CONTEST: I have two copies of Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead to give away. To enter, leave a comment with the name of your favorite rock writer or favorite profile of an artist, and let us know why. I’ll draw two names at random on July 8.

Before reading Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, my previous experience with Neil Strauss was limited. I knew that he had written for several publications, and that he had written books about Motley Crue, Jenna Jameson and pickup artists. His work for the former didn’t catch my eye in such a way that made me seek out his work the way I do that of folks like Greil Marcus or Ben Ratliff. And his work on the latter probably steered me the other direction. Strauss had cast his lot with those on the sleaze end of the spectrum, so I didn’t look to him for serious journalism.

The litany of names on the cover of his book made me curious enough to ask  the folks at !t Books for a review copy. When you’re promised interviews with R.E.M., Radiohead, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, etc., it’s clear you’ll probably find something of interest. What I did not expect to do was read this cover to cover, nor did I expect to take away true insights. I did both, and in doing so, quickly realized that this is the best book about music I have read in years.

Why? Well, as Strauss tells it, it is because he did this right, which means that before he had done it wrong. As he writes in the introduction, once the interview is done, the writer is pressed by deadlines, the stylistic constraints of the publication and the whims of the editors. The real person gets lost.

He went back to the 3,000 interviews he has conducted and “searched for the truth or essence behind each person, story or experience. Often it came from something I had previously ignored: An uncomfortable silent, a small misunderstanding or a scattered thought that had been compressed into a soundbite.”

That might sound strange; isn’t that what profile writers try to do the first time around? Yes, that’s the idea every writer subscribes to, but it doesn’t happen very often. As you’ll find while reading this book, these are the snippets that get left behind when the narrative is crafted, the rough edges. For the most part, these feel like the rare moments when these artists were real. An interview is a dance, with the subjects working hard to put forth the version of themselves they want people to see, and the writers working hard to penetrate that shell.

The fascinating thing is to see Strauss, who I associate with caddish behavior if for no other reason than the company he keeps, being a sympathetic ear. If these transcriptions are truly accurate, then he is among the most gifted interviewers I’ve read, able to show true empathy and understanding. His genuine interest and positively gentle approach (or so I assume; it’s hard to fully glean that from words on the page) cause these artists to let down their defenses are share genuine thoughts and feelings.

As if that wasn’t enough, Strauss also won me over with the book’s format. It seemed too clever by half at first blush, interview snippets broken up throughout the book, ostensibly grouped in thematic bunches. But it works. You’ll get two pages of an interview with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page where they discuss the co-opting of their sound by artists like Lenny Kravitz, followed immediately by two pages of Kravitz expressing disbelief that anyone could hear Led Zeppelin in his music. All of the material from one interview may be spread over half a dozen snippets peppered throughout this 500-page tome, but as you pick up the rhythm of Strauss’ organization, you’ll find yourself surfing through this effortlessly, marveling at the connections being made from one artist to the next.

Even the index is entertaining, as Strauss eschews the typical listing of famous names to instead include entries for “Best car wash in L.A.” and “Guys who say they are never going to date models or actresses but then end up engaged to one.”

At the outset I said I didn’t seek out Strauss’ work the way I did my favorite writers and critics. With Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, Strauss has vaulted to the top of that list. The interesting thing will be, now that he knows the right way to do things, will his profiles reflect it?

It was too difficult to narrow things to a top 10 in this, my first attempt at a best books of the year list. So, I offer instead a dozen, 12 books that were a cut above in 2010 (in alphabetical order):

Room – Emma Donoghue
A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
Daddy’s – Lindsay Hunter
Next – James Hynes
Print the Legend – Craig McDonald
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet – David Mitchell
The Wagon – Martin Preib
A Lesser Day – Andrea Scrima
Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart
Just Kids – Patti Smith
Pike – Benjamin Whitmer
Savages – Don Winslow

The pleasant surprise – while it feels as if I read a disproportionate amount of crime fiction these days – was that the list is fairly well rounded, with some so-called literary fiction, some crime fiction and some non-fiction.

