{"id":351,"date":"2011-11-14T23:06:04","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T23:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=351"},"modified":"2018-10-21T17:05:18","modified_gmt":"2018-10-21T17:05:18","slug":"roger-smith-and-dave-zeltserman-interview-each-other","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=351","title":{"rendered":"Roger Smith & Dave Zeltserman"},"content":{"rendered":"

interview each other<\/h3>\n
\n

Roger Smith interviews Dave Zeltserman<\/h4>\n

Dave Zeltserman<\/a>\u00a0writes the darkest brand of crime fiction, putting a contemporary spin on a tradition that goes way back to Jim Thompson and James M. Cain. His novel\u00a0Small Crimes<\/a><\/em>\u00a0was an NPR selection as one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of 2008.\u00a0Pariah<\/a><\/em>\u00a0was named by the Washington Post as one of the best books of 2009.\u00a0Killer<\/a>,\u00a0Outsourced<\/a>,\u00a0Caretaker of Lorne Field<\/a><\/em>, and\u00a0Essence<\/em>\u00a0are all coming over the next 18 months. He took time out from his punishing schedule to talk to\u00a0Roger Smith<\/a>\u00a0about psychotic noir, Kung Fu moves and Hollywood deals.<\/p>\n

Dave, the first two books in your \u201cbad-ass out of prison trilogy\u201d Small Crimes<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Pariah<\/em>, have attracted a huge amount of attention. I\u2019ve read the upcoming\u00a0Killer<\/em>, and in my opinion it\u2019s even better than the others, and is sure to get heaped with praise. Now, you don\u2019t write the kind of formulaic crime fiction \u2013 with antiseptic good guys fighting off cardboard baddies, full of cartoonish violence \u2013 that seems to find its way onto the bestseller lists: your protagonists are the bad guys, about as mean a trio of bastards as you could wish to meet. Talk about your decision to take the road less traveled.<\/p>\n

Well, Leonard March, my protagonist in\u00a0Killer<\/em>, might be a former hitman with 28 kills behind him, but I think he still comes across as sympathetic as he\u2019s reduced to little more than a toothless old wolf hollowing futilely at the moon, with all these forces working against him. But yeah, Kyle Nevin, from\u00a0Pariah, is certainly a bad guy. Really a force of nature, every bit as destructive as a hurricane. And Joe Denton from\u00a0Small Crimes<\/em>\u00a0is certainly a piece of work also.<\/p>\n

At one level I\u2019m just trying to write strong stories that will grip the reader, but what I\u2019ve come to realize is at another level I\u2019m also trying to provoke and challenge my readers. By the end of\u00a0Killer\u00a0the reader is definitely taken out of their comfort zone, and\u00a0Pariah, while at one level a fierce crime novel, at another level it\u2019s very subversive, and among other things is an indictment of our celebrity-crazed society and how we\u2019re willing to make some of the worst people into celebrities to sell books, movies and TV shows.<\/p>\n

My first book,\u00a0Fast Lane<\/em>, follows along these same lines. It comes across as psychotic noir, but it\u2019s also very much a harsh deconstruction of the PI genre. The book was published by a small press in the States, so it didn\u2019t get much distribution, but I\u2019ve heard from a lot of noir fans who love this book, but the book also has gotten an almost virulent reaction from some hardboiled PI fans who either consciously or subconsciously realized what I was doing with it.<\/p>\n

The \u201cbad-ass\u201d trilogy is written in the first person, with an unreliable narrators reminiscent of the great Jim Thompson\u2019s The Killer Inside Me<\/em>. Why did you choose this point-of-view?<\/p>\n

All three of my bad-ass guys are at different levels unreliable narrators, at least in their perceptions of the world around them. While Jim Thompson showed with\u00a0A Swell-Looking Babe<\/em>\u00a0that you can write an unreliable narrator with 3rd person, I think it would\u2019ve been near impossible to write\u00a0Killer<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Pariah<\/em>\u00a0in anything other than 1st person. Those two really needed to be written that way since getting the reader into Kyle and Leonard\u2019s heads and their thought processes was critical, especially with their unique way of perceiving the world.\u00a0Small Crimespossibly could\u2019ve been 3rd person. That one was more the way it felt to me\u2014also some of my favorite crime fiction reads have been first person noir novels like Thompson\u2019s\u00a0Savage Night<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Hell of a Woman<\/em>, Cain\u2019s\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/em>, Marlowe\u2019s\u00a0Name of the Game is Death<\/em>, so I wanted to give readers the same sort of thrilling ride with\u00a0Small Crimes<\/em>. Anyway, first person point-of-view seemed to fit well with this trilogy, especially given that with all three of my noir heroes once they leave prison they go on their unique quests.<\/p>\n

