Keith McCafferty
What is the first mystery novel you remember reading?
The first mysteries I ever read were Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, specially the first batch of his short stories called “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” though I eventually read every page of “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” which my mother gave me on my eigth birthday. It was so heavy that it would put a dent in my skin when I rested it on my chest.
All mysteries are a search for the truth. I was well aware of this because I grew up fascinated by snakes in a part of Appalachia where many people are steeped in superstition about them. When my grandmother would visit, she’d stuff towels under the door cracks in her bedroom because she knew I had snakes. “Honeychile,” she would say, “I seed that hoop snake roll down the hill and strike a man dead, ” or “I seed that milk snake suck the breath out of the baby till he turned blued.” Now how do you responded to that? Having no one to turn to for the truth, I had to teach myself to read, and by the time I entered kindergarten I could tell you names of all 120 or so snake species in our country and many of the Latin names as well.
Later I read Jim Corbett’s “Man-Eaters of Kumaon,” the true accounts of the hunting of man-eater tigers in the foothill of the Himalayas, where I would eventually follow his footsteps many decades later. Corbett was a conservationist who, along with Indira Gandhi, did more to save the tiger in India than any other person. His hunts were a quest for the truth. What does the bent blade of grass mean? What do the paw prints tell you? Is it a male tiger who made the tracks, or a tigress? Old or young? Injured or unharmed? What animal was its last meal? Boar, chital deer, or man? The truth is there if you know how to read the clues. Fishing, my favorite pastime, is similar. You are searching for something unseen, under the reflective surface of water.
All of the these influences — snakes, fishing, the stories of Sherlock Holmes and tales of man-eating tigers — were key to me becoming a writer of mysteries.
What is the latest mystery novel you’ve read?
The last book I read was “I’ll Be Gone In The Dark,” the story of author Michelle McNamara’s search for the Golden State Killer. McNamara went to her grave trying and failing to discover the identity of one of our country’s most notorious serial killers. That is one of the problems with true crime, as opposed to mystery or suspense. The books don’t end as you would wish. The true identity of the Golden State Killer was only discovered a few months ago. This book is similar to “The Monster of Florence,” one of the best true crime books I have read, which incidentally was the inspiration for the Hannibal Lector series of novels.
I think too much emphasis is put on genre. Publishers pigeonhole books by genre, because they have to take into account where they are shelved in bookstores and libraries, but readers of mysteries don’t need to be so narrow-minded. I also admire police procedurals such as Michael Connelly’s excellent Harry Bosch series, which are not traditional mysteries, though they have elements of mystery in then. A good book is a good book.
Something all these genres have in common is that somebody dies, usually violently, and the story of the novel is the story of the hunt. My books, if I had to categorize them, are literary murder mysteries that emphasize place, character and humor as much as plot. It’s interesting because I started out as a crime reporter, then became a writer and editor for Field & Stream, where I establish a career as a writer of personal narrative and literary essay. Such writing is largely introspective and driven by the declarative sentence, with or without subclause. By comparison, novels are driven almost entirely by character and dialogue, and in my case, I hope, by humor. If you’d have told me 15 years ago that humor and dialogue were my strengths as a writer, I’d have looked at you funny. The point is that what you think you are good at and what you really are good at are not necessarily the same. I am a sterling example, and I mention this to prospective writers who doubt their abilities. You’ll never know if you can write a good novel until you try.
What are you currently reading?
The book I’m reading right now is one of Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer novels, I’m away from home and don’t recall which one. I should clarify that I am listening to a recorded version. I live in Montana, where a short drive is anything under two and half hours. Recorded books help the miles pass, and the reader is as important as the writer.
One of the most enjoyable parts of the publishing process for me are the conversations I have with Rick Holmes, the Broadway actor who narratives my novels for Recorded Books. In addition to acting in plays and musicals (he recently played the role of the evil father in the Broadway production of “Matilda,” based on the Roald Dahl children’s book), he acts in movies such as “The Post , in which he played the role of a Washington Post reporter, and television. Talking with Rick gives me an insight into the life of real working actor, and it is beneficial for me to hear my words spoken by someone else. I will ask myself, “Did I really need that sentence or dialogue attribution?” Usually, I did not. Less really can be more.
If you were designing a course on mystery fiction, what would be on your reading list?
Here I must make a confession. I have a form of reading disability that makes it difficult to read a book as it is meant to be read, starting a page one and proceeding to the end. Instead, I read most novels by skipping around, a sentence or two on one page, another sentence on another, so that after a few days I have read every sentence, though in no particular order, and little comprehension. This is not a productive was to read, especial if you read mysteries. Curiously, when I write a book, I do start at page one and progress systemically to the end. It is an exercise in sequential thinking, and therefore therapeutic.
When I was young this disability was less pronounced and I was a voracious reader. The first mysteries I enjoyed, besides the Sherlock Holmes books, were the detective novels written by Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler. I preferred Chandler because he was such a great stylist. One of the stylists I enjoy today is Alan Furst, who writes so evocatively about Europe in the chaotic fearful years preceeding World War II. Really though, most of you are probably much better read than I am when it comes to the current crop of writers.