What set these books apart was not simply having a great story or compelling characters. It was the fact that the authors were daring and adventurous. Every book here is evidence of an author taking chances, and in each case, those experiments and leaps of faith paid off handsomely.

From Emma Donoghue’s book told from the point of view of a five-year-old boy who has lived his entire life in an 11-by-11 room, to James Hynes’ telling of a seemingly mundane, detail-filled day that becomes horrifically the opposite, these authors were not content to tell stories in traditional ways. Jennifer Egan uses Power Point effectively, while Patti Smith bares her soul in an uncharacteristically candid memoir.

Other notable 2010 reads:

Ghosted – Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
The Damage Done – Hilary Davidson
Stranglehold – Ed Gorman
Slammer- Allan Guthrie
The Lock Artist - Steve Hamilton
I’d Know You Anywhere – Laura Lippman
Rut – Scott Phillips
Life - Keith Richards
Johnny Porno – Charlie Stella
Bob Dylan in America – Sean Wilentz

Pre-2010 books read this year that are worth recommending:

City of Thieves – David Benioff
Await Your Reply – Dan Chaon
The Ghosts of Belfast – Stuart Neville
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned – Wells Tower
Let’s Talk About Love – Carl Wilson

I read enough mystery and crime fiction series to last me a lifetime. Literally; the pace some of my favorite authors crank out books, coupled with the back catalogs of those I came to late, I could read nothing but for the rest of my life. So, it is with caution that I take on a new author. Getting hooked on a first book will force me to shoehorn a new series of books into a schedule that already lacks wiggle room.

It’s a good problem to have, however. Who isn’t always in the market for a good thriller? So, when this pitch hit my digital doorstop, I was intrigued enough to add to my list. Here’s the premise: An anonymous letter arrives in the mail, telling the recipient to “think of any number.” He does, thinking of 658. The letter continues: “Now see how well I know your secrets. Open the little envelope.” He does, and finds a number scrawled within: 658, along with a little poem: “What you took you will give, when you get what you gave. I know what you think, when you blink, where you’ve been, where you’ll be. You and I have a date, Mr. 658.” (For a sample of how puzzling this seems, try this little game from the publisher.)

The recipient wants to know how the sender could possibly have known, and what more he may know. So did I. It’s a pretty amazing hook, and one that drove me through a story with many twists and turns, chills and thrills.

The author is a newcomer. John Verdon is a retired advertising executive from New York who moved upstate  when he left the job. The idea of writing a novel turned into Think of a Number, which promises to be the first of many books about retired NYPD detective Dave Gurney. Like Verdon, Gurney has retired and moved upstate. He is drawn into the case when he gets a call from an old college classmate, Mark Mellery, the recipient of the letter.

It isn’t long before murder and mayhem become part of the mix, and Gurney realizes he is facing a very formidable opponent. The book is not without its faults. An interesting thread about Gurney finding post-retirement work altering criminal mug shots to create art is pursued enough to create tension in his marriage and then abandoned, and too much time is spent making sure the reader is aware that nearly every other law-enforcement person Gurney works with is a pain in the ass.

But these are the flaws of a first-time writer (and frankly, the flaws of an editor who needed to spill more red ink before the book went to the printer), and the core of the book – the plot, the devices of suspense and the main protagonist – all are strong and bode well for what promises to an interesting, inventive series.

Verdon is on a virtual book tour, and his stop here at Things I’d Rather Be Doing is one of the last. For more information about the tour and to see links to the other blog stops along the way, click here.

TIRBD: Advertising executive is a fairly common resume entry for successful authors. Is that vocation – essentially selling things to people – a particularly valuable training ground for fiction writers?

JV: It may be that experience in writing ads is helpful in a couple of ways. It focuses the writer more on the discipline of communication than on simple expression – on what a particular audience is actually hearing you say rather than on what you think you’re saying. It also gets you pretty familiar with and accepting of the editing process – for example, the benefits of removing unnecessary words. However, that being said, I think there’s a second dynamic at work. Sometimes people who want to write fiction go into advertising because it’s a way to make a living, and when they’re finally able to make a living via their first love, they emerge from that “temporary” ad career.