Pariah<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Killer<\/em>\u00a0are very much Boston books, and they draw on the true story of a legendary Boston bad guy. How does your hometown influence your writing?<\/p>\n

Pariah\u00a0was strongly influenced by my living most of my life in the Boston area. Like a lot of people from the Boston area, I was fascinated by the Whitey Bulger story, and for years read everything I could about him and the South Boston mob. It really is an amazing story\u2014you\u2019ve got Whitey Bulger as Boston\u2019s most feared crime boss, and his brother, Billy Bulger, is State Senate President. Stories would come out about Billy squashing state police investigations into his brother, while Whitey would lean on other state pols to keep his brother in power. Quite a symbiotic relationship. And Whitey was really a piece of work\u2014if he found out someone in the neighbourhood came into some money, he\u2019d help them out by warning them that there was a contract on their heads, but for a price he\u2019d see if he could make the contract to go away. And then it turns out that he\u2019s an FBI informant who corrupted his FBI handlers\u2014in effect using them to wipe out his competition, as well as warning him whenever someone wanted to give evidence against him. A lot of South Boston history worked its way into Pariah. And the city became one of the major characters of the book. Pariah is very much Boston noir.<\/p>\n

Killer<\/em>\u00a0was also very loosely inspired by John Martorano, a Boston mob hitman who killed 20 people, then worked out a deal that got him out after 12 years by providing evidence against Whitey Bulger. In Killer<\/em>, I took it one step further where my hitman is arrested on a racketeering charge and is able to work out immunity and 14 years for testifying against his Boston mob boss, and only after the deal is made do the authorities learn the true extent of his crimes. Other than this premise, Killer<\/em> has nothing else to do with Martorano, but areas around Boston do play a big role in the book.<\/p>\n

Unlike most writers, you fearlessly jump genres.\u00a0The Caretaker of Lorne Field\u00a0<\/em>(coming July 2010), an eerie and atmospheric New England fable, reminds me a little of H.P. Lovecraft. Don\u2019t you drive your publishers crazy by resisting being pigeonholed?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure Serpent\u2019s Tail would\u2019ve preferred that I publish\u00a0Caretaker<\/em>\u00a0under a pseudonym. All about branding, right? But I\u2019ve had horror stories published, and have written novels like\u00a0Bad Thoughts<\/em>\u00a0which are a mix of horror and crime.\u00a0Essence, which is out next year, is also mix of crime and supernatural with some metaphysical elements.\u00a0Caretaker, though, is probably the best book that I\u2019ve sold, and I\u2019m grateful for Overlook Press for publishing it, especially since it\u2019s a hard book to categorize. On the one hand it\u2019s an allegorical fable, but it\u2019s also got this noirish vibe about, but also with this creepy horror feel to it.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the story of how the novel came about. We used to have this type of tree on our property which had this root system spread under our yard where hundreds of these little trees would pop up everyday. I think these things were actually weeds, but they\u2019d grow as big as a tree, and they\u2019d grow fast\u2014you\u2019d have a forest of them if you weren\u2019t careful. After a few days they\u2019d start developing these thorns, and they\u2019d get tougher to pull out if you didn\u2019t get to them right away. So everyday during the summer I\u2019d be walking around our property and pulling out hundreds of these suckers. After a month of this, I told my wife I was going to use this for a novel. She thought I was crazy, but this is how\u00a0Caretaker\u00a0came about, and it turned out to be my wife\u2019s favorite of my sold books\u2014and I think the favorite of my friends who\u2019ve read books before I sell them.<\/p>\n

You once told me that you see yourself as a pulp writer, and that if Gold Medal paperbacks were still around you\u2019d be one of their authors. Talk a bit about the great pulp writers who influenced you.<\/p>\n

Okay, I\u2019ll tell you why I said I would\u2019ve been a Gold Medal author. After I wrote\u00a0Essence<\/em>, all the rejections were the same\u2014too dark, too gritty. This agent read it who used to be an assistant editor at Gold Medal, and she told me the same\u2014too dark for today\u2019s market. But she also told me that if she were still at Gold Medal she would\u2019ve bought the book in a heartbeat. So there you have it, I was born about 30 years too late. But I guess if I was born 30 years earlier, I\u2019d be dead now, or at least close to it, so what the fuck.<\/p>\n

