Makin' a difference
DAVE ZELTSERMAN broke onto the scene in 2004 with Fast Lane, a PI novel with a difference. Then last year came Bad Thoughts, a thriller with a difference. Hot on its tail, March sees the publication of Small Crimes, a cop novel. With a difference, of course. Joe Denton, the book’s protagonist, is a cop fresh out of jail. ALLAN GUTHRIE spoke to Zeltserman for Pulp Pusher.
ALLAN GUTHRIE: An American author with a UK publisher is an increasingly uncommon sight these days. I know you’ve long admired your new publisher, Serpent’s Tail. How did the deal come about and just how damned pleased are you?
DAVE ZELTSERMAN: Al, I’m damned please. I wrote Small Crimes thinking Serpent’s Tail would be the right home for it. John Williams, who’s a consulting editor for Serpent’s Tail, is also a member of the hardboiled/noir fiction discussion group, RARA AVIS, and I contacted John off-list to see if he’d be willing to read my book. I think he was willing to partly because Ken Bruen, Vicki Hendricks and yourself were kind enough to read an early draft and provide me very generous comments, and partly because of the response my first book, Fast Lane, was generating. At the time John also gave me the caveat that Serpent’s Tail only buys books “that they’re completely desperate to publish”, so while I thought he would like Small Crimes, I wasn’t holding out too much hope that Serpent’s Tail would buy it. Nine months later, just as I was about to give up on them, John called me to give me the good news that both him and the publisher, Pete Ayrton, wanted to publish it. Needless to say I was ecstatic.
AG: A three-book deal is a very nice commitment, too. It’s not a series in the traditional sense, but I know there’s a link between the books. Can you tell us a little more?
DZ: For years I’d been reading about Whitey Bulger and the South Boston Irish Mob, and for years I’d been thinking I should write a book based on it. The source material is ridiculously good. Here you have the top mobster in Boston whose brother, Billy, is the State Senate President. There have been rumors circulating that Billy would use his office to squelch state police investigations into his brother’s activities, and that Whitey would intimidate state polls to vote along with his brother and keep his brother in power. Then you had the story breaking how Whitey was an FBI informant, and that Whitey would use this to eliminate his competition (and at the same time give up some of his own people), and the FBI agent, Connolly, would warn Whitey of guys wanting to rat him out so Whitey could take care of them before they had the chance. There’s a lot more to all this—this is only the tip of the iceberg, but you can see how a crime writer from Boston would want to use this.
Beginning of 2006 I had the perfect storm that finally had me writing this book—wanting to sell Serpent’s Tail a second novel, all the tell-all South Boston Irish Mobs books that all seemed to come out at the same time early 2006 and which pissed me off to no end seeing publishers giving these scumbags book deals, and the Little Brown plagiarism scandal that pissed me off even more.
This book, Pariah, ended up as a mix of crime, social commentary, and a somewhat bitter satirical look at the publishing industry. When I wrote it I had the idea of making it in a way the flipside of Small Crimes—in Small Crimes, the book opens with the protagonist, Joe Denton, being released from jail after serving time for a very brutal crime, and all he wants is to go through the rest of his life without causing any more damage. In Pariah, I start the book similarly, with my protagonist, Kyle Nevin, just being released from prison, but in his case, he’s a completely remorseless sociopath, someone who leaves death and destruction wherever he goes.
Fortunately, even with the critical eye the book turns on the publishing industry, John Williams and Pete Ayrton were both excited about Pariah and wanted to buy it. When my agent started talking contracts with Pete, a story broke in Boston about a Mafia hitman who was being released from prison after a relatively short prison term even though he had confessed to killing around 20 people. The reason he was able to work out that deal was he had some information on Whitey Bulger, and was able to trade that for immunity for whatever else he was going to confess to. Anyway, the story screamed noir novel, and I proposed a loosely based novel on this, which would also open with the protagonist just being released from prison. Pete liked the idea, and this third book was added to the contract. So while all three books are standalones, they’re tied loosely together by this “man just out prison” theme.
AG: Very nice. Does the third book have a title yet?
DZ: Killer.
AG: And another detail while we’re at it. Small Crimes
is out in March – are the others following at yearly
intervals or more closely than that?
DZ: Pariah will be out January, 2009, and Killer January, 2010.
AG: You mentioned earlier that you’re a ‘crime writer from Boston,’ yet Small Crimes is a rural noir. What made you decide on the small-town setting and how important is location to this particular story?