What came first: The premise of that first note asking Mellery to “think of a number,” or the character of Dave Gurney?

In my own imaginative process, plot devices always precede character development – but that’s simply a matter of sequence, not priority. I may think of an intriguing situation – say the number device in this book, or the inexplicable footprints in the snow – and that leads me into imagining what sort of larger story that situation could be part of. Imagining that story then starts to bring to life the kind of people who would inhabit that world and do those things, what sort of people they’d come into conflict with, what those people might look and sound like and so forth. The further I get into that process, the more important the elements of character become and the more the goals and feelings of the characters start to take over.

The troubled cop is a well-worn cliche in crime fiction, but you’ve turned that on its head by giving Gurney a stable, if troubled relationship with a woman who is a fleshed out character rather than simply a foil. Were you consciously trying to subvert that trope when creating Madeline and her relationship with Gurney?

Books that feature one central troubled character surrounded by two-dimensional foils bore me to death. They’re about as interesting to me as watching TV at the airport.  Think of a Number has a real married couple – equal partners – in the center of the story simply because I like it that way. It’s more interesting, more alive, more fun. If it subverts the common trope, all the better.

You’ve said that you didn’t have any genre or rules in mind when devising this story. When it became clear that this was going to become a series following Gurney’s character, did that necessitate any changes to the story or the character to make the transition to a second and third (and perhaps beyond) book more seamless?

I wrote the first draft of Think of a Number with no thoughts about a sequel or a series. That draft was somewhat bleaker and ended on a darker note than the final version. The relationship between Madeleine and Dave was more contentious, less hopeful. My agent and later my editor nudged me the direction of making the characters warmer and more inviting. The change made them more viable as an ongoing couple by creating room for optimism and growth.

You and your wife moved after your retirement to upstate New York, just as Gurney and his wife do. Were you discovering things as Gurney discovers them in the story, and if so, did this help you to keep him grounded geographically as he dealt with the challenges of the case?

Basically, the answer is yes. The fact that the couple in the book moved to the same part of the world that my wife and I did gave me easy access to the details and overall impact of the environment, physically and emotionally – much as growing up in the Bronx helped me with Gurney’s visit to one of the crime scenes later in the book. No research necessary.

Some awfully high-profile writers have blurbed your book. How do you feel about becoming a part of that fraternity and what has that meant to you as a newcomer?

The generous blurbs and their famous sources staggered me. I never expected anything remotely like that. It is a very strange thing to have read a particular author for many years, to have worshipfully devoured each new book, to have been in awe at the talent on display… and then to have that very same author welcome you to the club! It really does leave me at a loss for words.

What is the most random thing that has happened to you that made you think that there were forces greater than chance or coincidence at play?

Everything in the publication process of Think of a Number has been weirdly wonderful. I don’t have to tell you that this is a business where an awful lot can go wrong, where the water is full of reefs and torpedoes. However, the happy fact is that from the very moment that Molly Friedrich (my agent) brought this book to Rick Horgan (my editor), everything has proceeded with a degree of smoothness and success that I am told is almost unheard of. So much good stuff: the amazing blurbs and rave reviews, the bidding wars for foreign publication rights, the book’s appearance on so many “recommended summer reading” lists, and now the latest news –one week after its publication in Spain, it’s on the bestseller lists there. And Spanish is just one of the 19 languages in which it’s scheduled to be published. It’s been one good thing after another – one better thing after another. Quite astonishing!

David Shields lost me with little more than this: “(!?)”

In his new book (and I use the term “his” loosely, as will become clear in a moment), he makes the case that fiction is dead, and that nonfiction, specifically something he calls the “lyric essay” is the new best way to communicate. In making his case, he decided to construct the book largely through the work of other people. More than half of the 618 numbered paragraphs in the book are drawn wholesale from other sources, and are thus the words of other people.