The Gold Medal authors I enjoy include Jim Thompson, Dan Marlowe, Peter Rabe, David Goodis, Gil Brewer, Charles Williams and Richard Prather. Discovering Jim Thompson was especially liberating, seeing how he\u2019d break all the rules but still make it work. Seeing his schizophrenic split-ending of\u00a0Hell of a Woman<\/em>\u00a0was almost like a religious experience. Reading those Jim Thompson books helped me break out of the rigid writing structure I was stuck in and more than anything help me find my own voice. There\u2019s a strong Jim Thompson influence in my first book,\u00a0Fast Lane\u00a0(as well as a Ross MacDonald influence), but none that I can see in my other books, even if some of them have borderline sociopathic unreliable narrators. I just don\u2019t see Thompson\u2019s influence in the style or the plotting in those other ones. Years after writing\u00a0Small Crimes<\/em>\u00a0when I was going through the copy edits I did notice a Dan Marlowe influence that I hadn\u2019t been aware of. Other than that, I think these authors probably helped influence at some level my writing tightly plotted books.<\/p>\n

Dave, calling you prolific is an understatement. You put James Patterson to shame, and he has a sweatshop of flunkies writing his stuff! Tell us about that monster work ethic of yours \u2013 and does the black belt in Kung Fu help?<\/p>\n

Roger, I don\u2019t know. Partly, I think it\u2019s a mirage\u2014it took me so long to break in that I had a large backlog of books that I\u2019m now selling. I\u2019m certainly not writing at the level of George Simenon who would write a book in 6-12 days. If I pushed myself I could maybe write four books a year, but in today\u2019s publishing world it doesn\u2019t make sense to do that. The days are gone when writers like Ed McBain, Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block could publish 4-5 different books a year under different names. Publishers these days, unless you\u2019re a mega bestseller, only want to publish one book a year from an author, and they don\u2019t want you competing against them by publishing books with other houses. It\u2019s probably okay for me to publish my crime noir with Serpent\u2019s Tail and my supernaturally-tinged books with Overlook Press, but I\u2019d be pushing it if I tried publishing a 3rd book a year with someone else. So from this point on I\u2019m limiting myself to writing two books a year, and will spend the rest of my time working on screenplays and other projects.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been studying martial arts\u2014Kung Fu and Tai Chi\u2014for about eight years now, and it does help in keeping the brutality and fighting in my books more realistic. Not that there\u2019s a lot of fighting in my books, but what is in there makes sense. With all the training and sparring that I do, I understand what it feels like to be punched, and I understand how much damage can be done when someone knows what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

One of your upcoming books,\u00a0Outsourced<\/em>, has been optioned for the movies. Let\u2019s hear about the book, and what attracted Hollywood.<\/p>\n

I wrote\u00a0Outsourced<\/em>\u00a0back in 2004\u2014at that time it was the 4th book that I had written, and it\u2019s probably the closest book to my own situation. The book has this oddball group of out of work software engineers who have been made obsolete due to outsourcing. Out of desperation they come up with a brilliant plan to rob a bank, or more precisely, rob the safe deposit boxes of a particularly brutal Russian mobster. The plan almost works, and things only go downhill from there.<\/p>\n

This was one of those frustrating books where I had editors at several large NY houses try to acquire it only to be turned down because their editorial boards were afraid outsourcing wouldn\u2019t be an issue by the time the book would be released in 2005 (any question now why the NY publishing houses are struggling??). But while it was having little luck in NY, my agent sent it to Steve Fisher at APA, who is one of the top film agents in the business. Steve doesn\u2019t take on many projects, but when he finds something he loves, he usually pushes it until it gets made, and fortunately he wanted to take on Outsourced<\/em>. I think Steve assumed that the book would get bought quickly by someone in NY, and it caught him by surprise that NY passed on it\u2014not having a book deal definitely made selling the movie harder. But over the next 3 years we still came close several times\u2014at one point we almost sold it as a cable series, at another time two very hot screenwriters wanted to take it on but they had to drop it due to another commitment. But one of the Hollywood guys who was sold on the book was John Tomko, which made sense since he had produced\u00a0Falling Down<\/em>\u00a0and had been involved with\u00a0Ocean\u2019s 11<\/em>, and Outsourced<\/em>\u00a0is a bit of a mix of both of those. In 2008 we got Impact Pictures involved\u2014they\u2019re the guys who do the\u00a0Resident Evil\u00a0movies, and once they were involved we got Constantin Film for the financing, and the film was optioned. Right now they finishing up the script, and will be going out soon for a director.<\/p>\n

On the book front, after having a number of houses turn down the first version of\u00a0Outsourced<\/em>\u00a0because they feared outsourcing wouldn\u2019t be an issue by the time the book was published, I stripped out most of the outsourcing stuff from the book, making the engineers obsolete more because of time and their skill sets passing them by. This made the book leaner and more of a pure crime thriller. We still had everyone in NY turn us down\u2014supposedly because the book now is too dark and violent, but fortunately Serpent\u2019s Tail was quite taken by it, and the book will be released in the US this coming October.<\/p>\n

