biggest surprise for me has been perspective. I looked at events in the 70s as a teenager and a young adult and now looking back at them as a guy in his mid-50s very different things seem important. I guess I’m mostly surprised by how people adapt and life goes on and we get by. All those news stories that were huge events just got dealt with and new ones came along.

OBAAT: Last time we spoke you said Eddie became a cop “because he didn’t like school and thought being in an office looked like being in a classroom. And he got to drive fast.” You went on to say he came to realize a lot of his job takes place when people are at their most vulnerable. Has that changed him since Black Rock?

JM: Yes, it has. In Black Rock Eddie was 23 years old. In One or the Other he’s turning 30. So, some of it is just the natural maturing that happens through your twenties, and some of it is what he sees and deals with on the job. Eddie didn’t consider himself a real deep thinker, he wasn’t a guy who thought much about a moral code or justice or victims or much of that – the things that often show up in crime fiction – but he is starting to now. I hope this series shows some of that development.

OBAAT: Let’s say One or the Other is going to made into a movie and you have creative control. Who directs it? Who’s Eddie? Even better, who’s Rozovsky, the crime photographer?

JM: My favourite director is John Sayles and I think a movie like City of Hope, the way one event bleeds into another and the characters’ actions are effected by events is a pretty good model for what I was after, so I’d say him. But a movie set in Montreal might need a Canadian director, someone like Denis Villeneuve who directed Sicario. Also, I worked on a TV show last year and one of the episodes I wrote was directed by April Mullen and she did a great job, so I’d say her. Rozovsky is tough to cast. If it was 1976 it would be Richard Dreyfuss – he has the Montreal connections from Duddy Kravitz, after all, but today, I don’t know, probably a Brit doing a Canadian accent.

OBAAT: No offense, but your books don’t sell at quite Lee Child or Michael Connelly levels, yet you’ve been with ECW Press since Dirty Sweet came out in 2006. That’s just about unheard of in the current publishing world. Describe that arrangement a little.

JM: None taken. Like most things in life, I think it was mostly timing. ECW have been around 40 years, but it’s really only been a commercial press for maybe 15 or 20 years (before that it was very academic) so I got in on the ground floor. And I think we all still have the hope that one of these days these book sales will take off. ECW now distribute in the USA as well as Canada and as long as we don’t lose our minds here and have some kind of Brexit and pull out of North America, ECW and I can continue to grow together.

OBAAT: You base much of Eddie Dougherty’s life on your brother, who joined the Mounties about the time Eddie joined in Montreal. Your Toronto series (Dirty Sweet, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Swap (Let is Ride in the US), and Tumblin’ Dice) feature criminals and they’re just as convincing as characters. So now the obvious question: what’s up with that?

JM: Thanks. I think a lot has to do with the KISS rule, keep it simple, stupid. I’m more interested in the day-to-day activities of the characters and I do like ‘regular guys’ (guy is gender neutral) more than quirky or really unusual characters. I don’t know why, really. I like the grinders. Sure, Sidney Crosby is a star but you need a few Matt Cullens to win the Cup.

OBAAT: Who is your favorite character of all you’ve written?

JM: I do like Eddie Dougherty. And Judy McIntyre, there’s more to come from her, for sure. I spend very little time in my writing with creepy bad guys. Some writers do that really well and I don’t mind reading it but I like to spend time with people I like so I do like most of the characters in my books.

OBAAT: When asked what you liked best about being a writer, you said, “When it works.” What do you like least?

JM: I guess the obvious answer is when it isn’t working. But I’ve been doing this a while now and I’m getting a little more confident and feeling that it can be worked out. I really like this, it’s a dream come true to be able to do this so there isn’t much about it I don’t like.

OBAAT: How often do you write?

JM: Every day. I have the really lucky position that when my kids were little I was a stay-at-home dad so I was out for the workforce long enough to really lower expectations going back in. And then I made some money writing for TV so that took some pressure off, too, so now even though I don’t make much money from my books it’s enough to justify my doing it every day.

OBAAT: What do you hope readers will take away from your books?

JM: When the movie Bull Durham came out I read an interview with the writer-director, Ron Shelton and he said, “If you give people their dignity they’ll never let you down,” and I liked that so I think I’m trying to show people in vulnerable situations still have their dignity. That would be my take-away. Dougherty is going to go through a lot but he isn’t going to get too cynical and certainly not misanthropic. 

OBAAT: Endings are hard and can make or break a book. Americans as a whole tend to like happy endings, and those are the books that tend to sell best. What do you look for in an ending?