DZ: A rural setting was a must. There were a lot of reasons for this; two big ones being the claustrophobic atmosphere of the book and the damage that Joe Denton ends up doing to the town. Plus the best scene in the book involves a dried-up quarry, so I needed that. Also, with the police and Sheriff’s office being as corrupt as I made them, I had to make the area fictional.
AG: Joe Denton, the protagonist, is a complex individual with an unusual – some might say, abnormal – personality. There’s the suggestion that there might even be a name for his condition – if indeed he has one. How did you go about creating such a convincing psychology?
DZ: You’re right, it is suggested, but it can really go either way, and it’s left up to the readers own interpretation. I have my own personal opinion which I’ll be coy about and keep to myself for the time being. I do research such things using the Internet, which is a great source for articles on all sorts of personality disorders. For Small Crimes I ended up reading a number of papers on the disorder you’re referring to. Also, for whatever reason, I have this talent of being able to get into the heads of sociopaths and other broken individuals. It’s a skill that makes my wife and parents proud.
AG: Did you concern yourself with whether readers were going to find Joe likeable or sympathetic?
DZ: Initially, no. The first draft was written to be pretty much in-your-face noir, no compromises. What I found was that people who liked noir really liked it, but editors were hesitant about how the general reading public would react to the book. After a while it sunk in if I wanted to sell it I needed the book to appeal to a broader group of readers, and I ended up revising it to make Joe more sympathetic—at least at first. None of the noir aspects were removed, but they were delayed, made more subtle, and in a way made more powerful because of that. As it turns out, I had sent John Williams my first draft, and both him and Pete liked it enough that I think they would’ve bought it as it was, but when John read the second draft, he was happy about the changes that I made.
AG: If Joe and Johnny Lane (the protagonist of Fast Lane) met in a bar, how do you think they’d get along?
DZ: Joe’s smart enough and intuitive enough to keep the hell away from Johnny Lane. Junior Vassey, on the hand, would’ve found a kindred spirit and had become fast friends with Lane, as probably would’ve Dan Pleasant.
AG: A reviewer once described the men in your fiction as ‘bundles of repressed rage’. Naturally, this was pre-Small Crimes. Do you think there’s any truth in that statement? And if so, how do you see Joe fitting in?
DZ: I’m not sure “repressed rage” accurately describes Fast Lane—there’s nothing repressed about the rage Johnny Lane expresses. While Fast Lane is a mix of hardboiled PI deconstruction and psychotic noir, it’s also thematically about the damage that child abuse causes as it’s passed from generation to generation, so rage does play an important role in the book. With Bad Thoughts any rage that Bill Shannon holds towards his antagonizer is more than justified, but yeah, repressed rage does play a role in that book. Small Crimes, not so much. Joe Denton is more reflective than my other protagonists and genuinely regrets all the damage he’s caused in his life. With him it’s more of a sadness than anything else. Redemption—failed or otherwise, plays the biggest role in this book.
It is interesting, though, now that I’ve written a number of books and short stories, I find certain themes reappearing throughout my works, such as “repressed rage”, and some of these others are pretty scary. Fortunately, my wife hasn’t caught on yet, otherwise she’d probably be long gone.
AG: Finally, any word on whether you might make it over to these shores to help promote one of the forthcoming novels?
DZ: I’m hoping so. There’s nothing I’d like more, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Serpent’s Tail will want to send me on a book tour through the UK—if not for Small Crimes than for Pariah or Killer.
AG: That’d be cool. Here’s hoping.
DZ: Al, I understand you’ve got a new noir book coming out in March also.
AG: Indeed, my new novel, Savage Night, will be out in the UK. It’s a bloody revenge tale, probably my first proper noir since Two-Way Split, although the storytelling’s very different. I’m going through the usual pre-release anxieties at the moment, but I’m looking forward to seeing it on the shelves. Dave, it’s been a pleasure.
DZ: Same here, Al.
"Serpent’s Tail only buys books 'that they’re completely desperate to publish', so while I thought he would like Small Crimes, I wasn’t holding out too much hope"
-- Dave Zeltserman
ALLAN GUTHRIE was born in Orkney, but has lived in Edinburgh for most of his adult life. He is the award-winning author of four novels and a novella. His latest novel, Savage Night, is out in March '08. When he's not writing, he's a literary agent with Jenny Brown Associates.