“A major focus of Reality Hunger is appropriation and plagiarism and what these terms mean,” he writes. “I can hardly treat the topic deeply without engaging in it.” What he wanted to do was to simply have these lifted bits intermingle with his own, without attribution. His publisher thought otherwise, and forced him to include a list of credits. He asks the reader to ignore this, even to cut these pages from the book. “Who owns the words? Who owns the music and the rest of culture? We do – all of us – thought not all of us know it yet,” he writes.

So, how did that blip of punctuation above derail his argument? In a chapter headed “reality,” he includes a bit about the Stevie Wonder Song “Fingertips – part 2,” and how it is so real because someone in the band yells out a question about what key the song is in. Thing is, this isn’t Shields’ sentiment, but that of John Mellencamp. The snippet felt out of place and not in Shields’ voice, so I looked it up and found the following credit: “John Mellencamp (!?)” I can only interpret the part after Mellencamp’s name as snark, as in, “can you believe this guy thought that deeply about something?” If the source of a comment truly didn’t matter, if Shields’ reappropriation the context in which it appeared was the only thing I needed, then why did Shields’ feel the need to add that little hipster wink to the credit? It’s because he wanted to communicate that he was cool enough to join you in your surprise that Mellencamp would utter something so, well, real. As such, the source does matter. It matters a great deal.

That is far from the only flaw here. Shields has crafted an extremely thought-provoking argument here that explores the notions of fiction, non-fiction and reality that had me rethinking many long-held beliefs. The problem is that he writes in the same sort of absolutes that I’m sure bug him about people against whom his views differ. In a section about appropriating parts of the culture to reassemble them and say something new, he writes, “Anything that exists in the culture is fair game to assimilate in to a new work, and having preexisting media of some kind in the new piece is thrilling in a way that ‘fiction’ can’t be.” He’s certainly entitled to such a view, but to state it so definitively, to say, in essence, that fiction can’t be thrilling, is just dead wrong.

And that is just one of many instances where Shields circles back around to make that same point. He can’t imagine writing fiction any more, and can’t bring himself to read it, either. Fine, but in doing so, he is cutting himself off from a lot of great new work. God forbid we allow fiction and non-fiction and whatever new style Shields deems worthy to coexist, to march in zigzagging parallels toward the future, each adding something to the culture and to people’s enjoyment of it. In stating things so emphatically, Shields has joined the disturbingly growing group of people who have found that stating anything with enough volume, bluster and lack of room for argument makes people listen to you. In this, he is no different from Bill O’Reilly or Jeff Jarvis or anyone else bold enough to declare “that” is dead and “this” is the only sensible way forward. Call it the dick move; if you’re a big enough dick about things, you’ll energize your base and those against you in enough volume to create the kind of tension between the two camps that ultimately solves nothing.

It’s too bad, because Shields is clearly on to something. His notions of appropriation and repurposing leave a lot of room for exploring new ways to make literature and other communicative media take a leap into uncharted, exciting new territory. Seeking a way to do with writing what hip hop has done with music is certainly a worthwhile pursuit. But while no one would deny that as exciting as new music forms can be, sometimes a guitar-bass-drums combo can scratch an itch in a way that nothing else can, Shields seems to suggest that his new way is the only way. That’s a ludicrous argument. It’s no surprise. A look at Shields bibliography shows some of his motivation. After three well-reviewed but commercially dead works of fiction, he found his niche writing non-fiction that was as much about himself as his putative subject. If his forays into fiction failed, why not declare the entire form dead?

Anyone falling for that argument would, of course, but cutting off their nose to spite their face, ignoring the work of innovative fiction writers like Jonathan Lethem, J. Robert Lennon and David Mitchell, who continue to, yes, thrill as they seek new forms. I’m glad Shields is out there doing what he does, much as I’m glad the above writers and thousands more continue doing what they do. Contrary to Shields argument, all are contributing mightily to our culture.