I think what attracted Hollywood to it is that\u00a0Outsourced\u00a0is very fast-paced with a strong story, compelling issues, and an interesting cast of oddball characters. And for all you software engineers out there who I\u2019ve worked with over the years and are thinking you might see yourselves in these characters, you\u2019re out of luck. The characters are completely fictional, at most composites. None of you have a case, so give it up!<\/p>\n

Talking of software engineers, you were part of that world until a few years back. When did you start to write and how tough was it committing yourself to being a fulltime author?<\/p>\n

I was a software engineer for 25 years, most of it in the esoteric art of building network management software. Anyone who looks for me on Amazon will find along with my crime novels some technology books. During most of my career, I was at a leadership level where I was expected to define what needed to be built, architect the product, design it, and then lead a team in building it, and where I\u2019d still end up building a large portion of the software. At that level I had to be dedicated to the job. But there would be stretches where I\u2019d find myself between projects, and to keep myself sane I would work on a book. In \u201992I was in one of those stretches and I wrote\u00a0Fast Lane<\/em>. Then I had to shut myself down to writing until \u201997 when I hit another slow stretch and wrote\u00a0Bad Thoughts<\/em>. In 2001 I was part of a company that got bought by Lucent, and in 2003 they laid off the whole division, but not before paying us substantial bonuses, and I wrote\u00a0Small Crimes<\/em>\u00a0before finding another job. In 2004 the writing bug had gotten in too deep and I wrote\u00a0Outsourced<\/em>\u00a0in whatever time I could squeeze in, but by this time I was starting to lose some of my enthusiasm for software development. In 2006 when the company I was at folded, I wrote Caretaker<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Pariah<\/em>\u00a0before looking for another job, but I already reached a point where more than anything I wanted to write and was having a hard time mustering the necessary enthusiasm for the demands of my new job. When the film options for\u00a0Outsourced<\/em>\u00a0sold, I quit to write fulltime\u2014at this point I didn\u2019t have much choice. Writing was all I wanted to do.<\/p>\n

Astonishingly, between all the novels you still find the time to write short stories. Is this a passion of yours?<\/p>\n

I always read a lot of short stories\u2014everything from Hammett\u2019s Op stories (and I reread those every few years), to HP Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jay Friedman, and many others. As a kid I used to always go through the Alfred Hitchcock paperback collections whenever they came out. So yeah, I like short fiction, especially now short hardboiled and noir fiction, which is part of the reason I started\u00a0the Hardluck Stories webzine<\/a>\u00a0a few years back. For me writing short stories is easy\u2014while a good day might be 2000 words for a novel, I can sit down and pump out a 5000 word short story in one sitting. The problem is there aren\u2019t too many paying markets for short fiction, so these days I tend to only write stories if I\u2019m being invited to an anthology. But I did hear from Ellery Queen that they\u2019ll be buying my second Julius Katz story, and I\u2019ll keep writing more Julius Katz stories as long as they want them.<\/p>\n

Judging by your output, you don\u2019t have much free time. But who do you read when you want to kick back and put the feet up?<\/p>\n

I tend to stick with a lot of the older writers. I love Donald Westlake, but have only read about half of his 100 or so published books and want to work through the rest of them. I like Lawrence Block and tend to read his books when they come out. I recently discovered George Simenon\u2019s\u00a0romans durs\u00a0(serious novels), just finishing\u00a0Dirty Snow<\/em>, and plan to read more. Last year I made a point to reread all of Hammett, also read a bunch of Peter Rabe.<\/p>\n

Newer writers, other than yourself, who I\u2019ve read recently and like a lot include Paul Tremblay\u2014his narcoleptic PI sounds gimmicky, but it\u2019s actually the most original and best hardboiled PI I\u2019ve read in years and Sean Chercover. I also like Scott Phillips, Max Allan Collins recent Hardcase Quarry books and Vicki Hendricks. Scott Smith only writes a book a decade, but I think he\u2019s a tremendous writer. Ed Gorman has been around for a while, but I love his stuff\u2014he has that Gold Medal sensibility with just this great style to his writing. There are other writers also, that\u2019s just a sampling, but I do mostly stick with crime fiction.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s next from the pen of Dave Zeltserman?<\/p>\n

I have 4 books coming out:\u00a0Killer<\/em>, The Caretaker of Lorne Field<\/em>, Outsourced<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Essence<\/em>. Outside of those I have 3 books that still need to be sold. One of them,\u00a0Vampire Crimes<\/em>, think\u00a0Sin City<\/em>\u00a0with vampires. Very hardcore, ultra violent stuff, but with strong noir sensibilities. It\u2019s one of those books that young editors have loved, but then they get shot down by their bosses because a) it\u2019s a vampire book that\u2019s not a teen romance b) it\u2019s a thriller that\u2019s actually noir. Seriously, those are the reasons we\u2019ve been given. But one of the producers involved with\u00a0Outsourced\u00a0loves this book and is working on a film deal for it, and eventually NY will come to their senses.<\/p>\n

