Thanks for the interest in Nick Stefanos. DOWN BY THE RIVER
WHERE THE DEAD MEN GO (1995) was written in a fever after my
return from Brazil in the winter of 1993/94. In Brazil I saw
children eating out of trashcans, children so weak from
hunger that they were passed out in the middle of the street,
and children no older than ten or eleven with murder in their
eyes. My world was rocked. I came back home and wrote a very
dark book.
In THE BIG BLOWDOWN (1996), which is set in the years between
1933 and 1959, Stefanos makes an appearance as a toddler at
the conclusion of the novel. I began to work him forward into
the succeeding novels (two, three and four in the D.C.
Quartet) with cameos as a teenager in KING SUCKERMAN (1997,
set in 1976) and as a young man in THE SWEET FOREVER (1998,
set in 1986). By the time of the contemporary SHAME THE DEVIL
(1999) he comes back into the narrative as a major character.
The book deals with physical, mental, and spiritual recovery
in a violent world, so I felt it was right that I pick him
up. Stefanos is still drinking, but there is hope--because
there's always hope. I recently completed a manuscript called
SOUL CIRCUS (to be published in 2003), the third book in the
Strange/Quinn series, in which Nick Stefanos returns for a
supporting but pivotal role. It is indeed hard to keep a good
man down.
Graham asks about the frivolous tone of crime novel reviews,
and if it makes us reach for the bottle or the gun. The truth
is, there's not a whole lot a writer can do about it. RIGHT
AS RAIN was a case in point; I certainly can't complain about
the reviews, but I found it odd that relatively few of them
discussed the book's obvious subject, our country's racial
divide. Apparently, in the minds of America's literary
gatekeepers, a crime novel can't be "about" anything other
than it's own ability to deliver the genre goods. In the
recent NY Times Best of 2001 list, THE COLD SIX THOUSAND was
mentioned under Fiction, and MYSTIC RIVER was classified as a
Mystery. Does anyone who has read the two books believe that
Ellroy's novel was more
"serious" or "literary" than Lehane's? MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (a
damn good book) was, to my knowledge, the first crime novel
to win the National Book Award. Lethem was blessed by the
establishment early in his career as a literary writer (I say
this with no bitterness; Lethem's a great writer and a
friend). Given his pedigree, is MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN a
"better" or more important book than, say, THE LAST GOOD
KISS? The point is, James Crumley
(substitute Charles Willeford or any other extraordinary
crime novelist of your choice here) was tagged as a mystery
writer early on, and subsequently had no chance to be
considered for that kind of award. It's a shame, and also
frustrating, because few novels are as powerful and
well-written (read: literary) as THE LAST GOOD KISS. But it's
also irrelevant. When the smoke clears, the books and not the
genre will be judged.
19th Century Washington: there's an interesting non-fiction
book called REVEILLE IN WASHINGTON, 1860-1865, by Margaret
Leech (originally published in 1941) which goes into
fantastic detail about Civil War-era D.C.
George Pelecanos
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