It seems like an easy jab: those who can, do, those who can’t, teach. It’s also easy to fall into the mocked side of that dichotomy. How many writers take up a full-time teaching gig — for whatever reason — and maintain the same pace and quality they did before? Grading endless stories instead of writing your own clearly takes its toll. Unless you’re John McNally.

Now, I’m sure John would be the first to say that he would rather be writing during the times that he is teaching or grading students’ work, but he hasn’t let his duties as a faculty member at Wake Forest University or other teaching stints dull his progress. He just issued his fifth book in the past decade, the satirical After the Workshop. In addition, he has edited six anthologies, taken a crack at screenplay writing and continues to write and place short stories.

Given that output and work ethic, it seems we can put to rest any supposition that McNally’s characters are thinly veiled versions of their creator. After the Workshop‘s Jack Hercules Sheahan may share a bit of McNally’s resume — Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate and one-time media escort for traveling writers — but unlike McNally, Sheahan has debilitating writer’s block that has relegated his one-time debut novel in progress to a box tucked out of sight.

Sheahan is the latest McNally protagonist with more talent than ambition. These are working-class guys who have nothing handed to them… or if it is, it will probably just make things more difficult for them. But McNally renders these tales with considerable empathy and boatloads of sharp humor that allows him to tackle topics much deeper than he might otherwise be allowed.

McNally has been involved in academia for 27 years, either as a student or a teacher, and brings the lessons learned during that time to bear on his next project, his first non-fiction book, The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist. That book, forthcoming this year from University of Iowa Press, will perhaps offer some insights that will allow readers to better understand how it is possible for McNally to continue to crank out such top-notch fiction while his attention is pulled in any number of directions.

Caveat: I met John when taking a course he taught at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. I signed up for his class on short fiction after reading and loving Troublemakers. I was not disappointed; John was an insightful, funny and personable instructor, and it has been a pleasure to stay in touch with both John and his work since.

Note: McNally reads from After the Workshop at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City on Tuesday, March 9 at 7 p.m. I am hosting the reading, and will lead a Q&A with John after he reads. Listen online here.

TIRBD: While many novels have been written about writers and writing, none that I know of take on writing programs in general, and specifically the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, as directly as you do. That, coupled with the fact that you used real Iowa City institutions and geography made this really resonate. Was there ever a moment where you considered fictionalizing things more, and why did you decide instead to choose this path?

JM: When I was in the Workshop in the late ‘80s, I read a lot of books set in Iowa City, like John Irving’s The Water-Method Man and W.P. Kinsella’s The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and I still remember that shock of recognition I experienced every time a real place appeared in one of the books. In my first novel, The Book of Ralph, I used a lot of real places as well, but I never named the city, except to say that it was on the southwest side of Chicago, and I’ve since regretted it. With this book, I didn’t want there to be any ambiguity about place.

There is a real love-hate relationship with the Workshop here, and you’ll surely be asked how much of Jack is you given that your own time in the Workshop is so prominent in the promotion of the book. So, how much is you, how much is friends and acquaintances and how much is made up of whole cloth?

As with most of my fiction, my starting point is often autobiographical, but it tends to veer quickly away from that. I was a media escort in Iowa City; I graduated from the Workshop; I kicked around for a number of years before my first book was accepted. But I never experienced the writer’s block that Jack does, and I didn’t remain in Iowa City after graduating. (I moved back about seven or eight years later.) Jack is a slightly more pathetic version of who I was. But we shared the same fear that this whole thing – being a writer – wasn’t ever going to come to fruition, and there were many times, back when I was driving writers around as an author escort, that I questioned my reason for being, as Jack does. As for other people and places, I can say that some of the scenes grew out of conversations I was privy to, and some of the characters are composites of types of writers I’ve met, but that’s true of almost every book I’ve written. In The Book of Ralph, Ralph is a composite of three kids I knew, and yet everyone I grew up with thinks they know for sure who the real Ralph is. I’m suspect the same thing will happen with After the Workshop.