I also wrote a retelling of Frankenstein<\/em> from the point of view of the monster. Usually I don\u2019t spend more than a few hours researching any of my books\u2014but with this book I spent 6 months of research. In this retelling, the monster is a heroic, if not tragic, figure, while Victor Frankenstein<\/em> has far more depraved reasons for wanting to build this creature than what was given in Shelley\u2019s book. This is a book I\u2019m very high on. I think under normal times this would\u2019ve sold quickly, but my agent was sending it out around the time the publishing world was crumbling last fall. But I am keeping my fingers-crossed that big things will happen with this book.<\/p>\n

My 3rd unsold book is more of a commercial thriller, but with enough of my sensibilities in it to make it something I\u2019m happy with. We\u2019re waiting until the market improves before sending it out.<\/p>\n

As far as what I\u2019m writing now, I\u2019m working on a very dark noir novel that I\u2019m gearing for Serpent\u2019s Tail. After that I have a 4-book crime noir series in mind that I\u2019m very excited about.<\/p>\n

Thanks Dave, it\u2019s been a pleasure talking to you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dave Zeltserman interviews Roger Smith\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Roger Smith<\/a>\u00a0was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now lives in Cape Town. Before turning to a life of crime, he was a screenwriter, producer and director. His debut novel,\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>, was published internationally in 2009, and is in development as a movie with Samuel L. Jackson to star. His next thriller,\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>,\u00a0is being released in the U.S. and Germany in February 2010, and in the U.K. in August.<\/p>\n

Roger, I\u2019m going to get to\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>\u00a0and South Africa and Cape Town and movie projects soon, but first I\u2019d like to mention something very cool about the blurbs both myself and Ken Bruen gave you for\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>, which by the way, has already gotten a bunch of well-deserved starred reviews. So here\u2019s what I find cool. In different words, both Ken and I are saying the same thing about\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>, that it\u2019s dark, brutal, poetic and haunting. Where we differ is only that I sense a strong Elmore Leonard influence, while Ken sees more of a Charles Willeford and James Ellroy influence. So to put you on the spot, which influences, if any, do you see yourself in\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Dave, it\u2019s hugely flattering for a newbie like me to be compared to these great writers, all of whom have influenced me over the years. A couple of reviewers have also picked up on the Elmore Leonard thing, and I can only imagine it\u2019s because\u00a0Wake Up Dead\u00a0<\/em>is an ensemble piece like most of Leonard\u2019s books, with the POV shifting between a number of different characters, and there\u2019s something Leonardesque about the attraction\/ repulsion relationship between hot American widow, Roxy Palmer, and conflicted ex-cop turned mercenary, Billy Afrika.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve always loved about Elmore Leonard is that he doesn\u2019t write mysteries: everything is out there from page one and his characters are driven by a weird kind of karmic energy. What\u2019s so enjoyable is the suspense, the anticipation of what will happen when all these messed-up people collide. If I achieved a little of that, I\u2019m a happy man. But the body count in\u00a0Wake Up Dead\u00a0is way higher than in Leonard\u2019s books \u2013 especially the later ones \u2013 hence the James Ellroy comparison, perhaps?<\/p>\n

Okay, I\u2019d like to get to more on\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>, but first,\u00a0Mixed Blood, South Africa and movies. You burst on the scene last year with your first novel,\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>, which is a brilliant debut with a great compulsory vibe to it, and is a book that every crime fiction fan I know who has read it has loved. How\u2019d this book come about?<\/p>\n

Dave, thanks for talking me up! The book started writing itself, somewhere in the back of my head, a long time ago. I grew up under apartheid in South Africa. As a teenager in Johannesburg, I watched white cops mow down black school kids my age during the 1976 youth uprising. A few years later I was drafted into a white army fighting a meaningless bush war against older versions of those black kids. Disaster Zondi,\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>\u2019s Zulu investigator, is one of those kids 25 years on. And my rogue cop, Rudi Barnard, is a relic from the apartheid era, roaming the badlands of Cape Town, still slaughtering people darker than himself.<\/p>\n