JM: I do like to see some resolution to the question posed by the book. That’s probably why I tend to ask easy, obvious questions ;).

OBAAT: Who is your intended audience?

JM: I am. I write the books for myself so that I can feel after putting in all that work at least one person really likes it.

That's a badass answer, so I used a badass picture

OBAAT: What author, living or dead, would you most like to meet, and what would you like to know?

JM: I’d like to meet Stephen King, maybe watch a baseball game with him but he could never get me to like the Red Sox. I’d also like to meet Alice Munro and find out if after she won the Nobel Prize there was a non-Canadian moment when she said, “Fuck you,” to all those old English profs who called her writing, “housewife stories.”

OBAAT: Do you have a specific writing style?

JM: Just the keep it simple style.

OBAAT: You said before you liked to read “crime stories and noir and all that but they don’t often have a lot of insight into how relationships work.” Why do you think that is, and to you think is a natural weakness in the genre? Who do you think writes crime and does that well, if anyone?

JM: I think in much of the crime fiction the roles are set early on and then the characters play them out. Anti-heroes and femme fatales tend to be a little predictable.

OBAAT: What book are you reading now?

JM: I just finished Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers and now I’m reading Charlotte Armstrong’s Mischief, the first novel in Sarah Weinman’s Women Crime Writers of the 40s and 50s collection. I’m looking forward to all of them.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

JM: The next Eddie Dougherty, set in 1980. American hostages in Iran and the first Quebec referendum on separation – referendums seem to be in the news these days, everything old really is new again. Also, spies.

OBAAT: You and I both write series, which means there are multiple thigns happening with multiple books all the time. For example, you’re promoting One or the Other. I expect Dougherty Number 4 is done, or damn near, and you’re already thinking about ED5. Do you ever have trouble remembering which anecdotes happened in which books? (I’m asking for a friend.)

JM: Yes, I do. I’ve started to keep a lot of crib notes. And my excellent editor has found mistakes I’ve made. In this series there are some big changes in the characters’ lives; Eddie and Judy get married and they might have kids, Eddie does move up to detective and Judy settles into being a high school teacher so I hope the same things don’t keep coming up, but I know some will sneak in. I just used one of my uncle’s stories, a little life advice he had about social drinking and how to not become an alcoholic and I realized I’d used the story once before. But it wasn’t in a Dougherty novel (it was in Tumblin’ Dice) and I like it so I used it again.

Twenty Questions With John McFetridge

John McFetridge isn’t a prepossessing figure. His Wikipedia article is two books out of date. His Amazon author page has no bio. He’s as level as any person I know, unless you want to discuss the virtues of The Departed after a few drinks. His writing is somewhat the same. No car chases or series of explosions. His Toronto series of novels about the Saints of Hell motorcycle gang (Dirty Sweet, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Swap (Let it Ride in the U.S.), and Tumblin’ Dice) show the qualities of both Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins. Ongoing crimes told from the participants’ point of view, the police often no more than an inconvenience.

His current series, featuring Montreal Constable Eddie Dougherty, are almost police procedurals. Almost, but this is John McFetridge, so not quite. Set in Montreal during the early 70s, Black Rock is, on its surface, the story of a young cop working the periphery of a serial killer case. The bigger story is how people lived day-to-day while Quebecois separatists blew up buildings on a regular basis, the killing of young women hunted to the side. His most recent, ALittle More Free, uses the murder of a Yank draft dodger to explore attitudes about the Vietnam War from both sides of the border.

I didn’t just make up that Elmore Leonard comparison. Linda Richards, writing in January Magazine, called McFetridge's voice "colder and starker" than Leonard's. "McFetridge is one of a new breed of Canadian crime fictionists building neo-noir that seems touched by both the humor and self-consciousness of life north of the 48th.” Quill & Quire reviewer Gary Butler also compared his work to Leonard, writing, “both writers seamlessly mix the police procedural with perp procedural to underscore the parallel lives of members of the opposing teams. But where Leonard tends to favour Hollywood-homicide banter, McFetridge keep the quips to a minimum, preferring punch to panache. As a result, the only time his prose gets purple is when fists are flying.”

While researching John’s bio for this introduction, I saw on his Amazon author page that “customers also bought items by” Dana King. I can’t say how that makes him feel, but I felt damned good.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about A Little More Free.

John McFetridge: It’s the second book in the Eddie Dougherty series. He’s a young cop in Montreal. In this book it’s 1972 and while still a constable in uniform patrol he’s also working with a homicide detective to find out who killed an American man who’d come to Canada to protest the war in Vietnam.