One significant way you differ from Jack is that you have published several books, with five novels and story collections of your own and several anthologies. Was there a point at which you were in Jack’s shoes, unable to finish something and wondering if you ever would? If so, what pulled you out of that? Are you ever scared that could still happen?

I have rarely had writer’s block. I’ve had stretches of not being able to write because of situational things in my life, but it wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to write about. Unlike Jack, I was always able to finish the books I was working on, but I wrote two novels before my first book was publi
shed, and I’ve since written two novels that haven’t seen publication. So, my fear isn’t so much that I’ll be blocked as it is that I’ll write another book that won’t get published. In that regard, I could empathize with Jack’s wondering what the hell his life is amounting to and what, if anything, he can do about it.

You’re becoming quite adept at poking institutions that don’t welcome the provocation. First came the Bush Administration in America’s Report Card (and, of course, ACT), and now the fabled Iowa Writers’ Workshop. This makes for edgier fiction, to be sure, but are there repercussions that ever make you doubt the wisdom of that course?

My way of thinking (and, I’ll admit, it’s probably not sound) is that you’re only going to suffer repercussions if you have something to lose. I suppose the Workshop will never ask me to teach there as a Visiting Writer, but you know what? It’s not something I’ve pined for, and there’s a 99.99 percent chance it wasn’t going to happen anyway. I haven’t been waiting by the phone, in other words. Also, my intention in writing the novel wasn’t to take down the Workshop or the publishing industry. It was to write about a guy with a crappy job who’s questioning his purpose in life. In doing so, I hold up a few institutions and gently poke them, but I honestly don’t think I’ve poked fun at anything that can’t take it. Oh, and I’ve gotten pretty good at building bookcases these past few years, so if the whole writing thing dries up as a result of some serious miscalculation on my part, I’ve got a fallback plan.

Humor again plays a part in your work, deployed most effectively as a way to deflate some of the odd inner workings of the Workshop and the publishing world. As a graduate of the Workshop and someone dependent to an extent on the publishing world, did you worry about biting the hand that feeds, and did that lead you to temper things at any point? Did the humor let you get away with more than you might have otherwise?

Humor lets you get away with a lot. In both satiric novels – After the Workshop and America’s Report Card – I’ve had to trim back places where it seemed too rant-like. In After the Workshop, I tried to leave no stone unturned. I wanted it all in there. But what happens is that the first draft had passages that were too essay-like, passages that lacked humor and didn’t do anything to service the story or the characters, and so those had to go. As for biting the hand that feeds me…no, I’m not worried about that. I never tempered anything in the book for that reason.

You mentioned the last time we did one of these Q&As that your next book would be your Gravity’s Rainbow. Is this that, or did this pop up in the middle? And to that end, when you start something, do you finish it or do you let the heat of inspiration pull you in a different direction when a new idea surfaces, no matter what it might interrupt?

I said that? Yeah; well…my problem is that I work on too many things at once. There’s a long, complicated novel that I’m working on, but when the idea for this novel was presented to me (I was having a conversation with my then-agent, telling her about my days as a media escort, and she said, “You should write that book.”), I sat down and wrote a few pages to see if there was anything there, but once I started writing, I didn’t stop until I was done. (Well, okay, I did stop to sleep and eat, but I kept knocking out a few pages a day.) With this book in the bag, I returned to the big novel again, but I’ve since had an idea for a short novel, so that’s what I’m working on right now. It’s unlike anything I’ve written, and I’m having a great time with it, so I want to keep going with it to see what happens.

Your next book is The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist. You have taught writing for years. Was the act of writing down your thoughts and ideas illuminating at all? Did the process of organizing potentially disparate notions cause you to rethink any long-held beliefs?