Around ten years ago I moved down to Cape Town. People say it looks like the south of France, or California, just more beautiful. I fell in love with a woman who grew up out on the Cape Flats \u2013 a sprawling ghetto outside the city \u2013 home to millions of people of mixed race, where the rape, murder and child abuse statistics are the highest in the world. The true stories she told me, and the world she introduced me to, changed my view of Cape Town forever.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I went with her to prison to visit her brother. He\u2019s in his thirties, a human canvas of prison artwork. Since the age of fourteen he has spent a total of two years out of jail. He knows if he ever goes out into the world again he won\u2019t stand a chance, will end up where he always ends up: back in prison. Part of that man found his way into my ex-con night watchman, Benny Mongrel.<\/p>\n

So, I had these men \u2013 products of South African violence \u2013 running around in my head, looking for a home. Then I saw a TV news report about an American couple who\u2019d robbed banks in the US and were hiding out in Cape Town. After they were captured they were sent back home to do serious prison time.<\/p>\n

This story made me think: \u201cwhat if?\u201d What if a man with a past, a man on the run \u2013 Jack Burn \u2013 brings his family to Cape Town, seduced by those images of mountains and beaches and freedom? What if they are building new lives for themselves when they are confronted by a random act of violence \u2013 a collision between the Cape Flats and privileged Cape Town \u2013 that hooks them into the world of Rudi Barnard and Benny Mongrel and Disaster Zondi? Those \u201cwhat ifs\u201d became\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>.<\/p>\n

While I saw a strong Elmore Leonard influence in\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>,\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>\u00a0to me felt almost like a very violent Richard Stark\/Parker book, with a Parker-like American fugitive on the run in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Man, I love those Parker books! I first read\u00a0The Hunter\u00a0<\/em>aka\u00a0Point Blank<\/em>\u00a0as a teenager, and I was blown away by the book\u2019s stripped-down prose and amoral universe. I still have that dog-eared little paperback on my bookshelf.<\/p>\n

But, I suppose I tried to write what I like to read: a fast-moving, multi-character story without too much padding. I get very bored with those flabby, overlong, crime novels that bog down in endless navel gazing and descriptions of the landscape (inner and outer), or spend pages telling you about a character\u2019s taste in wine, coffee or music. Almost as if the authors are ashamed of writing genre fiction, and feel that by fluffing up their manuscripts, they\u2019re making them more \u201cliterary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mixed Blood\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>\u00a0both are very visual. You\u2019ve been involved in films and TV in South Africa?<\/p>\n

Yes, I have directed and produced film and TV, and worked as a screenwriter, which is mostly a frustrating experience. Anybody in the movie business will tell you that screenplays spend so much time in turnaround that your head\u2019s left spinning. Out here in South Africa, the movie industry is tiny and underfunded, so I have a stack of unproduced screenplays (among them a couple of thrillers) gathering dust. The TV market is more robust, and I have written everything from cop shows to comedies, to dramatic series dealing with the HIV\/Aids epidemic. You name it, I\u2019ve written it. Everything except soaps.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m writing novels fulltime now, but having a screenwriting background helps with plot, structure, pace \u2013 and dialogue of course. It also encourages a certain leanness, stylistically.<\/p>\n

You portray the Cape Flats as a violent hell-hole where death is cheap for everyone. Is it as bad as you portray it, or worse?<\/p>\n

Worse. I\u2019m been amused by some of the responses to my depiction of Cape Town from the city\u2019s elite, as if I\u2019ve just gone and slapped the prettiest girl at the party! Cape Town is not a mellow, temperate spot. It bakes and blows and burns in summer. The sea rages and the city floods in winter. And two thirds of the population live on the flipside of the Cape Town picture postcard \u2013 the Cape Flats \u2013 which is about as violent a place as you\u2019ll find outside of a war zone.<\/p>\n

In both\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>\u00a0I was interested in capturing what I believe to be the reality of many people\u2019s lives, without sentimentalizing that reality, even if it\u2019s uncomfortable. I know I\u2019ve got it right when readers from the Cape Flats are astonished that I\u2019m some white guy. They tell me that I\u2019ve portrayed their world with the eye of an insider.<\/p>\n

Rudi Barnard is quite a character, one that most readers, at least those unfamiliar with South Africa, probably think is a gross exaggeration. How realistic is he?<\/p>\n

Dave, Barnard is all too real, man . . . He\u2019s a composite of a number of thugs from South Africa\u2019s past, some of whom I have met. In the 80s \u2013 during the darkest days of apartheid \u2013 a group of South African cops, chosen for their brutality, were seconded to a hit squad responsible for assassinating political activists.\u00a0The hit squad members, mostly white Afrikaners who are now middle-aged, were nothing less than state-sanctioned psychopaths, given complete license to do their worst. These men, often devout Calvinist Christians, justified their actions as the work of God \u2013 as fanatics often do.<\/p>\n