OBAAT: Where did you get this idea, and what made it worth developing for you? (Notice I didn’t ask “Where do you get your ideas?” I was careful to ask where you got this idea.)

JM: The first book in this series, Black Rock, takes place in 1970 during something we call in Canada the “October Crisis.” It was really a movement that went on through the 1960s and involved a lot of bombs and armed robberies and in October of 1970 two political kidnappings. There was a lot of that in the world at the time, of course, over a dozen high-profile kidnappings in 1970 alone (including the American, Daniel Mitrone, in Uruguay). So that was a natural setting for a crime novel, I thought. (Well, actually I got the idea after reading Adrian McKinty’s excellent Sean Duffy novels.)

So, to follow up 1970 I looked for more historical events that would be interesting to develop into a novel. In September of 1972 there was a tragic nightclub fire in Montreal and 37 people were killed. It was arson and there was a huge hunt for the men who’d set the fire. But as I was looking at 1972 one of the things that came up a few times were stories about Americans who’d moved to Canada. The numbers are unknown, anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000, and each with their own reason. But it seems like it’s still a topic that people don’t know very much about. So that made it worthwhile developing, I thought.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write A Little More Free, start to finish?

JM: About a year. I’ve been a stay at home dad for quite a while and my schedule is really set by my kids. So, I usually start a book in September when they start school and I try to finish by the end of June when they finish. This one may have gone into July and August.

OBAAT: Where did Eddie Dougherty come from? In what ways is he like, and unlike, you?

JM: A recent review of this book said Dougherty was, “dogged,” and I think that’s the feature that’s most like me. Dougherty isn’t special in any way, he’s not a brilliant Sherlock Holmes detective and he has no great defining moment in his life that drives him, he didn’t see his parents murdered or anything like that – it’s not personal in those kinds of ways. He took the job as a cop because he didn’t like school and thought being in an office looked like being in a classroom. And he got to drive fast. Once he became a cop he started to realize that a lot of the job takes place at moments in peoples’ lives when they are most vulnerable and if he’s just not an asshole he can help people make things better.

Eddie is a composite of a few people. He’s the same age as my brother and joined the police the same year my brother did (and for some of the same reasons) but Eddie’s mother is French Canadian, which is based on my best friend when I was growing up.

OBAAT: In what time and place is A Little More Free set? How important is the setting to the book as a whole?

JM: The book takes place in the fall of 1972. At first I thought the time and place was hugely important. I’m very pleased with a couple of reviews that say the book paints a very real portrait of Montreal at the time but as I write more in this series I have come to realize that the most important thing is Eddie and the other characters. The specific events could only be Montreal – the French-English divide, the American war resisters, the fanatic interest in the Canada-USSR hockey series, and so on – but really, the specifics could change, it could be the black-white divide in an American city or the Protestant-Catholic divide in Belfast and the fanatic interest in soccer games in Glasgow and the themes would be the same.

OBAAT: How did A Little More Free come to be published?

JM: After I wrote Black Rock, the publisher at ECW Press asked me if I could write another one and I said, “But there was only one October Crisis.” He said, yeah, but something else must have happened in the 70s. So now I just finished the third in the series which takes place in 1976 and I think the next one will be set in 1980. If I can keep going someday Eddie will be a cynical, old, alcoholic detective.

OBAAT: What kinds of stories do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors, in or out of that area?

JM: Recently I realized that I like to read stories that have insight into people. That’s what I like about Elmore Leonard novels, there’s usually a few characters who are ‘regular guys’ but we get to know them pretty well. I’ve also started to like the kind of classic post-war American writers like John Cheever. I didn’t used to, I used to be one of those guys who complained about the ‘domestication of American literature,’ but I appreciate it more now. And also, thanks to the great work by Sarah Weinman, I’m starting to read women crime writers of the 40s and 50s, Dorothy B. Hughes, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Margaret Millar and others. And probably my favourite writer is Alice Munro. One thing I realized lately is that the part of our lives that usually means the difference between happiness and misery is mostly how well we get along with the people closest to us – for guys like us that usually means how well we get along with women. And I like crime stories and noir and all that but they don’t often have a lot of insight into how relationships work.

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

JM: When I was in high school I started fooling around with an 8mm camera and I wanted to be a filmmaker. I tried that for a long time. I think I was intimidated by the idea of writing novel (a movie can be saved by great actors, great music, great editing). Every novelist I heard talk was well-read, well-educated and well-travelled and I was none of those things. But it turns out I’m a terrible filmmaker and these days every movie I like seems to be based on a novel (or some work of non-fiction) so I figured if I was going to tell the stories about the kinds of characters that interested me I’d have to write a book. That took quite a few years, too, but now I feel that I can tell the stories that interest me with no compromises. And, it turns out, books can be saved by great editing, too.