What it illuminated was just how damned hard it is to write a nonfiction book. I walked away with an even greater respect for nonfiction writers, for whom I already had enormous respect. I’m not sure it made me rethink any long-held beliefs, though. It’s a highly opinionated book, and after spending 27 years in academia as either a student or a teacher, and almost as long writing and sending work to magazines while writing books, I’ve formed a lot of opinions. The book does come with this warning: “You may not agree with me.” At some point down the road, I’ll probably update the book, and I suspect some of my opinions will have changed in the interim, so I’m looking at it as an amorphous project, and I’m granting myself permission to disagree with myself when the time comes.

After reading Steve Hamilton‘s first novel, A Cold Day in Paradise, it didn’t take me long to zip through the rest of his seven Alex McKnight novels. The last time I was this captivated by an author and his main protagonist, Michael Connelly was hooking me with his Harry Bosch books.

There are a few similarities there: A police background, a loner who pushes people away and a keen mind that is adept at solving crimes. There are similarities in the writers, too, in that both write extremely well about characters yet don’t let that get in the way of deftly plotted stories. Theirs are the kinds of books that reveal the whole “style over substance” argument as it relates to crime fiction a sham.

If Hamilton’s new novel is any indication, he and Connelly are soon to share another trait: successful novelists who are able to weave together a career alternating between series books and top-notch stand-alones. Connelly has proven adept at the practice, and Hamilton, with The Lock Artist, proves he is more than up to the task.

Instead of McKnight, a former pro baseball player and cop who now lives in a cabin in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we get Michael, someone once know as “the miracle boy” who now is a talented lock picker and safecracker. He is unlucky enough to show off his skills in the wrong company, and now he is forced into a life of crime. Further complicating things is that that “miracle” event left him unable to speak, so the best way he can communicate is through his detailed, skillful drawings. (If you want more than that, look around the web. Hamilton plays with time here, so to give away much more is to give away too much).

With this book, Hamilton has stepped up his game. Though the McKnight books are awfully good, The Lock Artist is the best thing he has done, a cleverly plotted, sophisticated story full of rich, well-drawn characters that leap off of the page. It should be a career-defining book, sating the appetites of patient fans pining for the next McKnight book, and drawing in many more who have been oblivious to this top-flight talent.

TIRBD: From a reader’s perspective, The Lock Artist is a book that clearly takes your writing to another level and is quite different in almost every aspect from the McKnight books. Does it feel that way from your perspective, and what signifies the differences for you?

SH: It does feel a lot different, yes. It’s a younger character, and the overall feeling in the book ties in a lot more closely to things I’ve felt in my own life. Not so much the lockpicking and safecracking, obviously, but the feeling of alienation and loneliness. With Michael, that feeling is a lot more dramatic, but otherwise the whole story could be like a strange dream version of my own teenage years.

You mention that writing Michael allowed you to write about alienation and loneliness. But Alex McKnight certainly deals with both of those things, too. How was this different?

I suppose you could do some psychoanalysis on me and find out why that’s such a recurrent theme – but in this new book those feelings hit a lot closer to home for me. Alex has his own brand of solitude, of course, but he was a good 10 years older than me when I first started writing about him (funny how I seem to be catching up to him now), and he’d already been through a career as a cop, a divorce, and a lot of other things that I can only imagine. In Michael’s case, he’s 17 and his life hasn’t even started yet. So, that’s something I could definitely relate to, looking back at that same point in my own life.

The book is quite specific in its detail about how to pick locks and crack safes, and has the feel of being more than a recitation of research. Did you try your hand at these things to get a feel for them and better your descriptions of the act?

I was fortunate enough to work with a lock expert – somebody who knows a lot about lockpicking and even more so about opening those $5 combination locks you see on every gym locker. (Very easy to open, it turns out.) I also found a gentleman who happens to be one of the best safecrackers in the world. He was incredibly kind and generous in helping me to understand what it feels like to open a huge, 800-pound safe. (He’s not a criminal, by the way! He’s a legal safecracker and that’s the only thing he does, every single day.)

Is technology getting to the point where a book like this might one day be historical fiction because everything will be electronic and skills like these will be dated?