After Mandela came to power, some of them were offered amnesty from prosecution if they appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and confessed to their crimes. Others were imprisoned. Smaller fish, like Barnard, just disappeared \u2013 some back into the police, others into civilian life. But they are still out there. So Rudi Barnard is fiction, but based on fact.<\/p>\n

Rudi\u2019s favorite meal is a gatsby. Tell me about those. Do you eat them?<\/p>\n

A gatsby \u2013 nothing to do with F. Scott Fitzgerald \u2013 is the Cape Flats\u2019s contribution to world cuisine: a bread loaf the size of an alligator head, stuffed with steak, baloney, fries, onion and egg, lashed with mayonnaise and chili sauce that can clear backed-up drains.
\nIn my carefree youth I fought down a few gatsbys, but I\u2019d be terrified to go near one now!<\/p>\n

Mixed Blood\u00a0has been optioned, with Samuel Jackson to play Disaster Zondi. How\u2019d this come about, and any news on its development?<\/p>\n

These movie deals are very exciting, as you well know, Dave. My agent, Alice Martell, has an association with Jody Hotchkiss, who was instrumental in selling properties like\u00a0The Kite Runner<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0American Gangster<\/em>\u00a0to Hollywood studios. Jody got\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>\u00a0to Samuel L. Jackson, who loved it and immediately wanted to play the Zulu detective, Disaster Zondi.<\/p>\n

The book is in development with GreeneStreet films. Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You\u2019re Dead<\/em>) is adapting, and Phillip Noyce (The Quiet American, Patriot Games, Salt<\/em>) is on board to direct. Shooting is scheduled for late 2010 in Cape Town, so I\u2019ve got my autograph book at the ready.<\/p>\n

If you could cast the rest of the film\u2014Jack Burn, his wife, Benny Mongrel, and of course, Rudi, who would you pick?<\/p>\n

Okay, I\u2019ll play! For me there is only one Jack Burn: Viggo Mortensen, with his tough\/ vulnerable, brooding quality. Naomi Watts looks a lot like the Susan Burn of my imagination, and she\u2019s a fantastic actress. Rudi \u201cGatsby\u201d Barnard is a man-mountain of flesh, so casting him would be interesting! John Goodman (of course) comes to mind, but he may be a little old. Dave, you once suggested Brendan Gleeson, and though he\u2019s not quite built to the scale of Goodman, he could definitely play Barnard. Benny Mongrel, a one-eyed, mixed race, ex-con \u2013 covered in gang tattoos \u2013 is another challenge for the casting director. For some reason I see Giancarlo Esposito in the role. Now, Esposito is a very debonair, handsome man, but he has the compact leanness of Benny M., and with state-of-the-art FX make-up, he could pull it off.<\/p>\n

I understand\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>\u00a0are very hot in Germany. Any touring plans?<\/p>\n

Mixed Blood<\/em>\u00a0(translated as\u00a0Kap der Finsternis<\/em>) did really well over there last year, attracted a lot of great press, and was number one on the influential KrimiWelt 10 Best, the choice of 19 top German, Swiss and Austrian critics. It also made a bunch of \u201cbest of 2009\u201d lists in the German-speaking countries.<\/p>\n

Wake Up Dead<\/em>\u00a0(Blutiges Erwachen) is out this February, and my publishers have invited me over in early March for appearances at a series of high-profile crime fiction events in Germany and Austria. The Germans take their crime writing seriously, so I\u2019m really looking forward to this trip.<\/p>\n

Roger, getting back to\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>\u00a0and Elmore Leonard\u2019s influence, the large ensemble is part of it, but also the leanness of the writing and the way the characters violently collide. Also, the desperation of the characters brought\u00a0Rum Punch<\/em>\u00a0to mind.<\/p>\n

Elmore Leonard famously said: \u201cCut out all the bits that readers skip.\u201d Words to live by.<\/p>\n

South Africa is a society still divided by race, and increasingly, wealth. Predatory crimes like home invasions and carjackings frequently bridge that divide. Both\u00a0Mixed Blood<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>\u00a0begin with violent collisions between privileged Cape Town and the Flats, incidents so commonplace that they often don\u2019t even make the local news. What fascinates me is to look beyond the statistics, to get into the people who are flung together by these violent events, and the impact on their lives.<\/p>\n

Something that I\u2019ve always admired about Elmore Leonard is how he \u2013 unlike many other male crime authors \u2013 writes great female characters. His women aren\u2019t bimbos, happy homemakers, or psychotic femmes fatale, they\u2019re ballsy, vulnerable, conflicted and real.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Wake Up Dead<\/em>\u00a0I wanted to take on the challenge of writing a female protagonist, and Roxy Palmer, the American ex-model, just seemed to jump fully formed onto the page. I loved writing her, and enjoyed the fact that her good looks and street smarts catapulted her from a Florida trailer park to the runways of Paris and Rome, and then to Cape Town where she married a South African gunrunner for his money. It\u2019s great to have a foreigner, an outsider, in my Cape Town mix, because I can use her to highlight bizarre elements of South African culture. The conversations Roxy and Billy Afrika have about race, apartheid and African voodoo were fun to write.<\/p>\n