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

JM: I think the most important experiences I’ve had are the people I’ve met in my life. I use little things from real people all the time for character.

OBAAT: I’m a huge fan of your Toronto series of novels, all of which are set in the time they were written. What caused you to look back to fairly recent history in the Dougherty books?

JM: Thank you very much. I like those Toronto books, too. I started writing those books because I was fairly new to Toronto and trying to figure it out. It’s a rapidly changing place with so many new people moving in all the time. I started Dirty Sweet with the idea that people come from all over the world to Toronto for the opportunity to get something going. And some of them are criminals. As I was writing those books I was looking more and more into the characters’ backstories and that kind of naturally took me into the past. I was very interested in how the present day characters came to be and that meant I spent a lot of time thinking about their pasts.

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

JM: When it works. When I write a scene and I think it’s good and I can move on. I think it’s probably a similar feeling that a musician gets when a solo goes well.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you think has had a major impact on your writing.)

JM: A lot of the people who have influenced my writing have been my family and friends and people I’ve met in my life. There’s a scene in Tumblin’ Dice in which a guy explains his theory on how to be a social drinker and not become an alcoholic and it’s word-for-word something my uncle told me.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants? Do you even wear pants when you write?

JM: I do wear pants. I have tried almost every way of writing. And a lot of tricks. I heard a guy say once that he treated going to write like going to work and put on a suit and tie and sat at his desk. I don’t go that far but I do try to treat it like a job. For these novels set in the 70s I make a timeline of actual events and then fit my story, kind of on the fly, into those events.

OBAAT: Give us an idea of your process. Do you edit as you go? Throw anything into a first draft knowing the hard work is in the revisions? Something in between?

JM: I edit as I go and try to get a pretty clean first draft. But I am conscious all the way through that my editor will help a lot with the revisions. There’s the mystery aspect, of course, the way the crime happened and how it gets figured out but there’s also the character development, which is probably more important to me. Although I don’t feel that anything in the novel isn’t important.

OBAAT: Do you listen to music when you write? Do you have a theme song for this book? What music did you go back to over and over as you wrote it, or as you write, in general?

JM: I have made playlists of songs from each of the years the books are set. It’s been interesting to see the changes in pop music through the 70s. One thing that stands out for me is that disco music was a lot better than I realized at the time. Now, without my very fragile teenage ego involved I can appreciate the funk roots of disco and the liberating feeling of the music. And the horn sections.

OBAAT: If you could give a novice writer a single piece of advice, what would it be?

JM: While I was doing research today, reading a newspaper from 1980 I came across this quote from Jack McClellan, a “legendary” Canadian publisher: “If you want to write commercially, abandon pretense and go for the throat. If your field is literature don’t worry about the market.” I think it still holds up today. It sounds simple but those two things, abandon pretense and don’t worry about the market aren’t so easy. Most of us think we can have a foot in both camps and that’s what sinks us.

As an aside here I want to say that on the drive back from Bouchercon in Raleigh to Toronto I stopped in a small town in Pennsylvania off the I-79 and felt I’d been there before. Then I realized it’s because I thought I was in Penn’s River. So you shouldn’t worry about the market.

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

JM: That’s a good question. I think tone is very important. I like to have a clear idea what the novel is about when I start – the theme. A review (http://indextrious.blogspot.ca/2015/09/a-little-more-free.html) of A Little More Free said that the central theme of the book was, “… the ways in which we don’t really know those whom we consider our enemies,” and that was my starting point, thinking of the “other,” that set the tone. Then I work on a plot that can reveal that theme and then the characters that will inhabit that plot.

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

JM: I admire the books that, to me, speak in the characters’ voices. When I read Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women it was kind of an opening for me to start to understand my mother better. But as for a book I wish I could have written I’m not sure, there are so many.

OBAAT: Favorite activity when you’re not reading or writing.

JM: I am a reluctant traveler but I am learning to appreciate it. I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I can travel a little. And for me that even means a weekend in Buffalo, an exotic American city.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

JM: Another Eddie Dougherty novel. I just gave my publisher Dougherty #3, which will be published in 2016. It takes place in 1976 when the summer Olympics were in Montreal and it’ll be called, One or the Other (from the song, The Shape I’m In by The Band, “Save your neck or save your brother, Looks like it’s one or the other.” So now I’ve started #4 which will take place in 1980. No title yet.