Apparently (and don’t quote me on this), the electronic safes are fairly easy to crack if you have a special computer that can transmit the different codes at a high speed. There’s something about a good old-fashioned metal combination dial that people just naturally trust. I don’t think that’ll change for quite a while.

I would imagine that the character of Mike evolved for you as layers were added: young kid who suffered a tragedy and can now pick locks and can’t speak and is a great artist… did you worry at any point that you’d gone perhaps one step too far in giving Mike things to deal with, or did all of these seem vital from the start in terms of telling the story you wanted to tell?

It all started with the fascination with locks, and how that tied back to this thing that had happened to him. The muteness literally didn’t occur to me until I got to his first line of dialogue. Then it was just like, No, he’s not going to talk! That’s going to be the thing he has to deal with, every moment of every day. The talent with art followed after that, because without speaking he needs some way to impress a girl, right? Otherwise, it’s hopeless.

You set up an interesting premise that is fairly unique in crime and mystery fiction: the protagonist who is forced to use his skills in criminal pursuits. How does it change the dynamics of a crime story when there isn’t the clear cut choice between doing right or wrong?

Mike does know it’s wrong, of course, but he does it anyway, because it’s essentially the best choice he has. Although the first time was clearly a mistake, letting himself get roped into this seemingly innocent thing, because he succumbs to the basic idea of finally being popular at school. Eventually, he’s on the edge of becoming a full-fledged criminal, but at that point it’s just about
impossible to turn back. He does it for what he sees as a perfectly justifiable reason – to protect the one person he’s ever loved.

You mention on your web site that you’re back at work on another McKnight book. Does that process feel different now that you’ve been away for two books? Do you bring anything to it this time out that you learned from writing those other books that you might not have otherwise?

That was the idea. Take some time away from the series, recharge my batteries, become a better writer. (And never, ever get to the point where you’re just mailing it in!) I didn’t plan on doing two books outside the series – this new one just sort of got in my head and wouldn’t leave – but I’m glad it all turned out that way. Now that I’m back to work on the next Alex McKnight book, it all feels new again.

Given the success of The Lock Artist, do you foresee a new schedule that finds you alternating between series and non-series books like Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman and many others now do?

Absolutely yes. I’ll keep doing new and different things, and I’ll keep going back. (As long as people are reading the books, anyway.)

What is the status of the various film projects associated with your McKnight books?

I’ve been working (and reworking and reworking) on the “Cold Day” screenplay with Nick Childs – the director I worked with on “The Shovel.” He hopes to get that off the ground this year. Actually, this new book might get adapted first! There’s been some real interest, and talks are ongoing, as they say. Just think about it – some young actor gets to be in every scene, without ever having a line of dialogue! Talk about a breakout role, eh?

Former Iowa poet laureate Robert Dana died this weekend. The 80-year-old Dana had been battling pancreatic cancer. Still, he was writing up until the end. His most recent book, The Other, came out in 2009, and despite dealing with writer’s block after its release, he was still working.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dana at his Coralville home in early 2009 for an article about the release of that book. As I wrote, you can stand at the back window of Dana’s home, look into the ravine that serves as his backyard, and see the subject matter of many of his poems.

“People are surprised — it’s all right there,” Dana told me. “The longer you live in a place, the more it feeds you. The more it shows you what’s there.”

He knew Iowa, and documented it as well as any other poet, of his generation or any other. His contributions to poetry, and to the state, were invaluable. He taught at Cornell College in Mount Vernon for 40 years, and resurrected the North American Review literary journal.

Thanks to his generosity, I have gathered a small library of his work, and enjoyed watching as he evolved late in life from formal verse to freer, more playful (and, frankly, incisive) forms. The next I’ll acquire is New & Selected Poems: 1955 to 2010 from Anhinga Press. It’s about time Dana’s work has been collected, and it will serve as a fitting tribute to a poet who never stopped reaching.

“I don’t want to be a poet who repeats himself. It’s another reason I keep moving on, lighting out for the territory,” he said last year. “What do you do when you run out of territory?”