Billy Africa is a great character. Is he coming back?<\/p>\n

Yeah, I had a good time with Billy! I have no immediate plans for him, but you never know . . .<\/p>\n

A couple of bloggers have already commented on the opening line for Wake up Dead<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cThe night they were highjacked, Roxy Palmer and her husband, Joe, ate dinner with an African cannibal and his Ukrainian whore.\u201d\u00a0 That really is a great opening line. How\u2019d you get the inspiration?<\/p>\n

Cape Town is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Africa. Eurotrash rub shoulders with gangsters and hookers from the old USSR. Leaders of dubious African \u201cliberation movements\u201d live in lavish exile on the slopes of Table Mountain, while plotting coups in their home countries. I wanted to show that side of the city, to dig beneath the veneer of glamor and sophistication.<\/p>\n

A few years ago I watched a documentary shot by a South African crew in some central African country. The leader of some ragged-assed militia, high on weed and bloodlust, cornered an enemy and \u2013 while the poor bastard was still alive and conscious \u2013 hacked out his heart with a machete and ate it while he grinned for the camera. An image that for me is uniquely African. I hope the opening line captures something of that.<\/p>\n

Saying you don\u2019t shy away from violence in your books is a massive understatement. The violence in your books is horrific, brutal and real. This is risky, especially when so many thriller readers seem to want over-the-top cartoons as opposed to anything approaching reality. You also step over another taboo for many mystery readers where you have children dying violently.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said, I live in \u2013 and write about \u2013 an extremely violent country. I don\u2019t write about anything that doesn\u2019t happen every day in South Africa. I loathe the comic book porno-violence of a lot of European and U.S. crime writing (and movies, TV and video games, for that matter) where bloodshed is used to titillate. People aren\u2019t turned on by what I write \u2013 they\u2019re shocked. As they should be. Each day children are raped and slaughtered out on the Cape Flats, just miles from where I live. My girl friend counsels abused children, and tells me stories that give me nightmares. If this was happening anywhere in the West, there would be an outcry. Here it barely makes the newspapers. I write about this stuff because it freaks me out. Writing about it seems the only way to stay sane.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had the pleasure of reading your third novel,\u00a0Dust Devils<\/em>. I know it\u2019s a bit overused these days to say a novel transcends the genre, but while\u00a0Dust Devils<\/em>\u00a0is still a page-turning thriller of the highest-order, you have certain themes running through the book that does make it seem to transcend the thriller genre, including the sad history of South Africa.<\/p>\n

When apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela came to power, there was a period in South Africa where we went from being the pariah of the world, to a role-model for transformation. A giddy time. Then Mandela moved on, and the rulers of the country became ever more self-serving and corrupt, as politicians tend to do.<\/p>\n

Apartheid is over, but crime, poverty and the highest incidence of HIV\/ Aids in the world present new challenges that are left largely unaddressed. Our constitution is glowing testament to enlightenment and individual freedom, but teenage girls are sold into slave marriages and our president has just tied the knot with wife number five (or is it six?). The South African commissioner of police is on trial for corruption, and a trail of cover-ups leads straight to the presidency. This is the background against which\u00a0Dust Devils\u00a0<\/em>is set.<\/p>\n

This book also seemed very personal to me, as if there was a bit of you in the hero.<\/p>\n

There is a little of me in Robert Dell, a forty-something white liberal journalist who goes on the run when he is framed for the murder of his wife and children. Dell and I both came out of the Left, the anti-apartheid movement, but Dell was a lot braver, more of an activist \u2013 I was one of those dinner party lefties, filled with loathing for apartheid but I didn\u2019t have the balls to get locked up for my beliefs. Or go into exile. But the loss of Dell\u2019s idealism mirrors the experiences of a lot of my generation.<\/p>\n

Roger, it\u2019s been great talking with you. One last question, anything exciting in the works?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working on a new book, which goes deep into the world of child abuse and murder in Cape Town. It\u2019s not an easy or comfortable book to write, but there\u2019s no way I can dodge this subject. Not if I want to sleep at night.<\/p>\n

Dave, thanks for taking the time out to interview me. I am honored.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

interview each other Roger Smith interviews Dave Zeltserman Dave Zeltserman\u00a0writes the darkest brand of crime fiction, putting a contemporary spin<\/p>\n

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