Interview with Steve Hamilton
9-4-2001
by Jon Jordan
Steve's Web Site

Jon:  In case some one has been locked in there home for the last four years, and hasn't read your books, how would you describe them?

Steve:  Unconventional hard-boiled crime fiction, set in a small town on the shores of Lake Superior -- with a main character who has a lot of baggage, and who wants nothing to do with the private eye business. But he can’t stop himself from helping people who really need him. So he ends up in a lot of trouble. How’s that?

Jon:  Alex has a very interesting background. How did you come up with his past, and is there any of Steve in Alex?

Steve:  Not really. After I tried to write my own version of the modern wise-cracking private eye, and totally failed, he was sort of just there, waiting for me. The first sense I had of him was that he felt like a failure, just like I was feeling that night. The baseball background, especially the part about being a catcher, seemed to fit his personality -- and of course he never played one day in the big leagues. After that, it just seemed natural that he’d become a police office. The death of his partner was the thing that kept haunting him, fourteen years later.

Jon:  So far Alex hasn't used a gun. Is this going to continue? Will it cause problems down the line?

Steve:  The day his partner was killed, Alex had a gun in his hand. He didn’t use it. Since then, he’s had this thing about guns. He hates to even touch one. In the first book, he has to get over that, at least a little bit. But he’ll never really want to carry a gun again unless he absolutely has to. Will it cause him problems? Oh yes!

Jon:  You write about Michigan and his surroundings in such a way that the reader really feels they have been there. Is this from personal experience or damn good research?

Steve:  I grew up in the Detroit area, and we’d go up north every summer. Northern Michigan, especially the Upper Peninsula, seems so different from anywhere else in the country. As soon as you cross that bridge, time seems to slow down. And of course with Lake Superior always in the background -- the biggest, deepest, coldest lake in the world -- I thought it would be a great place to set a mystery.

Jon:  Do you intend to keep writing about Alex McKnight for a while? Any plans to do stand alone novels?

Steve:  Number four (NORTH OF NOWHERE) comes out next summer. I know the book after that will be a McKnight book, as well. I know I‘ll do something else some day, but not until the other kind of story (whatever it is) is just burning to get out. Stand-alones are doing very well these days, of course  (Connelly, Lehane, Coben, etc.), but I don’t want to do one just to try to make a big score. I think it would show. You’ve gotta do things for the right reasons.

Jon:  Laura Lippman said "Steve Hamilton already seems like a wily veteran to me". I think that she sums it up real well. Have you been writing a long time?

Steve:  I sent a story into Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine when I was twelve years old. (No, it was not accepted.) I’m forty now, and the magazine just bought a story from me! In the twenty-eight years in between, I wrote through high school, wrote through college, promised myself I‘d keep writing even though I was going off to work full-time at IBM, forgot that promise for about ten or twelve years, remembered the promise and joined a writer’s group, sold a couple short stories, and then decided to try my first book-length mystery. That book was A COLD DAY IN PARADISE. When it won the Edgar, I went up to the podium and said the same thing Tommy Lasorda said when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: “Who are you people, and what are you doing in my dream?”

Jon:  What made you want to write?

Steve:  I’m not sure there’s a good answer to that question. I think, like most writers, I write because I have to. It‘s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m doing what I’m really supposed to be doing.

Jon:  Do you have set writing time? Morning, night, weekends?

Steve:  For me, there’s only one choice. Nickie and Toni go to bed, and then I start writing around ten o’clock at night. I‘ll stay up until one or two in the morning.

Jon:  Do you enjoy touring and/or meeting the readers?

Steve:  I was so nervous the first few times, but now I just relax at these signings and have fun. I hardly ever read from the book, but I can stand up there and tell stories for an hour or so, no problem. It’s still amazing to me that people would actually come to the store just to meet me. I don’t think I’ll ever take that for granted. Bottom line, though, that’s one great hour and then twenty-three hours by myself, going to the next place, being away from my family. I wish I could just beam myself to the store, and then back home...

Jon:  Do you think being a Father has an affect on your writing?

Steve:  Dennis Lehane once told me that he didn‘t think he could have written GONE BABY GONE if he had kids. I know I couldn’t do it. Just the thought of one of my kids being in danger, even if it’s just in my imagination as I’m writing fiction -- I don’t know. If the story really demanded it, I suppose I could try. But it would be hard.

Jon:  What authors do you enjoy reading when you get the chance?

Steve:  I’ve mentioned Lehane and Connelly and Coben already. Who else? James Crumley, Lawrence Block, George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Elizabeth Cosin, Charles Knief, William Kent Krueger, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid. (I could go on and on.) Somebody I’ve just discovered is Denise Mina, from Glasgow. I got to meet her in London this year and tell her how much I love her books. Of course, about twenty seconds after I meet her, I’m already showing her pictures of my kids. I’m hopeless.

Jon:  If you were able to time travel to the past and talk with a teenage Steve, what would you tell him?

Steve:  Hang in there. Keep day-dreaming. It’ll all work out.

Jon:  You have a job besides writing. What do you do for a living? And how do you manage to juggle a career, a successful writing career and having a family? Do you ever sleep!!??!!!???

Steve:  I still work for IBM, although I did take a leave of absence this summer. The people I work with, especially my manager, have been so incredibly supportive and flexible. The fact that I can stay up late writing and then come in late the next day, for example -- and work at home at least one day a week. So far, it’s all worked out.

Jon:  When you aren't working or writing, what do you do with your free time?

Steve:  Not working, not writing, then it‘s spending time with my family... Okay, or golf. Every year, I play on this team with a bunch of Americans against some guys from England and Finland. We’ve played in Scotland and Ireland in the past, and this summer, we played in Spain. Life is rough, I know.

Jon:  What kind of movies do you enjoy? How about Music?

Steve:  I enjoy real offbeat comedies, like anything from the Coen brothers. (As you can imagine, I loved FARGO.) Music, let’s see... I’ll just tell you what I have in the tape box in my car: The Clash, The Smiths, The B-52’s, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Bach, and Vivaldi. So that’s what, alternative rock and baroque classical.

Jon:  So after reading your books I'm pretty sure I don't need to go outside in the winter! Do you like outdoor activities in the winter?

Steve:  I grew up playing hockey every day, on the frozen lake behind my house. That or snowmobiling or skiing.

Jon:  Baseball is a big part of who Alex is. Have you played baseball? And who's your favorite team?

Steve:  I come from a baseball (and golf) family, and have played a lot, but never in the minor leagues. My team from birth has been the Detroit Tigers. That’s not going so well these days...

Jon:  So is there anything about you that people would be surprised to know?

Steve:  I’m not sure about this one. I guess if you only know me through the books, which happen to be violent (and cold), you might be a little surprised when you meet me in person. I‘m the kind of person you could take home to meet your parents, put it that way.

Jon:  Batman or Superman??? And why?

Steve:  Batman. He’s much more interesting. He has a real dark side.

Jon:  What is the ONE thing that is always in your refrigerator?

Steve:  24-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew. How else am I gonna stay up so late every night?